A short life of the author
Halldór Kiljan Laxness (23 April 1902 – 8 February 1998), born Halldór Guðjónsson, was an Icelandic novelist who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1955 and who is, by the consensus of readers and critics, the greatest Icelandic writer since the anonymous authors of the medieval sagas. His novels — epic in scope, sardonic in tone, deeply rooted in the Icelandic landscape and character — are among the most extraordinary works of twentieth-century fiction: books that combine the narrative ambition of the nineteenth-century European novel with a modernist sensibility and a sense of humour so dry that it sometimes takes paragraphs to realise you’ve been told a joke. He is vastly underread in the English-speaking world, and every reader who discovers him wonders why no one told them sooner.
Life
Laxness was born in Reykjavík, grew up on a farm at Laxnes (from which he took his pen name), and began publishing at seventeen. His early intellectual life was restless and searching: he converted to Catholicism in a Benedictine monastery in Luxembourg (1923), spent time in Hollywood attempting to write screenplays (1927–1929), became a committed socialist after visiting the Soviet Union (1930s), and eventually settled into a position of independent radical humanism that defied easy categorisation.
He published his first novel at nineteen and continued writing fiction for over fifty years. His political commitments — which included vocal support for the Soviet Union during the Stalin era, a position he later regretted — made him controversial in Cold War Iceland, and his Nobel Prize in 1955 was received with mixed feelings in a country that was then firmly in the American sphere of influence.
Independent People (Sjálfstætt fólk, 1934–1935)
Independent People is Laxness’s masterpiece and one of the great novels of the twentieth century. It tells the story of Bjartur of Summerhouses, a stubborn, proud, infuriating Icelandic sheep farmer who values his independence above everything — above comfort, above prosperity, above the happiness and survival of his own family. Bjartur labours for decades to maintain his farm, enduring poverty, terrible weather, the death of his wives, and the suffering of his children, all in the name of a freedom that is as much a prison as the servitude he escaped.
The novel is simultaneously a realistic portrait of rural Icelandic life, a satire of the ideology of self-reliance, and a tragedy of magnificent stubbornness. Laxness’s prose — in the great English translation by J.A. Thompson — is dry, precise, and devastating. The landscape of Iceland — the moors, the mountains, the interminable rain — is rendered with a vividness that makes it a character in the novel.
Other Major Novels
Salka Valka (1931–1932) is a novel about a young woman in a fishing village in northern Iceland — a story of class struggle, sexual exploitation, and the arrival of labour unionism in a remote community.
World Light (Heimsljós, 1937–1940) is a four-volume novel about Ólafur Kárason, a poet born into poverty and illness who dedicates his life to beauty in a world that offers him nothing but suffering. The novel is Laxness’s most lyrical and most despairing work.
The Atom Station (Atómstöðin, 1948) is a political satire about Iceland during the Cold War — specifically, about the American military base at Keflavík and the impact of American culture and geopolitics on Icelandic society. The novel infuriated the Icelandic establishment.
The Fish Can Sing (Brekkukotsannáll, 1957) is a gentle, comic novel about a boy growing up in Reykjavík at the turn of the century — a portrait of childhood and community that is Laxness at his warmest.
Paradise Reclaimed (Paradísarheimt, 1960) follows an Icelandic farmer who travels to Utah to join the Mormon community — a comic and melancholy novel about the search for utopia.
Style
Laxness writes with a combination of epic sweep and ironic detachment that is unique in world literature. His sentences are long, his descriptions are precise, and his humour is so deadpan that readers unfamiliar with Icelandic culture sometimes miss it entirely. He is deeply influenced by the medieval Icelandic sagas — their laconic style, their refusal of sentimentality, their matter-of-fact treatment of violence and loss — but he brings to the saga tradition a modern self-consciousness and a social awareness that the original saga authors did not possess.
Critical Standing
Laxness is one of the great novelists of the twentieth century — mentioned in the same breath as Thomas Mann, Knut Hamsun, and Gabriel García Márquez. Independent People is increasingly recognised by English-language critics as a major world novel. His relative obscurity outside Scandinavia is a function of language — Icelandic is read by fewer than 400,000 people — rather than of quality.
Collecting Laxness
Icelandic first editions of Laxness’s novels are collected by Icelandic specialists. English translations are more accessible: Independent People (1946, Knopf, translated by J.A. Thompson) in first American edition brings $100–$300. Other English translations bring $20–$80. Signed copies in any language are very scarce.