Halldór Laxness (1902–1998)
Author of Independent People
About the Author
When presenting the 1955 Nobel Prize to Laxness, the Swedish Academy of Letters cited "his vivid writing, which has renewed the Icelandic narrative art." Laxness has been by turns a Catholic convert, a socialist, and a target of the radical press, some of whom accused Laxness of a class ambivalence show more the Saturday Review summarized this way: "Though Laxness came to believe that the novelist's best material is to be found in the proletariat, his rejection of middle-class concerns was never complete, and the ambiguity of his attitude toward the conflict of cultural values accounts for the mixture of humor and pathos that is characteristic of all his novels." Independent People (1934--35) was a bestseller in this country; Paradise Reclaimed Reclaimed (1960), based in part on Laxness's own experiences in the United States, is a novel about a nineteenth-century Icelandic farmer and his travels and experiences, culminating in his conversion to the Mormon church. Laxness owes much to the tradition of the sagas and writes with understated restraint, concentrating almost entirely on external details, from which he extracts the utmost in absurdity. An Atlantic writer found that The Fish Can Sing (1957), the adventures of a young man in 1900 who wants to be a singer, "simmers with an ironic, disrespectful mirth which gives unexpected dimensions to the themes of lost innocence and the nature of art." (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Works by Halldór Laxness
Eldur í Kaupinhafn = Brand i Köpenhamn : tredje delen av trilogin Islands klocka (1946) 11 copies, 1 review
Seiseijú, mikil ósköp 6 copies
N.Tryggvadottir: Serenity and Power 6 copies
Þjóðhátíðarrolla 6 copies
Gerska ævintýrið 6 copies
Heiman eg fór : sjálfsmynd œskumanns 5 copies
Dagleið á fjöllum; greinar 5 copies
Dagur í senn 4 copies
JOHANNES SVEINSSON KJARVAL 4 copies
Straumrof 4 copies
Silfurtúnglið, 4 copies
Yfirskyggðir staðir 4 copies
Ásta Sóllilja 4 copies
Við heygarðshornið 4 copies
Vettvángur dagsins : ritgerðir 4 copies
Þættir 4 copies
Gjörníngabók 4 copies
Og árin líða 3 copies
Sjálfsagðir hlutir 3 copies
Fuglinn í fjörunni 3 copies
Napoleon Bonaparte 3 copies
Úa 3 copies
Upphaf mannúðarstefnu 3 copies
Dúfnaveislan 3 copies
Snæfríður Íslandssól 3 copies
De islandske sagaer og andre essays 3 copies
Norðanstúlkan 3 copies
Himlens skn̜hed 2 copies
Noveller 2 copies
Fløjtespilleren - 4 Noveller 2 copies
Af menníngarástandi 2 copies
Sommerlandets Slot 2 copies
Höll sumarlandsins 2 copies
Af skáldum 2 copies
Drei Erzählungen 2 copies
Strompleikurinn 2 copies
Salka Valka 1 copy
Fish can sing, The 1 copy
Liv og lagnad i Brekkukot 1 copy
Opere 1 copy
Frie menn : Første del 1 copy
Islandsk saga 1 copy
Sjöstafa kverið 1 copy
Í austurvegi 1 copy
Utsaga 1 copy
Zuchwaliada 1 copy
Ásmundur Sveinsson 1 copy
*ANY 1 copy
O întîmplare la Reykjavik 1 copy
Thjohatidarrolla 1 copy
Thu Vinvidur Hreini 1 copy
Laxdæla Saga 1 copy
Het licht der wereld 1 copy
Piplekaren : noveller 1 copy
Atomstationen : roman 1 copy
Nokkrar sögur 1 copy
Dagleið á fjöllum 1 copy
Skáldatími 1 copy
Íslendíngaspjall 1 copy
Vínlandspúnktar 1 copy
Hús Skáldsins 1 copy
Fegurð Heimsins 1 copy
Lesebuch 1 copy
Nína í krafti og birtu 1 copy
Menntaskólaljóð 1 copy
Associated Works
The Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic (2007) — Contributor — 136 copies, 8 reviews
Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought - Volume 11, Number 2 (Summer 1978) (1978) — Illustrator — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Laxness, Halldór
- Legal name
- Guthdjonsson, Halldór (birth)
- Other names
- Laxness, Halldór Kiljan
- Birthdate
- 1902-04-23
- Date of death
- 1998-02-08
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Reykjavík Lyceum
- Occupations
- novelist
screenwriter
playwright - Awards and honors
- Nobel Prize (Literature, 1955)
World Peace Council Literary Prize (1952)
Sonning Prize (1969) - Short biography
- Halldor Laxness, an Icelandic author, received world-wide recognition after being awarded the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature. According to the Nobel Prize committee, he received this coveted award "for his vivid epic power which has renewed the great narrative art of Iceland." By 1948 he had received from literary scholars from around the world 25 nominations for the Nobel candidacy. As of 2021, he is the only Nobel Prize recipient from Iceland. During his writing career, he authored more than 60 works including novels, poems, plays, essays, short stories, memoirs, and travel books.
