Iceland (Lonely Planet, 7th Edition) - Fran Parnell [22]
All of Laxness’s works are masterpieces of irony; his characters, however misguided, are drawn with sympathy; and seams of the blackest humour run through them all. Whatever you think of his works, it’s impossible not to be affected by them. At the time they were written, they were very controversial – quite a few Icelanders disputed his observations, although their complaints were often motivated by national pride and reluctance to publicise Iceland’s relative backwardness. When Laxness won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1955, however, in true Icelandic style he became a hero of the people.
By 1962 Laxness had settled in Reykjavík for good (his home at Laxnes, near the suburb of Mosfellsbær, has now been turned into a museum – Click here). Apparently mellowed by his experiences with extremism at both ends of the spectrum, he wrote A Poet’s Time, which recanted everything he’d ever written in praise of the Communist Party.
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The sagas provided not just entertainment but a strong sense of cultural heritage, as they were written, over the long desperate centuries of Norwegian and Danish subjugation, when Icelanders had very little else. On winter nights, people would gather in farmhouses for the kvöldvaka (evening vigil), a time of socialising and storytelling. While the men twisted horsehair ropes and women spun wool or knitted, a family member would read the sagas and recite rímur (verse reworkings of the sagas).
And the sagas are very much alive today. Modern Icelandic has scarcely changed since Viking times, which means Icelanders of all ages can (and do) read the sagas in Old Norse, the language in which they were written 800 years ago. Most people can quote chunks from them, know the farms where the characters lived and died, and flock to cinemas to see the latest film versions of these eternal tales.
One of the best known, Egil’s Saga, revolves around the complex, devious Egill Skallagrímsson. A renowned poet and skilled lawyer, he was also the grandson of a werewolf and a murderous drunk. Other favourite works include Grettir’s Saga, about a superhuman but doomed outlaw, Grettir the Strong; Laxdæla Saga, the tragic account of a family in northwest Iceland; and Njál’s Saga (see the boxed text), another tragedy about two warring families, whose heroic characters make it one of the most popular sagas of all.
You can admire the original saga manuscripts in Reykjavík’s Culture House (Þjóðmenningarhúsið).
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If you read nothing else, at least read Halldór Laxness’s dark, funny, painful masterpiece Independent People – it’s fantastic, and you’ll marvel all the more at Iceland’s progress in the last 70 years.
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EDDIC & SKALDIC POETRY
The first settlers probably brought their oral poetic tradition with them from mainland Scandinavia; however, this ancient poetry wasn’t written down until the 12th-century Saga Age.
Eddic poems are subdivided into three classes – the Mythical, the Gnomic and the Heroic – and were composed in free, variable metres with a structure very similar to that of early Germanic poetry. Mythical poetry was based on the antics of the Norse gods and was probably promoted as an intended affront to growing Christian sentiments in Norway. Gnomic poetry consists of one major work, the Hávamál, which extols the virtues of the common life. The Heroic Eddic poems are similar in form, subject matter and even characters to early Germanic works such as the Nibelungenlied.
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Iceland publishes the greatest number of books per capita in the world, and the literacy rate is a perfect 100%.
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