Freezing Fire, Singing Stone by Falling Tree Productions

Hilary Finch presents a portrait of Iceland, the land of ice and fire that's now in economic meltdown.

Hilary Finch is chief music critic of The Times, but her consuming passion is for Iceland, a country she's visited at least once a year for the past twenty-five years. She's absorbed the culture, from the sagas to Sigur Ros, become acquainted with the people and explored the landscape of lava fields, glaciers and volcanoes.

In this portrait, she examines the energies that burst from the land - literally, in the form of geysirs and volcanic eruptions, and metaphorically, through Icelanders' essential creativity. She talks to the former President, Vigdis Finnbogadóttir, about elves and economics, including the emergence during the recent crisis of the 'kitchen-utensil-revolutionaries' who call for a return to the values of the land and the home. And she meets some of Iceland's most distinctive figures - among them, the Zen Buddhist monk, restauranteur and singer, Sverrir Gudjonsson and the reclusive artist Pall Gudmundsson, who prints portraits from painted ice and creates marimbas from stone gathered in the mountains behind his farmhouse.

Freezing Fire, Singing Stone is Hilary Finch's personal portrait of Iceland - part travelogue, part biography, part confession of an enduring passion - and captures the sounds of geysirs and waterfalls in the mid-Atlantic rift valley alongside cultural testimonies and socio-political analysis.

First broadcast on 10th April 2009 BBC Radio 4
Presented by Hilary Finch
Produced by Alan Hall