Halldór Laxness

This magnificent novel—which secured for its author the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature—is at last available to contemporary American readers. Although it is set in the early twentieth century, it recalls both Iceland's medieval epics and such classics as Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter. And if Bjartur of Summerhouses, the book's protagonist, is an ordinary sheep farmer, his flinty determination to achieve independence is genuinely heroic and, at the same time, terrifying and bleakly comic.Having spent eighteen years in humiliating servitude, Bjartur wants nothing more than to raise his flocks unbeholden to any man. But Bjartur's spirited daughter wants to live unbeholden to him. What ensues is a battle of wills that is by turns harsh and touching, elemental in its emotional intensity and intimate in its homely detail. Vast in scope and deeply rewarding, Independent People is simply a masterpiece

Abandoned as a baby, Alfgrimur is content to spend his days as a fisherman living in the turf cottage outside Reykjavik with the elderly couple he calls grandmother and grandfather. There he shares the mid-loft with a motley bunch of eccentrics and philosophers who find refuge in the simple respect for their fellow men that is the ethos at the Brekkukot. But the narrow horizons of Alfgrimur's idyllic childhood are challenged when he starts school and meets Iceland's most famous singer, the mysterious Garoar Holm. Garoar encourages him to aim for the 'one true note', but how can he attain it without leaving behind the world that he loves?

Sometimes grim, sometimes uproarious, and always captivating, Iceland’s Bell by Nobel Laureate Halldór Laxness is at once an updating of the traditional Icelandic saga and a caustic social satire. At the close of the 17th century, Iceland is an oppressed Danish colony, suffering from extreme poverty, famine, and plague. A farmer and accused cord-thief named Jon Hreggvidsson makes an improper joke about the Danish king and soon after finds himself a fugitive charged with the murder of the king’s hangman.In the years that follow, the hapless but resilient rogue Hreggvidsson becomes a pawn entangled in political and personal conflicts playing out on a far grander scale. Chief among these is the star-crossed love affair between Snaefridur, known as “Iceland’s Sun,” a beautiful, headstrong young noblewoman, and Arnas Arnaeus, the king’s antiquarian, an aristocrat whose worldly manner conceals a fierce devotion to his downtrodden countrymen. As their personal struggle plays itself out on an international stage, Iceland’s Bell creates a Dickensian canvas of heroism and venality, violence and tragedy, charged with narrative enchantment on every page.

Le belle storie, dice Laxness, cominciano d'estate, quando gli uccelli cantano e il sole diffonde i suoi raggi su terra e mare. E così, in un idilliaco clima estivo in cui il fascino della natura d'Islanda agisce come un incantesimo, inizia, nei toni e nei modi della fiaba, il racconto dell'Onore della casa. C'erano una volta due sorelle, Thurithur e Rannveig, una bruna e una bionda, una volitiva e l'altra dolce, ma entrambe belle e ricche: il buon prevosto, loro padre, è anche il capo della società di pesca locale, raro esempio di un'ammirevole eccezione al detto evangelico sull'impossibilità di servire due padroni. Mandata all'estero per l'inevitabile viaggio di formazione a Copenaghen, Thurithur tornerà pronta per essere ben maritata, lussuosamente accasata, riverita, considerata il più perfetto esempio delle norme del vivere sociale, l'incarnazione stessa della Rispettabilità. Identica sorte dovrebbe toccare alla sorella, ma, ahimè, ben diverso sarà il risultato del soggiorno danese della buona Rannveig: tornerà incinta, portando un imperdonabile colpo all'onore della Casa, una scandalosa macchia che va camuffata e nascosta agli occhi degli altri. Comincia allora l'impari lotta di Thurithur contro i "si dice" della gente, la sua strenua difesa. E così la fiaba si capovolge: da rifugio degli affetti la casa si trasforma in prigione, la mite Cenerentola non trova il principe azzurro, ma le vengono appioppati i più svariati falliti per rimediare al suo errore, il lieto fine è una sinistra riconciliazione quando il frutto del peccato sarà finalmente tolto di mezzo. Sardonico e scanzonato, Laxness, col candore dello spettatore capace di riferire con dichiarata indulgenza agghiaccianti episodi di cinismo e di raccontare con l'occhio impassibile del vero umorista scene di grande comicità, dipinge ipocrisie e ingiustizie in uno spietato "ritratto di famiglia", che non perde però mai la lievità dell'ironia.

Ugla, an unrefined girl from the countryside, moves from an outlying area of Northern Iceland to the capital city of Reykjavík in order to work for Búi Árland, a member of parliament, and to learn how to play the organ. She’s met with a world that’s completely foreign to her: politicians and the military move freely about the city, and she views city residents as spoiled, snobbish and arrogant. In contrast, she comes from a rural area where the Icelandic Sagas of the Middle Ages constitute the majority of what people discuss and ponder and are viewed as more important than reality. These historical backgrounds are certainly important and provide crucial patterns. The prime minister subsequently carries out secret dealings with the Americans and “sells” the country. Ugla, however, also confronts other current issues, above all in the organ player’s house. There, she comes in contact with communist and anarchist mindsets and likewise protests the construction of an atom station in Iceland. After a short relationship with Búi Árland, Ugla decides to return to the “selfconscious policeman”, who is the father of her recently born child.

A novel of Iceland -- a queer, repellant sort of Iceland at that. The story of a prostitute and her child, victim of her passions, her selfishness, and her ill-fame -- and of their attempt to find a place for themselves in a new community which is unfriendly, critical, and unforgiving. Chiefly the story of the daughter -- her obsessions with and revulsions from sex, and her relations with two men, the one by morbid fascination and hate and love of a queer sort -- the other by appeal to her better nature. Glimpses of effects of industrial unrest in a distant part of the world. A difficult style -- not easy reading. (Kirkus review)

Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness’s Under the Glacier is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece, a wryly provocative novel at once earthy and otherworldly. At its outset, the Bishop of Iceland dispatches a young emissary to investigate certain charges against the pastor at Sn?fells Glacier, who, among other things, appears to have given up burying the dead. But once he arrives, the emissary discovers that this dereliction counts only as a mild eccentricity in a community that regards itself as the center of the world and where Creation itself is a work in progress.What is the emissary to make, for example, of the boarded-up church? What about the mysterious building that has sprung up alongside it? Or the fact that Pastor Primus spends most of his time shoeing horses? Or that his wife, Ua (pronounced “ooh-a,” which is what men invariably sputter upon seeing her), is rumored never to have bathed, eaten, or slept? Piling improbability on top of improbability, Under the Glacier overflows with comedy both wild and deadpan as it conjures a phantasmagoria as beguiling as it is profound.