- Cause of death
- Alzheimer's disease
- Nationality
- Iceland
- Birthplace
- Reykjavík, Danish Iceland
- Places of residence
- Mosfellssveit, Iceland
- Place of death
- Reykjavík, Iceland
- Burial location
- Mosfellskirkjugarður Mosfellsbæ, Mosfellsbaer, Höfuðborgarsvæði, Iceland
- Map Location
- Iceland
Members
Discussions
July 2015: Halldor Laxness in Monthly Author Reads (July 2015)
Group Read, June 2015: Independent People in 1001 Books to read before you die (June 2015)
Group Read of Independent People by Halldór Laxness in Club Read 2014 (April 2014)
Ligiloj: eo.Wikipedia - epo in Esperanto! (March 2012)
Reviews
We follow the life and travails of a hapless poet, Olafur, from childhood through his adult life, as he endure the extraordinary hardships of life in a mysterious time window in Iceland. This all occurs during the "grave times for the nation!", an excuse offered by the conservative elements of local society to justify every injustice and to use brutality to crush every effort to improve life for the incredibly downtrodden local population. Families have 16 children, and lose them all, over show more and over again as poverty, ignorance and the harshness of the locale take their toll. Olafur is a dreamer who drifts through life composing his poems and steadfastly refusing to do anything else unless forced to- an occasional cutting of hay or weeding perhaps, and lets life bring him and his family a bare minimum to survive, which somehow happens despite his doing nothing about it. Laxness has a special skill describing characters that drive you crazy, but you still sort of admire them, and Olafur is no exception. Olafur does go beyond this and crosses over to the unforgivable in one section. He also falls in love again and again, and always (following the drive you crazy theme) screws it up, no matter how wonderful the offer before him. Does one fool deserve so many chances? The corruption, slipperiness and brazenness of the politicians and the stupidity of those that not only believe the patently idiotic nationalist slop they are fed, and willing to not only vote but do violence to support, rings extraordinarily true in todays world, despite the setting in olde Iceland. show less
‘Independent People’ is a book whose subject and length might make you think it was going to be as exciting as eating sawdust. Bjartur of Summerhouses is a very poor sheep farmer in Iceland in the early part of the 20th century, who after 18 years of indentured servitude has earned the right to a piece of land with a turf house on it. He faces threats from the very harsh winters, disease and parasites to his sheep, and the threat of a curse to the land he’s on from centuries of show more folklore. He faces even bigger threats from the rich farmers around him, as well as the political movements at play as Iceland modernized.
Sound exciting? Well, it is. This book has it all – outstanding prose, wry humor, wonderful characters, great dialogue, and a deep sense of culture. It’s no wonder that it earned Laxness the Nobel Prize in 1955, nine years after it was published.
Bjartur’s greatest strength is his stubborn, steely resolve to overcome all obstacles, and to remain beholden to no one. He not only refuses loans but also any type of gift or kindness, and warily avoids business propositions that he instinctively knows are likely to take advantage of the little guy. In this way he is an Independent Man, completely free, and scratching and clawing to survive on his own land.
Of course being “Independent” has its drawbacks, and Bjartur is quite blockheaded at times. He’s a loner who doesn’t feel love or understand that humans need to lean on each other sometimes. The same strength we applaud as he holds his own against his rich neighbor the Bailiff in sharp exchanges, we cringe at as he’s extraordinarily callous to his own children. He’s a hard guy to like and certainly no hero, and yet, he seems to recall the great Icelandic heroes of old that are referenced in the novel (mostly by Bjartur himself, who also likes composing traditional poetry to himself).
This novel, as it’s subtitled, is an epic, and yet there are not a lot of overly complicated relationships or excessive characters that are hard to keep track of. Each character that Laxness does include, however, whether major or minor, is masterfully painted.
There are several parts of the book which are memorable. Stop reading here if you don’t want to see spoilers, because I’d like to share three of them.
