Reykjavík Grapevine - 09.12.2016, Qupperneq 20

“I write as little as possi-
ble,” says Sjón, with a bare-
ly perceptible smile and a
twinkle in his eye. “In fact,
I do everything I can to
avoid actual writing.”
When he issues this joking-not-joking
statement, we’re sitting in a comfort-
able coffee house where the Icelandic
author—full name Sigurjón Birgir
Sigurðsson—is often to be found
reading, chatting, and passing time.
It’s an unexpected sentiment to hear
from one of Iceland’s finest and most
prolific authors. Sjón has published
twelve books, and at least as many col-
lections of poetry, with one coming
out every year or two. He was Oscar-
nominated for his lyrical contribution
to Björk’s ‘Dancer In The Dark’ songs,
and collaborates with her regularly. His
output has been translated into 35 lan-
guages and won five awards, including
the Nordic Council Literature Prize for
‘The Blue Fox’.
“I’m just like a cat,” he continues,
warming to the theme. “I have a small
routine. I try to do a little as possible
and relax as much as possible.”
Creative history
Sjón’s description of his method is, of
course, deceiving. Although his style
is deliberately sparing and economi-
cal with words, his books are carefully
sculpted and rich with colourful context
and meticulous detail, betraying the
amount of work that goes into creating
each character and scenario. ‘The Blue
Fox’ is set in 1883, and chronicles the
rural life of the time; ‘From the Mouth
of the Whale’ takes place even earlier,
in 1635. Both paint a vivid picture of the
time in which they’re set.
“I do quite a lot of research,” Sjón
admits. “Most of my novels call for
that. I’ve been working mostly with
historical material over the last ten
to fifteen years. I enjoy that: going to
the national library or the city library,
browsing through books, photocopy-
ing anecdotes from here and there.”
“That is really the fun part of it,” he
continues. “Reading through old news-
papers and magazines, biographies—
it’s such fun. You come across stuff
that’s truly amazing and strange. I’m
always looking for strange things—the
exceptions in human life and in history.
They very often offer the possibility to
go and work with material that has been
thoroughly defined by official histori-
ans, and to twist it around.”
Sjón’s deliberate habit of not writ-
ing is also a method of preparing or
even cajoling himself to produce new
work. “It builds up the need for writ-
ing,” he explains. “I definitely have a
need for it. I sincerely believe that hav-
ing written since quite a young age—I
started at fifteen—my mind has be-
come attuned to this. It’s become a
physical need more or less. By avoiding
writing, I build up the need for it. Then I
go to my small house in Eyrarbakki. And
then I might write for three weeks in a
row, working sixteen hours a day. I com-
pletely immerse myself in that world.”
“Because, of course, I have to write!”
he exclaims. “I have to produce some-
thing.”
Real imaginings
Sjón’s latest work to be released in
English translation is ‘Moonstone
- The Boy Who Never Was’. It’s an en-
grossing tale set within a pivotal and
dramatic moment in Iceland’s history.
“In this case, I started with the
Spanish influenza,” he explains. “I
thought I was going to write a novel
about the rise of the spiritualist move-
ment. I discovered that the spiritual-
ist movement had quite an easy start
around 1912 and then more or less
fizzled away, until the Spanish influ-
enza. In the aftermath of that—well,
the need for conversations with the
dead grew, and they consciously took
advantage of that. We have letters be-
tween the people who founded that
movement, and they say, ‘Now is the
opportunity to do something.’”
At the same time, Sjón was also re-
searching the origins of film culture
in Iceland. “When I looked at the key
dates of the Spanish influenza, I saw
that the dates coincided with cinema
in Iceland,” he continues. “That helped
me to develop the character. Making
him a cinephile, and realising these
two elements would have come togeth-
er in his life.”
This technique lends a grain of re-
ality that grounds his stories. “I’ve
sometimes said I work this way be-
cause I’m lazy,” says Sjón. “I don’t like
to spend too much time imagining
stuff. I’m wary of completely imag-
ined storylines. There’s always a dan-
ger that they become contrived. If real-
ity—as it’s represented in the original
research material—if that hands you
elements you can work with, that’s the
best thing. Then my job is to make it
work as a story and to imagine that
world. But it’s made from something
real.”
