Reykjavík Grapevine - 08.04.2011, Blaðsíða 28

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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 4 — 2011 Egill Helgason is a man of many talents, in case you were wondering.
Besides running a political talk show on Icelandic State TV, he also runs a
literary programme there. And he blogs a lot for website Eyjan.is. Busy man!
literature | Egill Helgason
The local literary scene is
now in the throes of the
Nordic crime novel. Admit-
tedly the ancient Icelandic
sagas tell tales of murder, blood and
revenge, but it was long thought that
it was impossible to write crime fiction
set in such a small, peaceful society.
Those who tried were ridiculed. Enter
Arnaldur Indriðason, ex-journalist and
film critic, son of a rather well-known
novelist, who started writing crime
stories in the early nineties. He almost
instantly became a bestselling author,
and almost every Christmas he tops the
bestselling lists in Iceland.
A Sheep heAd eATinG
policemAn
Though unique in Iceland at the time,
Arnaldur was not an insular figure. He
had basically been reading crime fic-
tion all his life. There is nothing new
about his formula. The strongest in-
fluence comes from Sweden, where a
tradition of realistic crime fiction with
a social dimension runs from the taut
police novels of Mai Sjöwall and Per
Wahlöö through the works of Henning
Mankell. Arnaldur’s policeman pro-
tagonist Erlendur likes eating sheep’s
heads, but he is still in many ways simi-
lar to Mankell’s policeman, Wallander.
Icelandic crime fiction—now a very
strong genre—is definitely a part of the
Nordic crime wave, which has hit the
bookstores of the world in recent years.
Arnaldur is by far the biggest name,
he has sold millions of copies abroad,
but there are strong pretenders such
as Yrsa Sigurðardóttir and Árni Þóra-
rinsson. Interesting murders almost
never happen in Iceland, we mostly
have drunks killing other drunks, but
that doesn’t seem to be a problem.
The backdrop of the stories more than
compensates for this—a gloomy place,
with mountains all around, miserable
weather, Nordic depression and dis-
gusting eating habits.
The lARGe pReSence of
lAXneSS
Even if Arnaldur is the biggest name
in terms of sales, the great man of Ice-
landic fiction remains Halldór Laxness,
the country’s sole Nobel Prize winner.
Laxness was born in 1902, and he was
awarded his Nobel Prize in 1955. He is
a continuous presence, last year two
plays based on his novels were staged
in the National Theatre. He is con-
stantly being quoted in order to prove
some point or the other. Thus he is not
only a writer, but part of the national
psyche—a spiritual guide and all-round
wise man. “But Laxness said,” is some-
thing you’ll often hear in conversation
in Iceland.
Halldór Laxness was a socialist for
much of his life, and many Icelanders
became socialists through reading his
books and those of his contemporary
Þórbergur Þórðarson, rather than by
reading Marx or Lenin. This is literary
socialism, which tends to be senti-
mental and very nationalistic. Halldór’s
characters keep popping up in the
strangest circumstances. Suddenly the
farmer Bjartur of Summerhouse, from
the novel ‘Independent People’ (‘Sjálf-
stætt fólk’), has become somewhat of
a figurehead in the fight against joining
the EU—it has been conveniently for-
gotten that in his battle to stay a free
man on his small farm in the mountains,
Bjartur managed to get most of his fam-
ily killed.
nonSenSicAl inTeRpReTATionS
Another oft-quoted popular hero from
Halldór’s books is the rascal Jón Hreg-
gviðsson, who, as the story goes, might
have killed a man, and then might not
have killed a man. He was drunk, so
he really doesn’t know. The novel is
called ‘Iceland’s Bell’ (‘Íslandsklukkan’)
and it is written on the eve of Icelandic
independence. One of the themes of
the novels is that Denmark’s affluence
was built on exploiting Iceland. In one
of the book’s scenes, a Danish mer-
chant shows an Icelander the towers
of Copenhagen, saying that this was all
founded on Icelandic wealth.
This is of course total nonsense.
There were only a handful of ships sail-
ing to Iceland every year during that
period, trading with a broken, dirt-poor
nation of no more than 50 thousand
people.
