Hi all. I’ve recently read Base Valka and Independent Peopleand I’m curious what kind of cultural place, so to speak, these works hold in Iceland and Icelandic literature.
I’m neither Icelandic nor speak the language, so I’m limited in how much I can find, but while researching the novels and the author, I came across a brief line in a small article that claimed that "Salka herself is a literary icon, beloved character, and role model for generations of Icelandic girls and women, as I’ve been told by my Icelandic friends." Does this ring true (even if only for older generations)?
More broadly this also made me wonder how large these works loom in Iceland. I’ve read a couple details in English reviews that claim they are monumental, against which all later Icelandic writing tends to be compared, but it’s hard to discern whether such details are laudatory excess or accurate descriptions when one doesn’t speak the language nor know the culture. Are these books read by pretty much all Icelanders, do people name-drop Salka Valka, Bjartur, or Rauthsmyri (possibly Rauðsmýri in the original) with metaphorical meaning? Or are these novels just books everyone knows about because their parents and grandparents read them, but they’re not so significant anymore in contemporary Icelandic (literary) culture. I’d love to learn more about how they feature in Icelandic culture and literary culture, if anyone can shed light on that.
What's the cultural impact of Halldór Laxness in Iceland?
byu/shotgunsforhands inIceland
Posted by shotgunsforhands
11 Comments
I am halfway through Independent People and struggling to finish it. But I do see a lot of references to Laxness.
Everyone that didn’t drop out of “high school” had to read that shit.
My mother made a great point the other day about growing up as an Icelander. You read Independent people by Halldór Laxness as a child or a teen and most likely you will hate it or at least hate the protagonist. Then you read it again years later, once you’ve grown up and then you will love it fiercely.
They’re considered iconic Icelandic works of fiction but for younger generations it holds much less interest and relevance than it does for older people
I would say that Halldór Laxness is an integral part of Icelandic culture, even if many Icelanders don’t realize it.
-Most Icelanders have read at least one of his novels. Íslandsklukkan and Sjálfstætt fólk were mandatory reading in high school ( still are maybe?)
-Many Icelanders are named after characters in Halldór’s works. Salka, for example, was not used as a name before Halldór, as far as I know.
-The majority of Icelandes can recite and sing “Maístjarnan” (The May Star), his most famous poem.
Those are just the first points that come to mind. He is considered one of the giants of Icelandic literature.
He’s like Tolstoy to the Russians or Dickens to the english.
Something to keep in mind when discussing his legacy is that Laxness was actually quite a divisive figure in Iceland in his own time. Both due to his political beliefs and his writings.
Many farmers felt that his books portraying rural life were unfair and/or unaccurate. He was also a socialist for a large part of his life, which rubbed some folks the wrong way.
He also couldn’t spell. The more charitable way to phrase that is that he had very unconventional opinions on how to spell many words. My grandma, for example, can’t stand to read his works because of this. I’ve also heard many people echo the sentiment that “Laxness thought that he was above that (spelling and grammar rules),” viewing him as arrogant.
As the years go on, most of these “controvorsies” have faded, but older people still have some of these strong opinions on him. I say this to say that he is not universally praised in Iceland, even today. He is however, universally discussed. Whatever you think of him (I personally adore his works), there’s no denying that he’s a, if not the, titan of icelandic literature. Probably way over 90% of published authors in Iceland for the last few decades have read at least one of his works (because he’s required reading in schools). That’s bound to make you influential.
Bjartur í Sumarhúsum is the character i most often see refrenced in broader culture. Sometimes in a strange way that makes him out to be a hero, but more often in the way you’d expect, as a symbol for someone who’s stubborn and self-centered.
There has also been some discourse in recent years about what to make of Bjartur’s molestation of Ásta Sóllilja, given how differently we see those issues today (not that the book endorses it either, to be fair).
Something that may be more illustrative than anything is that a few weeks ago major newspapers in Iceland were stirring up an outrage about the notion that only four major ‘high schools’ (not an exact correspondence, this is a school stage for 16-18-year-olds) now make reading and studying one of his works required to graduate and some are saying they’ve been removed from the curriculum for being too difficult. So for a lot of Icelanders the idea of anyone graduating without having read him is an outrage. That says something about his cultural weight. Extremely, extremely beloved; being Iceland’s sole Nobel Prize winner makes him something of a national hero (we’re a small nation, and any Icelander gaining that sort of international recognition is a really big deal for us).
His books *are* a bit difficult for teenagers, I think; I know I didn’t particularly appreciate his works when I read them in school (I felt he had a knack for coming up with some very funny scenes here and there, but that the characters were either uninteresting or intensely unlikable, and the events kind of tedious), although as someone else mentioned I suspect I would appreciate a book like *Independent People* more if I reread it as an adult. Part of it is that, in the original Icelandic, one of his quirks is he refuses to use standardized spelling and often uses kind of bizarre and old-fashioned or unusual vocabulary, so his prose reads as fundamentally quirky and often kind of cryptic, at least to a teenager; I imagine they read pretty differently in translation.
Top 5 rock album in Icelandic music history.
I have a short personal anecdote related to Laxness’ work that probably won’t interest you at all, but I am going to share it regardless.
When I was reading Independent People for the first time, back in high school, I thought it was an interesting coincidence that the Danish merchant, Túliníus Jensen, had the same surname as my great-grandfather who just so happened to have been a Danish merchant in Iceland, during this period.
In hindsight, it should’ve been obvious to me, but since Jensen is the most common Danish surname it didn’t occur to me that it might be anything more than a coincidence. When I mentioned this to my teacher she told me that Laxness’ characters were often influenced by real people, and that I should look deeper into it.
Later that night, I raised the subject with my dad, who proceeded to explain to me that back then (e.g. when my family was merchanting), our family’s closest business partners had been another Danish merchanting family with the surname Tulinius. Tulinius and Jensen.
Now, technically we’ve never had any confirmation that the character Túliníus Jensen is an amalgamation of my great-grandfather and his business partners, but we’ve generally accepted this as a fact. It’s been a while since I read the book, so I can’t remember most of them, but I do recall there being a few more similarities between Túliníus Jensen, and a few members of both the Tulinius and the Jensen families, so we’re quite certain that’s the case.
The reason why I am sharing this, is to give a lesser known example of how Laxness’ work is rooted in reality.
https://preview.redd.it/8tq44i43rjcg1.png?width=1535&format=png&auto=webp&s=6a90f63357bb3b20fc3175601c128db9f7eae3d8
A broader English-language perspective on Laxness and his works can be found in the web site “Laxness in Translation.”
Major “rabbit hole” warning-you have been warned.