Spoken by few
Sjón writes in Icelandic, with his work
then translated for foreign readers. It’s
an interesting position for an interna-
tional author to occupy, and one that
he’s considered in depth over the years.
“Icelandic is ‘a language spoken by
few,’ as we say here, rather than saying
it’s a ‘small language,’” Sjón explains.
“That phrase came from our former
president Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, who
said that if Shakespeare can be trans-
lated into Icelandic, Icelandic is a big
enough language for Shakespeare; and
if you can translate the Quran into
Faroese, then Faroese can accommo-
date the Quran. I think that’s a beauti-
ful way to look at languages.”
But Sjón notes that many young
Icelandic authors are writing directly
into English, and links this decision to
technology, and the rise of the inter-
net. “I ask them why,” he says, “and, of
course, they often say it’s they want to
reach a bigger readership. But some of
them do it because they get interested
in English-language literature online.
Maybe they get first get interested in
reading—and writing—fanfic, science
fiction or fantasy online, in English.
And then there are some who say they
find it intimidating to write in Ice-
landic—that the bar is raised so high,
they feel like they have to be better at it
than they are at writing in English.”
“I spoke to a translator recently
who said there might be something
in that,” he continues. “The nature of
how it’s structured and how words are
combined and things like that, asks
for a different way of writing. You have
to produce more literary language.
You can be more direct in English. So
many young authors feel they can be
clearer in English. This is a very inter-
esting thing.”
Future language
One of Sjón’s most recent projects is
writing a book for the Future Library
project. One hundred authors will
each write a book—one per year—
which will then be published simulta-
neously in the year 2114 and housed in
a specially constructed library in Oslo.
For Sjón, taking part in the project
invites consideration of what the Ice-
landic-language readership might be
like a century from now. “I feel like I
should write in Icelandic, and I will,”
he says. “But it means that I’m faced
with the difficult question of how Ice-
landic will survive.”
Sjón quotes rising immigration—
Iceland’s immigrant population is
forecast to rise from 10% to 25% by
2060—as one part of the equation.
He also cites the rise of speech-driv-
en technology and “the internet of
things” as potential factors. “For all of
the great software developers and in-
formation tech developers, Icelandic is
not the most important language,” he
says. “This means that Icelandic and
other ‘languages spoken by few’ will be
left behind by speech-driven technol-
ogy. And what happens to language,
when it falls out of use in your daily
life? When you start ordering food
from the supermarket through a dis-
cussion with your refrigerator, which
only understands English, French,
Spanish, Chinese… what are you going
to do?”
Life’s elixir
Sjón thinks that the government could
play a more proactive role in the pres-
ervation of Icelandic. “The authorities
are completely blind to what’s go-
ing on with the language,” he muses.
“For example, there’s no policy when
it comes to teaching Icelandic to for-
eigners. It’s expensive, it’s impracti-
cal, it’s in places that shift workers and
such have trouble getting to. There’s
no policy. And then at the same time,
politicians speak of the Icelandic lan-
guage as life’s elixir or something.
They don’t make the connection that
if they want to preserve the language
they’re responsible for keeping it alive
in contemporary society.”
But at the same time, the constant-
ly evolving nature of language is some-
thing that excites Sjón. “I went to a play
a couple of years ago that was staged by
a group of people from different coun-
tries,” he says, his face brightening at
the memory. “The play was in many
languages—some spoke Icelandic,
others spoke in their native languag-
es. There was a Brazilian there. The
Icelandic sounded so beautiful in the
Brazilian accent and rhythm. It was a
moving experience for me, to hear it,
and to realise Icelandic can also have
that rhythm and those accents. This is
what will be exciting in the future for
the Icelandic language.”
“I’m excited about those things,” he
finishes. “I’m not a pessimist. If the
language goes, it goes. But one way
to help Icelandic survive would be to
make it accessible for the people who
move here, and to give them the pos-
sibility of a role in developing it.”
With that, Sjón smiles, waves, and
slinks off back into his daily routine.
As he walks back towards Austurvöl-
lur, he looks every bit the carefree fla-
neur. But no matter how relaxed, be-
neath the surface, his mind is always
at work.
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Second
Sight
Spiritualism, talking
refrigerators, and the
life and death
of language:
a conversation
with Sjón
WORDS JOHN ROGERS PHOTOS HÖRÐUR SVEINSSON
FEATURE