I was reminded of Gogol's "The Inspector General" about the reaction of townspeople to a stranger's visit. With Gogol's play the town is convinced that a vagabond is the Inpspetor General -- and he is treated to all the best the town has to offer. In part this treatment is so that the visitor will not discover the town's secrets. In Laxness' novel, the Bishop has recruited a young man to be his emissary to check out the church at Snaeffelsjokull. Some rather strange goings on have been reported there. The Emissary of the Bishop (Embi for short) is to go and find out what he can and simply record the information. The EmBi keeps a journal and we read the journal. I was not too far into the book (read in translation) before I took advantage of Wikipedia's Icelandic alphabet and Google Maps aerial view of the glaciers of Iceland. I found the characters rather interesting. To some degree, this book has to do with relationship of a small village in a remote part of Iceland with the rest of the world. Some of the characters have been world travelers and some are not from Iceland at all. ( )

This is the second Laxness book I've read. I did not enjoy it as much as Independent People, which was more epic and had more enjoyable characters. Under the Glacier was funny at times, but not very funny. It was a bit slow in the beginning in middle, but the last 30-40 pages made it worth getting there.

Wonderfully absurd and "deep". I really enjoyed how the contemplation of religion unfolds amongst the humorous characters. One cannot escape the mood of the distinct Scandinavian folklore. Damp. ( )

In "Under the Glacier," Halldor Laxness mixes whimsy and profundity together, with odd characters, a peculiar quest, dreams and transformations, new age mystics and gurus, and a healthy dose of the post-structuralist theology of the 1960s. In some ways, the novel reminded me a Bjork video! It's about a "pastoral investigation" of a isolated rural community where the resident minister has gone off the radar screen of belief, the church itself has been nailed shut, and the community seems to be reverting to its pre-Christian paganism. Enter "Embi," the bishop's emissary, to gather information and prepare the report: he's the Marlowe on this journey into the Icelandic Heart of Darkness. The irony being that that the Darkness is actually suffused with light, the non-believers in the book are filled with piety, and one of the novel's most important characters must die in order to live again.

There's a lot going on in 240 pages! Halldor Laxness wrote some 60 novels; "Under the Glacier" is said to be very atypical of his style and themes, but it makes me want read something else of his. It did seem to be very Icelandic, with some of the central characters as loopy as the people I met on my night prowls through the streets of Reykjavik a few years ago. ( )

This book was published in a slightly different form, under the title "Christianity at Glacier," a title which I prefer for this book.

Who could be immune to the charms of a narrator who refers to himself throughout the tale as Embi? Embi is the "Emissary of the Bishop," sent from Reykjavik to Snaefells to investigate and report back on various suspicious events purported to take place at the remote Glacier. Embi meets Pastor Jon Primus, who is a practical man, insightful and brilliant. Or perhaps he is highly impractical, and possibly insane. As Embi travels to the community around Glacier he finds a boarded-up church, a pastor who repairs primus stoves and shoes horses instead of preaching, an abundance of coffee and cakes but little food, and passionately articulate people who rarely make the sort of sense that we can understand.

Glacier is far more remote than geographical distance would indicate, and not one person that Embi encounters is normal in any sense of the word. It is hard to classify this wild, funny, compassionate story. In her introduction Susan Sontag discusses elements of fable, science fiction, philosophical novel...but the title of her introduction says it best: "Outlandish."

Embi and Pastor Jon Primus are characters I will remember a long time, but they are not characters that will always remain in my heart, such as Alfgrimur in Laxness' "The Fish Can Sing" . ( )