In the first, Bjartur’s first wife is terrorized by what seems like a demonic sheep while alone at night, leading to her killing and butchering it. Bjartur then goes out and looks for that sheep, thinking it lost, even though his wife is due to give birth. He comes across a reindeer that he attempts to kill with his bare hands, successfully mounts it, but then takes a ride into the icy river, forcing him to eventually let it go. Stuck on the wrong side of the river, he then faces a long, circuitous route home through a howling blizzard. By the time he gets home, his wife has died in childbirth, but his infant daughter has miraculously survived.
In another, when his daughter, Asta Sollilja has grown up a bit, she goes to town with him. It’s a ‘big outing’ for her, and she compares the fashions of the girls there to her threadbare clothes, visits a bookstore, and later needs to share a bed in a hotel with Bjartur in a roomful of snoring men. She innocently snuggles up to him for warmth in the drafty room, but this leads to a confusing situation for Bjartur.
The last one I’ll mention is youngest son Nonni, who seems to be Laxness himself. He has a special relationship with his grandmother and he’s a dreamer, imagining the kitchen utensils talking in the night, and eventually he sets off for America still as a child. The book doesn’t follow him, it stays entirely in one small region of Icleand, but it makes clear that despite making it as a ‘singer to the world’, he always carries Iceland and the memories of his humble upbringing with him as he goes.
There are many others. It’s shocking to me that this book went out of print for decades. If you’re travelling to Iceland, it would seem like essential reading. If you aren’t travelling to Iceland, well, it’s still great, great reading, and I highly recommended it.
Just one quote, on poetry:
“This was the first time that her soul was charmed by the power of poetry, which shows us the lot of man so truthfully and so sympathetically and with so much love for that which is good that we ourselves become better persons and understand life more fully than before, and hope and trust that good may always prevail in the life of man.” show less
Sound exciting? Well, it is. This book has it all – outstanding prose, wry humor, wonderful characters, great dialogue, and a deep sense of culture. It’s no wonder that it earned Laxness the Nobel Prize in 1955, nine years after it was published.
Bjartur’s greatest strength is his stubborn, steely resolve to overcome all obstacles, and to remain beholden to no one. He not only refuses loans but also any type of gift or kindness, and warily avoids business propositions that he instinctively knows are likely to take advantage of the little guy. In this way he is an Independent Man, completely free, and scratching and clawing to survive on his own land.
Of course being “Independent” has its drawbacks, and Bjartur is quite blockheaded at times. He’s a loner who doesn’t feel love or understand that humans need to lean on each other sometimes. The same strength we applaud as he holds his own against his rich neighbor the Bailiff in sharp exchanges, we cringe at as he’s extraordinarily callous to his own children. He’s a hard guy to like and certainly no hero, and yet, he seems to recall the great Icelandic heroes of old that are referenced in the novel (mostly by Bjartur himself, who also likes composing traditional poetry to himself).
This novel, as it’s subtitled, is an epic, and yet there are not a lot of overly complicated relationships or excessive characters that are hard to keep track of. Each character that Laxness does include, however, whether major or minor, is masterfully painted.
There are several parts of the book which are memorable. Stop reading here if you don’t want to see spoilers, because I’d like to share three of them.
In the first, Bjartur’s first wife is terrorized by what seems like a demonic sheep while alone at night, leading to her killing and butchering it. Bjartur then goes out and looks for that sheep, thinking it lost, even though his wife is due to give birth. He comes across a reindeer that he attempts to kill with his bare hands, successfully mounts it, but then takes a ride into the icy river, forcing him to eventually let it go. Stuck on the wrong side of the river, he then faces a long, circuitous route home through a howling blizzard. By the time he gets home, his wife has died in childbirth, but his infant daughter has miraculously survived.
In another, when his daughter, Asta Sollilja has grown up a bit, she goes to town with him. It’s a ‘big outing’ for her, and she compares the fashions of the girls there to her threadbare clothes, visits a bookstore, and later needs to share a bed in a hotel with Bjartur in a roomful of snoring men. She innocently snuggles up to him for warmth in the drafty room, but this leads to a confusing situation for Bjartur.
The last one I’ll mention is youngest son Nonni, who seems to be Laxness himself. He has a special relationship with his grandmother and he’s a dreamer, imagining the kitchen utensils talking in the night, and eventually he sets off for America still as a child. The book doesn’t follow him, it stays entirely in one small region of Icleand, but it makes clear that despite making it as a ‘singer to the world’, he always carries Iceland and the memories of his humble upbringing with him as he goes.
There are many others. It’s shocking to me that this book went out of print for decades. If you’re travelling to Iceland, it would seem like essential reading. If you aren’t travelling to Iceland, well, it’s still great, great reading, and I highly recommended it.