But in the eyes of some, this has
also become a symbol of how Iceland is
treated by the world, getting a knowing
nod and even a small sigh during last
winter’s theatre performance of ‘Ice-
land’s Bell’. The idea is that there are
forces in the world, for example the EU
and the IMF, who are conniving to swal-
low Iceland and its resources.
Of course Halldór Laxness is in no
way to blame for this, he died in 1998
at the ripe old age of 95—and he fa-
mously changed his mind many times
on both politics and religion. Laxness
was a realist who based his books on
research and real persons who could
be recognised again in his books, even
if he mixes these elements together in a
brilliant way. He is the towering figure
in Icelandic literature, maybe second
only to Snorri Sturluson, the author of
the Edda, Egil's Saga and Heimskringla
(tales of the Norwegian kings). Snorri
was incidentally beheaded by his en-
emies in 1241, after becoming involved
in complicated plots during a period
of Icelandic civil war referred to as the
Sturlunga Age. This famously ended in
Iceland being under the rule of Norway
and then Denmark for 700 years.
GUÐbeRGUR, The oUTSideR
Laxness was long thought to induce a
minority complex in younger writers.
But this was not true for one of them,
Guðbergur Bergsson. The day Laxness
died Guðbergur famously appeared on
TV, and when asked if he had been in-
fluenced by the great man answered:
"No, he did not influence me, not one
iota." Guðbergur, born in 1932, has al-
ways been an outsider in a way. He is
admired and feared for his sharp wit,
and he can be brutally honest. Some-
times he seems to be impossibly ascet-
ic. He states that he doesn’t have any
interest in fame or his career. One of
his friends, the antiquarian bookseller
Bragi Kristjónsson (please visit his shop
on Hverfisgata!), describes him thus:
"He wakes up at eight in the morning,
writes, then goes out to buy his fish,
writes some more, and then boils his
fish for dinner. For the rest, he doesn’t
care much."
Maybe this is a part of a myth that
has been spun around Guðbergur. But
he is almost the exact opposite of Hall-
dór Laxness, who liked big cars and ci-
gars. Guðbergur is almost microscopic
in his writing, patiently peeling away
clichés, lies and lazy ideas. Some of his
books have been considered scandal-
ous; in some of them he has made the
Icelandic nation, its newfound riches
and blatant consumerism, look quite ri-
diculous. His most famous character is
Tómas Jónsson, an eccentric old miser
who gradually turns into the apartment
he rents out.
At 78, Guðbergur is the greatest liv-
ing writer in Iceland. Abroad he is not
very well known, maybe he doesn’t
always translate well (Halldór Laxness
really doesn’t translate well either), but,
for example, Milan Kundera has quoted
him as a major European writer. He is
78, looks many years younger, has the
smile of an angel, but one never really
knows what to expect of him. He is very
much his own man.
looKinG bAcK in A Time
of cRiSiS
Literature is of course very important
in Iceland. It is linked to the heritage
of the sagas and the survival of the na-
tion—and the language—during centu-
ries of hardship. The number of books
published every year is staggering for
such a small society. They are not all
very good—that would be impossible.
The interest in literature actually grew
after the collapse of the economy in
2008—this somehow signified a return
to older values after the death of the
idea of Iceland as a financial paradise.
Some might have thought that
the economic crash—by far the most
dramatic event in our recent history—
would translate into literature. This has
not been the case, however, not yet.
Works of fiction written about the col-
lapse have mostly been failures, while
the best books of the last years look
into the past: Jón Kalmann Stefánsson
writes about the hardship of fisher-
men on open boats in the Westfjords,
Bergsveinn Birgisson writes a pastoral
story about the love of a sheep farmer,
Einar Kárason writes about events in
the Sturlunga Age and the poet Gerður
Kristný uses themes from the Edda.
Meanwhile, the Nordic crime novel
rages on. We not only have many hope-
ful writers working in the genre, but a
lot of crime fiction also gets translated
to Icelandic from the other Nordic lan-
guages. There is some hope that this
will end one day.
Words
Egill Helgason
illustration
Lóa Hjálmtýsdóttir
cRime, cRiSeS And noRdic depReSSion
Arnaldur, Guðbergur, Laxness and the Icelandic literary scene
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