Icelandic Literature

[Stewart]

The WLF list of world literatures stops in at Iceland today with a new thread for Icelandic literature.

I've had a stab at Iceland's only Nobel laureate in Literature, Halldór Laxness, and come away feeling I really need to read more of the old sagas to get a better flavour of where he's coming from culturally. The Atom Station bemused and confused me, while Independent People pushed me over the edge.

Amongst my shelves I have titles by a couple of other Icelandic writers, namely Hallgrímur Helgason and Olaf Olafsson. And Sjón's The Blue Fox, winner of the Nordic Council Literary Prize 2005, has been staring at me from book store shelves for a while now.

Then there's the crime fiction, as befits Northern Europe, from the likes of Arnaldur Indriðason.

Other Icelandic writers? Thoughts on the sagas?

[Max Cairnduff]

Hi all,

There's a concept in contemporary iceland of the present generation being essentially cossetted, there's a term for it - something like the cosy generation, though I'm not certain it's exactly that.

It's a generation that grew up in prosperity, in a time without threat of war or poverty, when life was essentially comfortable and luxuries which earlier generations wouldn't even have aspired to became accessible to all who wanted them.

Obviously all that ended last week.

Anyway, in Iceland there is one author well known for writing about this particular generation, their lives and concerns. He is apparently of it himself. But, annoyingly, I lost the article where I was reading about him and google searches have not proved successful.

Anyone here have any idea who I'm talking about?

While I'm on the topic, Jar City which is now out of print in the UK irritatingly is also I understand good on contemporary Iceland. Is that correct, or is my understanding a tad off? I've not read it so I'm not sure.

Thanks for any help anyone can provide.

[Eric]

Now that the Icelandic economy has collapsed, and culture is again more important than money, maybe someone can provide the names of a few more Icelandic authors than Arnaldur Indriðason and Halldór Laxness. See:

List of Icelandic writers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So, who is cosseted, pampered and overpaid, who is ascetic, noble and holy? Names. Max asks a pertinent question, and I hope we get answers.

I suspect that Sjón is important; there must be others.

[Max Cairnduff]

Hm, I looked on wikipedia and failed to find that link, so thanks for that. I'll follow through on some of those to see if I find the chap I'm looking for.

It wasn't so much a question of importance, as that I understand there is one author particularly known for writing about the present generation, whether that's important or not I can't personally say. Was Maupin important for writing about his milieu? Too early to say really. Importance is a fluid beast.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that culture is more important than money right now though, money is jolly important when you suddenly have none. Or, indeed, when you never had any. But here I risk straying into general chat territory...

[Eric]

Here's another site, in English, that you can browse:

About us

Plus a list of authors:

Authors on the web

You can't be too cossetted and cosy if you're determined to find this author. You just have to look through this longish list, author by author!

Remember that Icelandic people are listed by forename [i.e. Christian name] as they change their surname every generation, as Icelanders are given a forename, but the surname is the name of their father + -son or -dóttir. Note that women are still their father's daughter in their surnames, not their mother's daughter. Whether feminists are changing this I do not know. Example: Áslaug Jónsdóttir, i.e. Áslaug Daughter-of-John.

The author could be Hallgrímur Helgason and his novel & film 101 Reykjavík which has been translated into English. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/101_Reykjav%C3%ADk

and

http://www.bokmenntir.is/rithofundur...r_id=40&lang=8

and

http://www.bokmenntir.is/hofundur.as...r_id=40&lang=8

[Max Cairnduff]

What a tremendous site, thanks Eric.

Now I fear I shall be drawn from the comforts of home, lured to dark and desolate places tracking down authors of whom I would not otherwise have heard.

Good point about the names, thanks for that. I was familiar with it from the sagas, some of which I'd read, but I don't mentally connect them much with modern Iceland so hadn't thought through the nomenclaturistic implications.

[Eric]

Max, you surely don't have a home, since you live in the mythical Biercian city of Carcosa.

This names thing is important. When looking things up on the English-speaking Wikipedia it won't matter a bit, but as you can see, the Icelanders maintain Icelandic name norms on their own Icelandic Literature website. (You get a similar problem with Hungarian authors' names, as they always, in Hungary, put the surname first, contrary to the practice of the rest of Europe.)

My only problem with that Icelandic website is that there doesn't appear to be a kind of overview, pointing the outsider in the direction of trends and genres. Instead, all you get is a rather long list of undifferentiated authors' names.

However, what is incredibly positive about this same website is that it shows that amongst the rather small 300,000-strong population of present-day Iceland, there are present-day authors writing present-day books. The sagas will no doubt be frequently referred to in intertextual and reference terms in novels and poetry, but it would be a pity if people in Britain and America rushed off to find the classics and ignored all those authors listed on that website, i.e:

literature.is

I've just read a book with translations (into Dutch, which I read with ease) of five contemporary Icelandic poets. And I was impressed. The poets are:

Vigdís Grímsdóttir: Vigdís Grímsdóttir
Ingibjörg Haraldsdóttir: Ingibjörg Haraldsdóttir
Gerður Kristný [Guðjónsdóttir]: Gerður Kristný
Steinunn Sigurðardóttir: Steinunn Sigurðardóttir
Sigurbjörg Þrastardóttir: Sigurbjörg Þrastardóttir

I'd never heard of any of them before, but I was impressed by what I read. I received the book through the post about a week before all this stock market and bank business, so this was not the reason for my getting interested in these poets. I got the book purely owing to the fact that I wrote a very small article about an Estonian author for a magazine, and got this book as payment.

The good thing about this anthology from my point of view is that you have the original one one page, the translation on a facing page. This means you get some idea of the sound and shape of the original poem. Why they chose five women poets, I do not know. But this anthology is not billed as poetry by five Icelandic women poets, simply poetry by five Icelandic poets.

I have not yet read the afterword, which will no doubt enlighten me further.