Just one quote, on poetry:
“This was the first time that her soul was charmed by the power of poetry, which shows us the lot of man so truthfully and so sympathetically and with so much love for that which is good that we ourselves become better persons and understand life more fully than before, and hope and trust that good may always prevail in the life of man.” show less
I have only one theory.
I have the theory that water is good.
One doesn't even have to go by my theory
unless one is thirsty.
--recalcitrant Pastor Jón Primus
Well, well. Well! How to describe what I just read?
In a nutshell--a nutty nutshell--this short novel takes place in a remote Icelandic village where Christianity hasn't fully taken hold, not even by 1968. The village sits near a glacier and strange things are happening there.
This is the same glacier that Jules Verne's Journey to the show more Center of the Earth used to reach the mysterious beginnings of life. In this work by Laxness, the glacier's presence and energy is also recognized as something quite special, as an unrelenting pressure on human understanding of Time. And, it's a real glacier! Snæfellsjökull.
Here, under the glacier, it is as if Creation is still ongoing. Thus how can any religious or spiritual or intergalactic understanding be "set"? Christianity does, though, see things as set.
The novel begins when alarming rumors have reached the Bishop of Iceland: the village pastor is not performing his high office duties. The church is nailed up, the pastor's wife has been missing, and perhaps most alarming, there has been a mystery burial up on the glacier instead of in the churchyard.
The Bishop dispatches a young emissary to interview the villagers, to record their answers and report back. One gets the impression the self-effacing young man is chosen because he knows how to operate new technology: the tape recorder. (And the "kid" can be had on the cheap.) He is given strict instructions not to believe or disbelieve, not to engage in theological debate, not to try to correct or judge anyone. Just report back what was said.
Embi, as he calls himself, short for "Bishop's Emissary", does exactly that in spite of the many challenges. The instructions were sound because the quirky villagers say things so remarkable and so regularly include comical non sequiturs that I can't imagine anyone else performing so well under those conditions. However, they clearly convey their love for their Pastor Jón and have absolutely no complaints about how he conducts the burden of his office, which he fulfills mostly by being a tireless and talented handyman of old technologies, like horseshoeing and repairing Primus camp stoves. No one is particularly concerned that the church is nailed shut and rotting, of having no services even at Christmas, nor especially worried about the many additional mysteries that come up here and there in their interviews with Embi. Everyone is content. Content with their pastor and with their personal doctrines that each has taken firmly to heart--each being a personalized patchwork of scripture, sagas, and a skewed or maybe not skewed world view.
In this place, Christianity does seem odd and though never disparaged, it just doesn't fit, is not practical, and doesn't help with the hardscrabble struggles of the villagers nor the village's continuation of a near ancient way of life. Christianity is lacking the full power for life under the shadow of all that, plus a glacier.
Multiple times Embi thinks his assigned task is complete--the interviews requested have been duly recorded, if hardly coherent, and ready to submit. He is ready to leave this wackadoodle place. But when a villager unexpectedly dies, he must stay to help oversee the proper arrangements for burial. He does that and again he's ready to finalize his reports and go. But now, suddenly, the time has been deemed right for the coffin buried up at the glacier to be retrieved and an infamous resurrection be conducted. Embi again must stay to protect the church building, which the resurrectors would love to use for the purpose.
What happens next was a doozy.
I most heartily hope to read this again! And definitely more Laxness is in my future. But I would not banter around a recommendation, willy-nilly. I'm not sure I personally know anyone who would like this but me.
Wait. I can think of one person, not living though (how apt). My deceased mother would have enjoyed it. But even if there were such a thing as a current manifestation of Lord Maitreya who could teach how to resurrect a woman (he has also done fish), would a resurrected still be interested in reading? I like to think if any would, it would be my mom.
So, in spite of my not having any knowledge about Iceland except Bjork and loving her music, and in spite of reading this work in translation, and in spite of my head spinning with the many zany philosophies encountered (Theosophy, oh my), in spite of all those obstacles, I absolutely loved this. It was a page-turning, head-scratching, belly-chuckling WTF for me. show less
I have the theory that water is good.
One doesn't even have to go by my theory
unless one is thirsty.
--recalcitrant Pastor Jón Primus
Well, well. Well! How to describe what I just read?
In a nutshell--a nutty nutshell--this short novel takes place in a remote Icelandic village where Christianity hasn't fully taken hold, not even by 1968. The village sits near a glacier and strange things are happening there.
