IV

In literature there had, especially in poetry, been a continuity

from the very beginnings. Yet, in the field also, the early

nineteenth century saw the dawn of a new age. The Romantic Movement

was here, as elsewhere, accompanied by a national awakening, so that

literature became the herald and the principal motive force of

social improvement. There was at the same time a new drive for an

increased beauty of language and refinement of style, where the

classical, cultivated, literary language and the living speech of

the time merged. With Romanticism there also emerged poets of so

great merit that only a few such had come forward since the end of

the saga period. But henceforward--let's take as our point of

departure the second quarter of the nineteenth century--each

generation in the country has indeed produced some outstanding

literary works, comparable in quality with the accomplishments of

the ancient classical Edda and saga periods.

During this new golden age, several literary tendencies and genres

may be observed. But Romanticism remained the most lasting and

potent literary force for about a century. However, one of the

characteristics of the Icelandic literature of later ages is the

infrequent manifestation of literary trends in their purest and most

extreme forms. Here the stabilizing and moderating influence of the

ancient sagas has, without doubt, been at work. In most cases this

middle course may be said to have been beneficial to the literature.

But the saga-literature may also well have had a restraining

influence on later authors in so far as it set a difficult standard

to be emulated. It is probably here that the principal explanation

of the late re-emergence of prose fiction is to be sought. It was

not until about the middle of the nineteenth century that modern

short stories, novels and plays began to be written on anything like

a scale worthy of note. The earliest of these were romantic in

spirit, though most of them had a realistic tinge. With Realism, the

short story came into its own in the eighties and nineties of the

last century. This trend came like a fresh current to take its place

side by side with Romanticism, without, however, ousting it from the

literary scene. But owing to the realistic technique and the tragic

endings of much in the ancient literature--Eddaic poetry and sagas

alike--Realism was never the novel force it generally was felt to be

elsewhere. Still, it brought social criticism into our literature.

This was introduced through the activity of young literary-minded

students who, while studying at the University of Copenhagen, had

become full of enthusiasm for Georg Brandes and his school.

One of these young men was Einar H. Kvaran (1859-1938), a

clergyman's son from the North, who, after beginning as a student of

politics, soon turned his attention to literature and journalism. He

became editor of Icelandic newspapers in Canada (1885-95), and,

later, in Iceland, mainly in Reykjavík. His chief preoccupation,

however, became the composition of short stories and novels, and

besides these he also wrote some plays and poetry. The delicacy and

the religious bent of his nature could not for long remain the soil

for the satirical asperity and materialism of the realist school,

though his art was always marked by its technique. As he advanced in

years, brotherhood and forgiveness became an evergrowing element in

his idealism, and he became the first bearer of the spiritualist

message in this country. With his stories he had a humanizing

influence on his times, especially in the education of children, and

in the field of culture he remained actively interested right up to

a ripe old age. If somewhat lacking in creative fervour and

colourful raciness of style, he made up for it by the abundance of

his intelligence, his humanity and culture.

He wrote A Dry Spell (Ðurrkur) at the beginning of the present

century, when he had disengaged himself from the strongest influence

of Realism, but before moral preaching and the belief in the life

hereafter had become the leading elements in his stories. He had

then, for a few years, been living in the north-country town of

Akureyri, which obviously provides the model for the setting of the

story. It was first printed in the 1905 issue of the periodical

Skírnir.

In addition to the travelled, academic realists, there appeared a

group of self-educated popular writers, some of whom had come into

direct contact with this foreign school. They were farmers, even in

the more remote country districts, who had read the latest

Scandinavian literature in the original, and who wrote stories

containing radical social satire. Guðmundur Friðjónsson, for

instance, had begun his career in this way. In many of these

authors, however, we find rather a sort of native realism, where

there is not necessarily a question of the influence of any

particular literary tendency. Their works sprang out of the native

environment of the authors, whose vision, despite a limited horizon,

was often vivid. They convey true impressions of real life.

Of this kind are most of the works of Guðmundur Friðjónsson

(1869-1944), a radical who later turned to conservatism--and the

best works of Jón Trausti (1873-1918). These, who had their debut as

writers about the turn of the century, are the authors of the next

two stories in our collection. Both were North-countrymen. The

former, a farmer's son from a district enjoying a high standard of

culture, himself settled down as a farmer in his native locality in

order to earn a living for his large family. In his youth he had

attended a secondary school in the neighbourhood for a couple of

winters, but he never had his experiences enriched by foreign travel

and was during the whole of his life anchored to his native region.

