Iceland review - 2014, Page 42

40 ICELAND REVIEW
A Lesson from Auden
What can Iceland learn from the late English poet W.H.
Auden about the Icelandic króna?
are you fed up with economic statistics, but still want to
get an idea about where the world is heading? Would
you quite like to understand the political debate and
see past the nonsense thrown at you by politicians? Where can you
turn? Well, literature always helps... So when you find yourself in
the middle of a debate, as we do, about whether Iceland should
adopt a new currency or stick to the tried and tested Icelandic
króna, you could do worse than pick up a copy of W.H. Auden and
Louis MacNeice’s Letters from Iceland, published in 1937.
Auden and MacNeice traveled to Iceland in the summer of 1936
having signed a contract with Faber and Faber to write a travel
book. Auden, by the way, had long had an interest in Iceland and
was in fact convinced that his family name had Nordic origins,
possibly deriving from Odin. This family interest does not seem
to have started with W.H. Auden, for his father, George, to whom
Letters from Iceland is dedicated, and who told his son many boyhood
stories about Iceland, had in his library a copy of Gabriel Turville-
Petre’s book, Origins of Icelandic Literature. I know this because the
book is sitting on my desk, discovered among the remnants of
Auden’s book collection in New York some years ago. Turville-
Petre’s supervisor at Oxford was J.R.R. Tolkien, another student of
Old Icelandic. But I digress.
BY hallDóR lÁRUssOn
Auden and MacNeice have arrived in Iceland. At the end of the
first month, Auden writes a letter to his wife Erika Mann, daughter
of Thomas Mann, that “as it is, I’ve been here a month and haven’t
the slightest idea how to begin to write the book.” The letter sub-
sequently becomes a part of the book, which turns into a strange
combination of practical advice (“The most essential article [of
clothing] is a pair of stout gumboots, but with smooth soles or they
get caught in the stirrups … At least two pairs of socks should be
worn inside the gumboots”), and wonderful verse:
Then let the good citizen here find natural marvels:
The horse-shoe ravine, the issue of steam from a cleft
In the rock, and the rocks, and waterfalls brushing the
Rocks, and among the rocks birds.
Auden and MacNeice also provide their readers with informa-
tion about the sex lives of the locals (“Uninhibited…there is a good
deal of venereal disease in the coastal towns.”), and the local sense
of humor (“They are very fond of satirical lampoons”). Auden is
fond of Iceland, although he has reservations about certain aspects
of its culture. On running into Hermann Goering’s brother who was
traveling around Iceland with Alfred Rosenberg, Auden observes,
w.h. auden, photographed by Howard Coster.