This is the same glacier that Jules Verne's Journey to the show more Center of the Earth used to reach the mysterious beginnings of life. In this work by Laxness, the glacier's presence and energy is also recognized as something quite special, as an unrelenting pressure on human understanding of Time. And, it's a real glacier! Snæfellsjökull.
Here, under the glacier, it is as if Creation is still ongoing. Thus how can any religious or spiritual or intergalactic understanding be "set"? Christianity does, though, see things as set.
The novel begins when alarming rumors have reached the Bishop of Iceland: the village pastor is not performing his high office duties. The church is nailed up, the pastor's wife has been missing, and perhaps most alarming, there has been a mystery burial up on the glacier instead of in the churchyard.
The Bishop dispatches a young emissary to interview the villagers, to record their answers and report back. One gets the impression the self-effacing young man is chosen because he knows how to operate new technology: the tape recorder. (And the "kid" can be had on the cheap.) He is given strict instructions not to believe or disbelieve, not to engage in theological debate, not to try to correct or judge anyone. Just report back what was said.
Embi, as he calls himself, short for "Bishop's Emissary", does exactly that in spite of the many challenges. The instructions were sound because the quirky villagers say things so remarkable and so regularly include comical non sequiturs that I can't imagine anyone else performing so well under those conditions. However, they clearly convey their love for their Pastor Jón and have absolutely no complaints about how he conducts the burden of his office, which he fulfills mostly by being a tireless and talented handyman of old technologies, like horseshoeing and repairing Primus camp stoves. No one is particularly concerned that the church is nailed shut and rotting, of having no services even at Christmas, nor especially worried about the many additional mysteries that come up here and there in their interviews with Embi. Everyone is content. Content with their pastor and with their personal doctrines that each has taken firmly to heart--each being a personalized patchwork of scripture, sagas, and a skewed or maybe not skewed world view.
In this place, Christianity does seem odd and though never disparaged, it just doesn't fit, is not practical, and doesn't help with the hardscrabble struggles of the villagers nor the village's continuation of a near ancient way of life. Christianity is lacking the full power for life under the shadow of all that, plus a glacier.
Multiple times Embi thinks his assigned task is complete--the interviews requested have been duly recorded, if hardly coherent, and ready to submit. He is ready to leave this wackadoodle place. But when a villager unexpectedly dies, he must stay to help oversee the proper arrangements for burial. He does that and again he's ready to finalize his reports and go. But now, suddenly, the time has been deemed right for the coffin buried up at the glacier to be retrieved and an infamous resurrection be conducted. Embi again must stay to protect the church building, which the resurrectors would love to use for the purpose.
What happens next was a doozy.
I most heartily hope to read this again! And definitely more Laxness is in my future. But I would not banter around a recommendation, willy-nilly. I'm not sure I personally know anyone who would like this but me.
Wait. I can think of one person, not living though (how apt). My deceased mother would have enjoyed it. But even if there were such a thing as a current manifestation of Lord Maitreya who could teach how to resurrect a woman (he has also done fish), would a resurrected still be interested in reading? I like to think if any would, it would be my mom.
So, in spite of my not having any knowledge about Iceland except Bjork and loving her music, and in spite of reading this work in translation, and in spite of my head spinning with the many zany philosophies encountered (Theosophy, oh my), in spite of all those obstacles, I absolutely loved this. It was a page-turning, head-scratching, belly-chuckling WTF for me. show less
Wormy sheep, a mangy dog, a dilapidated hovel--priceless possessions of an independent man.
How can a novel be so base, vulgar, cold, despairing and yet be beautiful, hopeful, funny, sad, and evoke real and deep empathy, empathy for us all?
I don't know how but Laxness did it. I'm at a loss at how to even describe the experience. Icelandic sheep farmer Bjarthur of Summerhouses is someone you must meet for yourself.
What a man. Exasperating and admirable. Idiotic and poetic. Sympathetic and show more misery-making. I won't soon forget him. show less
How can a novel be so base, vulgar, cold, despairing and yet be beautiful, hopeful, funny, sad, and evoke real and deep empathy, empathy for us all?
I don't know how but Laxness did it. I'm at a loss at how to even describe the experience. Icelandic sheep farmer Bjarthur of Summerhouses is someone you must meet for yourself.
What a man. Exasperating and admirable. Idiotic and poetic. Sympathetic and show more misery-making. I won't soon forget him. show less
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Statistics
- Works
- 122
- Also by
- 5
- Members
- 7,992
- Popularity
- #3,032
- Rating
- 4.0
- Reviews
- 242
- ISBNs
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- 21
- Favorited
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