Jón Trausti, the son of a farm labourer and his wife, who had been

born on one of the northernmost farms in Iceland in a barren and

outlying district, was brought up in dire poverty. From an early age

he had had to fend for himself as a farmhand and fisherman, finally

settling in Reykjavík as a printer. Apart from his apprenticeship

with the printers, he never went to any sort of school (school

education was first made compulsory by law in Iceland in 1907); but

on two occasions he had travelled abroad.

These energetic persons became widely read, especially in Icelandic

literature, and wrote extensively under difficult circumstances:--in

fact all the modern authors represented in the present book may be

said to have been prolific as writers. Guðmundur Friðjónsson was

equally versatile as a writer of short stories and poems. He has a

rich command of imagery and diction, and his style, at times a

little pompous, is often powerful though slightly archaic in

flavour. The ancient heroic literature doubtless fostered his manly

ideas, which, however, sprang from his own experience in life. One

must, he felt, be hard on oneself, and on one's guard against the

vanity of newfangled ideas and against the enervating effect of

civilization. It is in the nature of things that with this farmer

and father of a family of twelve, assiduity, prudence, and self-

discipline should be among the highest virtues. This is notably

apparent in The Old Hay (Gamla heyið), which he wrote in 1909, and

which was published in Tólf sögur (Twelve stories) in 1915.

Jón Trausti (pseudonym of Guðmundur Magnússon) is best known as

the author of novels and short stories on contemporary and

historical themes, but he also wrote plays and poems. He was endowed

with fertile creative powers and the ability to draw vivid sketches

of environment and character. At times, however, he lacks restraint,

especially in his longer novels. Still, his principal work, The

Mountain Cot (Heiðarbýlið)--one of the longest cycles in

Icelandic fiction--is his greatest. The little outlying mountain cot

becomes a separate world in its own right, a coign of vantage

affording a clear view of the surrounding countryside where we get

profound insight into human nature. Like the bulk of his best work,

this novel has a foundation in his own experiences. In reading the

story by him included in this volume, the reader may find it helpful

to bear in mind Trausti's early life as a fisherman. What he

attempts to show us there is a kind of inner reality--an offset to

reality. When I was on the Frigate (Þegar eg var á fregátunni)

first published in Skírnir for 1910.

Jón Trausti and Einar H. Kvaran--who between them form an

interesting contrast--were the most prolific novelists at the

beginning of the present century. By that time prose was becoming an

increasingly important part of Icelandic literature. It would be

more or less true to say that in the first thirty years of the

century it had gained an equal footing with poetry. For the last

thirty years, however, prose has taken first place, after poetry had

constituted the backbone of Icelandic literature for six hundred

years, or since the end of saga-writing.

But there were several writers who felt that the small reading

public at home in Iceland gave them too little scope. So they

emigrated, mostly to Denmark, and in the early decades of the

century began to write in foreign languages, though the majority

continued simultaneously to write in the vernacular. Pioneers in

this field were the dramatist Johann Sigurjónsson (1880-1919), and

the novelist Gunnar Gunnarsson (b. 1889). Both of these wrote in

Danish as well as in Icelandic. Early in the second decade of the

century three of this overseas group produced works that were

accorded immediate acclaim, and which have since become classics,

being widely translated into foreign languages. These were Eyvind of

the Hills (Fjalla-Eyvindur) by Johann Sigurjonsson; The Borg Family

(Borgaraettin, in English Guest the One-eyed) by Gunnar Gunnarsson;

and Nonni, Erlebnisse eines jungen Isländers, the first of the

famous children's books by the Jesuit monk Jón Sveinsson (Jon

Svensson, 1857-1944). With these works modern Icelandic literature

won for the first time a place for itself among the living

contemporary literatures of the world. Since then, Iceland's

contribution has been steady, not only in the works of those who

wrote in foreign languages, but equally--and during the last couple

of decades exclusively--in vernacular writing. In fact, with the

return to his native country of Gunnar Gunnarsson in 1939, the vogue

of writing in foreign languages virtually came to an end.

