Reykjavík Grapevine - 07.12.2012, Page 18

When he was at Leeds University in the
1920s, J.R.R. Tolkien formed a drinking
club where he and his fellow students
would recite Old Norse poetry and sing
Icelandic folk songs. His ‘Lord of the
Rings’ trilogy was directly inspired by
the William Morris’ translation of Ice-
land’s ‘Völsungasaga.’ Tolkein’s work,
in turn, has influenced generations of
fantasy authors from Terry Pratchett to
J.K. Rowling.
Although English and American
literary buffs will have dipped into The
Sagas of the Icelanders at some point,
there’s a small chance they’ll have heard
of Iceland’s only Nobel laureate, Halldór
Laxness; it’s even less likely that they’ll
have read the prolific Icelandic authors
Gunnar Gunnarson (1889-1975) or Jón
Trausti (penname of Guðmundur Mag-
nússon 1873-1918) or Guðmundur G.
Hagalín (1898-1985).
Gunnar Gunnarsson, who wrote
primarily in Danish and published
close to 40 works of literature in his
lifetime, is highly regarded in Iceland,
yet only a handful of his volumes were
translated into English. Even though
Gunnar was nominated for the No-
bel Prize in Literature four times, he
remains out-of-print in English since
the 1960s. Neither Jon Trausti, who
wrote the definitive, 4-volume cycle,
‘Heiðarbýlið’ (“The Mountain Cot”)
reflecting the stark life of pastoral Ice-
land, nor Guðmundur G. Hagalín who
penned many works, including the
well-received novel ‘Kristrún í Ham-
ravík’ (“Kristrún in Hamravík”), have
had their major volumes translated into
English.
Translations long overdue
“New English translations of Gunnar
Gunnarsson’s works are long overdue,”
says Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson, one of Ice-
land’s internationally best-known liter-
ary novelists (known as Ólaf Ólafsson
in English). “Of course, you can’t forget
that only 3% of the US publishing mar-
ket is translated work.”
Ólafur, who has lived and worked in
New York for over 30 years, is the author
of four novels: ‘The Journey Home,’
‘Absolution,’ ‘Walking Into the Night,’
and the recently released, ‘Restoration,’
as well as the story
collection, ‘Valen-
tines.’
And, Ólafur
has every reason to
be optimistic about
Icelandic literary
ambitions. ‘Valentines’
is currently being made
into a TV series on the US
Sundance Channel, produced by none
other than Robert Redford. Ólafur con-
tinues a family literary tradition that
began with his father, Ólafur Jóhann
Sigurðsson, the first Icelander to win
The Nordic Council’s Literature Prize.
A literary wow factor
“Of course modern Icelandic literature
has been influenced by The Sagas, but
more than anything else it is a linguis-
tic continuation of what began with
The Sagas,” Ólafur says. Due to the
country’s isolation and a protectionist
language policy, Icelandic has changed
relatively little in the last 900 years.
And yet, as Ólafur points out: “The
modern Icelandic literary form did not
really start to develop until the mid-
1800s. Jón Thóroddsen (1818-1868)
published the first Icelandic novel in
1850.”
In the early 1900s, several Icelan-
dic authors started writing in Dan-
ish, which obviously gave access to a
broader audience. Many of these writ-
ers were based out of Copenhagen, in-
cluding Gunnar Gunnarsson and the
dramatists Guð-
mundur Kam-
ban (1888-1945)
and Jóhann
Si g u r jón s s on
(1880-1919). In
the 1920s, the poet
and scholar Sigurður
Nordal (1886-1974)
led Iceland’s neoromantic
movement, influencing a whole
new crop of inspired poets and novel-
ists. This movement, followed by the
Second World War and Iceland’s inde-
pendence in 1944, began to shape what
is now loosely-termed Contemporary
Icelandic Literature. (It is certainly no
coincidence that one of Halldór’s most
influential novels is entitled, ‘Indepen-
dent People.’)
Echoes of the past
Writing in the Guardian, literary critic
Ben Myers says “The Sagas still influ-
ence the way we read and tell stories to-
day.” Yet according to the ‘Oxford Guide
to Literature in Translation,’ William
Herbert published the earliest accurate
translation of Old Norse poetry into
English in 1804. William Morris’ and
Eiríkur Magnússon’s translation of the
Völsungasaga that influenced Tolkein
and his successors first appeared in
1870.
Milan Kundera has said that “(t)
he glory of The Sagas is indisputable,
yet their literary influence would have
been much greater if they had been
written in the language of one of the
major nations; and we would have re-
garded The Sagas as an anticipation or
even the foundation of the European
novel.” It wasn’t really until the Victo-
rian era that the world became aware of
Iceland’s rich literary heritage.
And a dialogue with the past still
continues to this day. More recently,
contemporary authors such as Sjón and
Jón Kalman Stefánsson have explored
Iceland’s grimmest ages in their in-
spiring works of lyrical fiction. Sjón’s
recent novel, ‘Rökkurbýsnir’ (“From
the Mouth of a Whale,” 2011), and Jón
Kalman’s trilogy that begins with the
novel ‘Himnaríki og helvíti’ (“Heaven
and Hell,” 2011), are both examples of
contemporary authors connecting with
Iceland’s literary heritage as a means of
reflecting upon its future.
A struggle for independence
On a much larger scale, since earliest
inceptions (as Halldór clearly recog-
nised), Icelandic literature has been
about the struggle for independence,
more recently about the establishment
of a world-class literary voice. And al-
though, in the last years, more and
more Icelandic authors are making in-
ternational waves, in truth, we English-
language readers (and Icelandic transla-
tors) should be paying closer attention
to the untapped wealth of contempo-
rary Icelandic literature that have roots
going back further than Columbus’
“discovery” of the New World.
It is the very nature of this age-old
culture, indeed, its incredible linguistic
history and its insularity, that makes its
literature, new and old, ring undeniably
true. As Ben Meyrs points out, ‘The
Sagas’ are “like some of today’s best fic-
tion, unpretentious and unadorned.”
He firmly believes that ‘The Sagas’ are
“perhaps the most important work of
the past thousand years. Possibly ever.”
I concur wholeheartedly—only,
I should add: What ‘The Sagas’ gave
birth to is certainly just as noteworthy.
In reading these modern Icelandic au-
thors, we may actually begin to reinter-
pret our own European literary roots in
new and exciting ways.
18 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 18 — 2012LITERATURE
A Very Brief History Of Icelandic Literature
By Marc Vincenz
“It is a great fortune for an author to be born into a nation so steeped in centuries of poetry and
literary tradition.” —Halldór Laxness, from his Nobel Prize acceptance speech
“
The modern Ice-
landic literary form did
not really start to develop
until the mid-1800s. Jón
Thóroddsen (1818-1868)
published the first Ice-
landic novel in 1850.
„