The novel Meðan nóttin líður, translated to English by Katjana Edwardsen.
The novel received the Icelandic Literature Prize in 1990 and the Nordic Council's Literature Prize in 1992.
From Night Watch:
Stefan picks up a bird by the water’s edge, studies it absently and throws it away. A shabby thing; not even the feathers are reasonably fresh, for they have started to rot. A creature from the cliffs that has crash-landed upside-down, its head crushed, its body broken – a feast for ravens.
Stefan wipes his fingers on the back of his trousers and sits down on a stone, staring at the bird’s carcass without seeing it.
He has no idea of what he is doing here, at the foot of the cliffs in the middle of the night, has no reason, no excuse; it would be far more sensible to try to sleep or to help Einar, the farmhand, to make the coffin. But sleep cringes from him these days and his hands are unwilling, his fingers slow and stiff.
Making coffins. Too often, he has had to make coffins, already.
Rebecca bore him six children, of which Thorkell is the only one still alive. He has had to watch the others die, one by one, first the four girls, then the little boy who took his mother with him. But he never gave up, not even now, when his crown of hair and beard have turned grey as if coated by rime in warm weather. He just sits here on his stone by the water in the middle of the night, in all this pointlessness, against the background of the black cliff. Not giving up.
H has not once taken off his clothes these past days, no more than Sunneva. No peace of mind, no tranquility anywhere. From his bed, at night, he has watched her, studied her every movement, thinking that we shall see, now, what she knows, realizing that her knowledge will not suffice in any event. Not this time. Known? Suspected. Ever since he went and got Jacob out of the mountain’s clutch, snatched the quarry, as it were, in fact from the moment he saw the blood-smeared body hanging from the noose, he had known.
(28-9)
