Reykjavík Grapevine - 12.04.2019, Blaðsíða 30

“No one is afraid of
Laxness anymore.”

Hallgrímur Helgason on writing the great Icelandic novel

Words: Valur Gunnarsson Photo: Art Bicnick
Your novel '101 Reykjavik' is in
many ways the definitive text
of the Icelandic '90s, when the
country was in some regard
opening up to the outside world.
In what way do you think things
have changed and how are they
the same? What might Hlynur
be doing today?
I think he would still be in trou-
ble with his life, living alone and
with his mother as his only friend,
fighting his demons and depres-
sion but he would be on medica-
tion by now. His humour would be
the only thing that brings him joy.
I should maybe write that sequel,
a fun book about depression… Of
course, Reykjavík and Iceland are
totally different from what they
were back in 1996. The difference
is like having a wi-fi connection as
opposed to not having one.
In the same manner, 2005’s
'Stormland' captures some-
thing about the insanity of the
boom years in Iceland. The film
version, which came out six
years later, had the economic
collapse as a backdrop. You
yourself were quite vocal during
the protests. Do you think this is
a subject you may return to, or
have you said all you have to say
about it?
I think we will always write
about the crash, in one way or an-
other. Iceland is not the same after
it. But it’s true, I have not written
a contemporary novel since 2008,
and sometimes I feel a strong urge
to do so. So much has happened
since then. But I will now stick
with the historical stuff for some
years, as I am about to write an-
other book about the characters in
my latest, 'Sixty Kilos of Sunshine.'
But that doesn’t mean I won’t be
writing about the boom and crash
of Iceland, since we have a histori-
cal tradition of those things hap-
pening every three years in the be-
ginning of the 20th century, in the
herring era, which is my subject
in 'Sixty Kilos.' We have for a long
time been a rollercoaster nation.

The novel Author of Iceland,
based on the life and works of
Halldór Laxness, caused some-
thing of a scandal for daring to
engage with the old man’s works
in a playful manner. Are we too
reverential of our sole Nobel
prize winner? Is it time for Ice-
landic writing to step out of his
shadow and into the sunshine?
I think we have. Nobody is
afraid of Laxness anymore, at
least not in the sense as we were
before, when I was growing up.
And I think it’s a lot healthier situ-
ation for him to be in as well. But
we need to do more for his legacy,
we need to make new translations
of his best books and keep push-
ing them to foreign publishers. In
many countries he’s totally forgot-
ten, or only available in bad trans-
lations as is the case in France
for example. He truly was one
of a kind, the best thing ever to
come out of Iceland, apart from…
No, apart from nothing. The best
thing ever. Period!

Your latest novel, 'Sixty Kilos of
Sunshine,' is a great Icelandic
novel dealing with a boy among
fishermen in the early 1900s. It
won you the Icelandic literature
prize for the second time. You
describe it as the period when
Icelanders were moving from
the darkness and into the light.
It sounds thematically similar
to your contemporary Jón Kal-
man, or even to Laxness him-
self. What is it about these times
that are so compelling to Icelan-
dic writers? Was the boom and
bust the same thing in reverse,
perhaps?
It’s so close in time. My grand-
mother was born in 1900 and died
in 1998. She went from a turf hut
to a Toyota Landcruiser, from the
Bronze Age to the -Information
Age, in a lifetime. Imagine the
changes she witnessed. I was al-
ways fascinated by her fate, and
often thought about it while writ-
ing 'Sixty Kilos.'
I think we will never get over
the fact that, as a nation, we lived
for centuries in windowless and
leaking turf huts and were among
the poorest countries in the world.
We hardly had anything to burn,
so we could only manage one fire
per farm, and this had to be in
the kitchen rather than the living
room. Then there were no roads
here, no real towns. We did not
even own a single horse carriage!
And to try to capture and describe
our journey out of those dark
times and into the light of moder-
nity really is a worthy subject that
I am sure will continue to be writ-
ten about.

English-language literature
these days puts much emphasis
on voice. Do you think there is
an Icelandic style of writing, go-
ing via Laxness (him again) back
to the Sagas, which describes
characters more by what they
do than what they think? Do you
feel you have perhaps broken
out of that style, since the voice
of the character often seems as
important as their actions?
In the Sagas you never get into
the heads of the characters, you
never know what they think or
how they feel. The Viking tradi-
tion was to stay cool and keep on
struggling, even though your life
was in grave danger. That one cool
and snappy sentence, spoken at
your last moment alive, was more
important than any cry for rescue
or a report on how you really felt.
For they knew it would last for-
ever and immortalise their name.
Those guys really knew the power
of literature, and they believed in
literature as we Icelanders have
done ever since. Forget God and
Jesus, Njáls Saga is still our Bible.
I think we can say in all fairness
that the Sagas were the first nov-
els in history, hard rigid tales
that did not allow any inner voice.
Then came Shakespeare with his
“invention of the human;” sud-
denly the characters spoke from
their hearts, laying out all their
hopes and fears, doubts and hesi-
tations, and this major invention
did of course bring the characters
closer to the audience or reader,
they made him their buddy.
My first novel was in the vein of
the Sagas, I described everything
from the outside, never enter-
ing the characters' heads. Then I
slowly learned from Shakespeare
and Nabokov and others how the
inner monologue is maybe more
exciting than what happens in
the visual world. I was hooked on
the first-person narrative for a
long time, but in my latest, I use
a more traditional way, with an
all-knowing third-person story-
telling voice—this allows you the
freedom of entering every char-
acter’s head. You can have numer-
ous first-person narratives in a
panel discussion, so to speak, or
many novels on stage at once, like
Harold Bloom defined the art of
Shakespeare.

Apart from writing novels, you
have written poetry, painted,
drawn cartoons, written ar-
ticles, and even done stand-up.
Does the form have a great im-
pact on how you approach your
subject matter or is it a second-
ary concern to the content?
No, form is always important.
All my ideas come to me with
a small post-it: This one is for a
novel, this one for a painting, this
is a poem…

You have been published in vari-
ous languages and even written
one novel in English, 'The Hit-
man’s Guide to Housecleaning,'
that you then translated to Ice-
landic yourself. How did that af-
fect your process? Is there a big
difference dealing with English-
language publishing vs. that in
Iceland?
Oh, yes, the editing tradition in
the English-speaking world is so
much greater than we have. Until
the late nineties, there was hardly
any editing in Iceland. The writer
was king! A bit too much of a king,
I must say, for we all need good and
healthy editing. My other novels
have also been edited when they
are published in the States, and
the fact-checking process and all
that proof-reading stuff is just so
very professional, on a whole dif-
ferent level than elsewhere. Even
in a book that has been translated
14 times they can still find some
errors over there in the big US of A.
Writing a novel in English was
fun to begin with; it was like get-
ting a brand new bike, and you felt
like a new man, but after two years
of working in a language that you
do not master 100%, I was so happy
to go back to Icelandic. I think that
energy shows in the next novel I
wrote, 'Woman at 1000 Degrees.'

What are you looking forward to
during the Reykjavík Literature
Festival?
I’m excited to see Samanta
Schweblin, a fresh voice from far
away. The Norwegian Roy Jacob-
sen is always a real charmer, and
I am curious about the American
Lily King. Then I’m also excited
to meet Alain Gnaedig from the
French publishing house Galli-
mard. They just bought my latest
book.
"I think we will never get over the
fact that, as a nation, we lived for
centuries in windowless and leaking
turf huts and were among the
poorest countries in the world."