On his arrival in Iceland Gunnarsson had settled in his native east-

country district though he afterwards moved to Reykjavík, where he

now lives. Indeed he possesses many of the best qualities of the

gentleman-farmer--firmness, tenacity of purpose, and a craving for

freedom in his domain,--combined with a writer's imaginative and

narrative powers and understanding of humanity. He often describes

human determination and man's struggle with destiny, especially in

his historical novels, which are set in most periods of Icelandic

history. More moving, perhaps, are his novels on contemporary

themes. The greatest among these is the cycle The Church on the

Mountain (Fjallkirkjan; of the five novels making up this sequence,

three have been translated into English under two titles, Ships in

the Sky and The Night and the Dream). This is one of the major works

of Icelandic literature--containing a fascinating world of fancy,

invention, and reality. It is the story of the development of a

writer who leaves home in order to seek the world. One of the best

known stories in all Icelandic literature is his masterly short

novel Advent or The good Shepherd (Aðventa).--Father and Sam

Feðgarnir) was first published in the periodical Eimreiðin in

1916. The present version, with slight changes, is that found in the

author's collected works, Rit XI, 1951.

Most Icelandic writers have, of course, written in the vernacular

only, in spite of longer or shorter stay abroad. This applies to the

last two authors represented here, both of whom appeared on the

literary scene about 1920.

Guðmundur G. Hagalín (b. 1898) comes from the sea-girt Western

Fiords, where he was a fisherman before attending secondary school.

Later, he lectured on Iceland in Norway for a few years (1924-27),

and is now a superintendent of public libraries. His home is in the

neighbourhood of Reykjavík. In his novels, and more particularly in

his short stories, he is at his best in his portrayals of the simple

sturdy seamen and countryfolk of his native region, which are often

refreshingly arch in manner. Hagalín, who is a talented narrator,

frequently succeeds in catching the living speech and characteristic

mode of expression of his characters. The Fox Skin (Tófuskinnið)

first appeared in 1923, in one of his collections of short stories

(Strandbúar).--He has also been successful as a recorder and editor

of the biographies of greatly different people, based on first-hand

accounts of their own lives. He is at present continuing with the

writing of his autobiography--a long and interesting work.

Halldór Kiljan Laxness was born in 1902 in Reykjavík. Shortly

afterwards his parents established themselves on a farm in the

neighbourhood where he was brought up, and where he has now built

himself a home. He is a patriot and, at the same time, a

cosmopolitan who has probably travelled more extensively abroad than

any other of his fellow-countrymen. After becoming a Catholic at the

age of twenty, he spent a year in monasteries abroad, but had

already begun to waver in his Catholicism when he first visited

America, where he stayed from 1927 to 1930. During those years he

became more and more radical in his social beliefs. Already in his

first year there, he wrote the short story New Iceland (Nýja

Ísland), which was immediately published in Heimskringla, an

Icelandic weekly in Winnipeg. The story thus dates from an early

period, when his art was in process of great development.

Indeed, the nineteen twenties saw important changes in our

literature. The last of the great nineteenth century poets were

vanishing from the literary scene, their places being taken by

others, whose poetry, though hardly as profound and lofty in

conception, was more lyrical and simple in manner, with greater

delicacy and refinement of form. Especially in the prose-writing of

the period, there were signs of flourishing growth. Gunnar

Gunnarsson wrote The Church on the Mountain, and Laxness was

becoming known. In the early thirties he appears as a fully mature

writer in Salka Valka, a political love story from a fishing

village, and Independent People (Sjálfstaett fólk), a heroic novel

about the stubbornness and the lot of the Icelandic mountain farmer,

both of which have appeared in English translations. Laxness has

devoted less attention to the writing of plays and poetry than

novels and short stories. Two among his greatest works are the novel

sequences The Light of the World (Heimsljós)--about a poet-genius

who never reaches maturity--, and The Bell of Iceland

(Íslandsklukkan), a historical novel describing a political,

cultural and human struggle. On the whole, the subject-matter of his

stories is extremely varied, equally as regards time, place and

human types. However, the greatest variety will probably be found in

his style, which he constantly adapts to suit the subject. Behind

all this lies a fertile creativeness which rarely leaves the reader

untouched. No matter where in the wide world his stories may be set,

they always stand in some relation to his people--though, at the

same time, he usually succeeds in endowing them with universal

values shared by common humanity. To achieve this has from early on

been Laxness' aim; thus the first printed version of New Iceland

contains the sub-heading: "An international proletarian story."

When this introduction was being written, a new novel by him, Heaven

Reclaimed (Paradísarheimt) was published (1960), which, like his

early short story, is set partly in America--this time among the

Icelandic Mormons of Utah. Here, the man who goes out across half

the world in quest of the millennium is in the end led back to his

origins.

Laxness was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1955.

Tke University of Iceland, Reykjavík.

Steingrímur J. Þorsteinsson.