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Vagrants and Uncommon Visitors traces the origins, impact, and significance of a bird collection turned museum on the shores of Iceland’s Lake Mývatn.

The lake supports a eutrophic ecology that, among other things, gives life to an all-but-complete collection of Icelandic birds. The birds, or maybe their collection, give purpose to Sigurgeir, a native son who has been sighting birds and gathering eggs on the lakeside family farm since childhood. When Sigurgeir is killed in an accident on the lake, his family begins a decade-long struggle to make a museum. In this gorgeously illustrated, long-form lyric essay, Vagrants and Uncommon Visitors concerns itself with family, gender, and memorials as it examines the grief, natural history, and accomplishment of Sigurgeir’s Bird Museum.

 

Praise for Vagrants & Uncommon Visitors:

"While Greene does a fabulous job at describing the museum itself and its roots and the history of the individual and family that put it together and run it, something she's done throughout this series is to consider museums, and collecting, in general...I don't know how many museums there are in Iceland, but I hope there are many, many more and that Greene continues to find herself with questions about their origins, their impact, and just what they accomplish so that she continues to publish more of these chapbooks, or maybe even something larger."
—Emerging Writers Network Review (Read the whole review here!)