Reykjavík Grapevine - 06.08.2004, Qupperneq 32

“ ….if she were likened to the heart of a house, one could say exactly
the same about her as one does about healthy hearts in general, that
whoever is lucky enough to have such a heart is quite unaware of
having a heart at all.”
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LAXNESS TRANSLATED
by Robert Jackson Halldór Laxness writes this de-
scription of a grandmother in his
book The Fish Can Sing. It is a
description which can be adapted
to describe Laxness’ own writing.
It is writing so natural, so unforced
and so unaffected that the reader
becomes unaware of the writer,
he instead becomes embodied in
the story. It is a rare gift and one
of the reasons why Laxness stands
head and shoulders above all other
writers of contemporary fiction in
this country, why his work has been
translated into over thirty languages
and why he received, amongst many
other awards, the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1955.
He wrote his first novel Children of
Nature at the age of 17 and went on
to write more than sixty books in-
cluding novels, short stories, essays,
poems, plays and memoirs. Several
have been translated into English
and they demand to be read by any-
one who enjoys fine writing and who
is interested in trying to understand
the Icelandic psyche.
Laxness´ childhood was one where
‘the mighty of the earth had no place
outside of story books and dreams’
and his books manifest this through
his unflinching love of - and respect
for - the humble routine of daily
life. Laxness’ characters demonstrate
time and again traits of the Icelandic
character: self-sufficiency, stub-
bornness, independence, aloofness,
humour in adversity and pitches
them against plots and circumstances
that sweep through the full gamut of
human experience.
He also shows similar emotions
towards the country and its climate
with a detail and lyricism that is rare.
There is no better way to appreciate
a winter’s morning here than through
Laxness’ words, “Slowly, slowly
winter day opens his arctic eye.” And
when it comes to rain he understands
and describes it in a way approaching
the visceral.
“…Rain that seemed to fill the entire
world with its leaden beat, rain sug-
gestive in its dreariness of everlast-
ing waterfalls between the planets,
rain that thatched the heavens with
drabness and brooded oppressively
over the whole countryside like a
disease, strong in the power of its
flat, unvarying monotony, its smoth-
ering heaviness, its cold, unrelenting
cruelty.”
And when summer comes.
“The apprehensions of winter disap-
peared all in one day. The cloudless
brightness of that day lay infinite
over the soul as over the vault of
heaven; it was one of life’s happy
days and they remembered it for as
long as they lived.”
We who cannot read Icelandic are
limited to only a few of his works,
most of which are available in the
town’s bookshops. If you can only
pick one, pick Independent People.
Laxness praised his fellow coun-
trymen for the way in which they
followed his literary career “now
critcising, now praising but hardly
ever letting an individual word be
buried by indifference…it is great
good fortune to be born into a na-
tion so steeped in centuries of poetry
and literary tradition.”
We who are visitors to this country
are fortunate to be able to share
some of these pleasures through
these fine translations.
Independent People
The Fish Can Sing
Iceland´s Bell
The Atom Station
World Light
Paradise Reclaimed
About Realism
by Einar Már Guðmundsson
In the summer of 1990, Iceland and Albania played a football
match. It was a momentous event. This was a qualifying game
for the European Cup and one of the first portents that Albania
intended to join the community of nations in work and play. The
country had been isolated for decades and hardly visited except by a
handful of admirers of its dictator, Enver Hoxa.
Nothing was said about the Albanian
national team until they arrived at
Heathrow Airport in London. They
made a stopover there on their way
to Iceland and the players could
be expected to have found it quite
a novelty to venture beyond their
country’s borders.
It was a sunny Sunday afternoon in
June. No news reached Iceland until
the evening, when it was reported
that the Albanian football team had
been taken into custody at Scotland
Yard. The players were suspected of
shoplifting duty-free goods by the
armful.
During questioning, the Albanians
referred to the “Duty-Free” signs
that where hung up everywhere in
the terminal, besides which it was
a Sunday and various goods there,
for example beer, were free in their
country that day. For all they knew,
this was the custom in other coun-
tries as well.
But even though the Albanians
escaped the clutches of Scotland
Yard, their dealings with eagle-
eyed authorities were far from over.
Upon the Albanian team’s arrival in
Iceland, an extensive customs search
was made through their luggage and
they were kept almost under house
arrest afterwards until the time for
the football match. So the Albanians’
weak attempt to break their isolation
with the rest of the world took on a
very peculiar form.
Nonetheless, the football match
began. The teams entered the pitch
and lined up to hear their national
anthems being played. But no sooner
had the stadium brass band played
a few notes than a naked Icelandic
male came running out from the
spectators’ stand and started hopping
around in front of the Albanian
team.
At once, six brawny policemen ap-
peared on the scene. They rushed for
the naked man, rugby-tackled him
and piled on top of him in a heap.
But the naked man was slippery
as an eel and slipped out of their
clutches. He ran past the Albanian
football team, waving his genitals at
them. At that point the police man-
aged to overpower him. They were
last seen carrying him away.
But at that moment everything went
wild. The brass band had stopped
playing and one of the stadium
groundsmen had switched on the
microphone and was reciting an
impromptu verse in celebration of
the incident.
...
I have often wondered what it would
have been like if an Albanian writer
had been sitting in the capital city
Tirana, a year or two before the
football match, imagining it taking
place and describing everything that
actually happened.
He would have smashed every
rule known to socialist realism and
imposed by the Albanian Writers’
Union on its members, because real-
ity often outdoes fiction, and nothing
is so poetic that reality has no place
in it.
This Albanian writer has suddenly
become very real.
I visualise him and his position
demonstrates two things. Firstly,
how ridiculous it is to subject mental
activity to rules, or rather, to social
goals; and secondly, how unrealistic it
is to intend to be realistic, in particu-
lar when a predetermined definition
of reality is used as a yardstick for
truth.
Reality is always catching realism by
surprise.
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