The Icelandic Canadian - 01.09.1964, Síða 34

32
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Autumn 1964
spend at least half an hour a clay
practicing.” He added:
“I play only for myself. I have
studied piano a little and music a great
deal.” He indicated wide acquaintance
with the different systems and schools
of music and their composers.
He also has a large outdoor
swimming pool, heated with hot spring-
water the year around. His wife makes
a hobby of keeping a planter, along an
extended picture window, filled with
a variety of shrubs and flowering
plants, which she termed “a jungle
because I haven’t cleaned it out recent-
ly.” Her plantings are luxuriant in
growth.
Laxness considers his biggest and
most important work “The Happy
Warrior”, written in the language and
style of the old Sagas. He said he work-
ed on it for six years.
“It is unthinkable that I am an
author wtihout the Sagas,” Laxness
said. He pointed out that Icelanders
read the Sagas in the original. The
Sagas are Iceland’s only national liter-
ture in existence from the Middle
Ages. They are in manuscript form.:1
Iceland has for some years tried tr
regain possession of these Saga manu-
scripts from Denmark, where they are
being held.4
“I think we’ll get them back short-
ly,” Laxness said. He added that he
understood a law had been passed in
Denmark approving return of the
Saga manuscripts to Iceland. That day
will be one of jubilation to the Ice-
landers. The Sagas are part of their
daily life, just as much as the air they
breath and the herring and cod they
fish.
The Laxness comments about the
Sagas were somewhat new to me.
Reason for the Sagas, according to
Laxness, is that “the Inquisition of
the Middle Ages never reached Ice-
land. Where all but pious literature
was banned in most countries of Eur-
ope for a thousand ears, secular liter-
ature flourished in Iceland because it
was isolated by the sea.
“The Sagas are proof,” Laxness said,
of what the Middle Ages were capable
of producing.”
Laxness appears very casual, a per-
fect sophisticated gentleman, but I had
been told he is “a very complex person-
ality.” That he may be since he has
seen a world in turmoil during most
of his lifetime and has witnessed it
from two vantage points—from the
isolation of his own country, Iceland,
and from its midstream in the cities of
many countries where he has lived.
Laxness is married a second time
and has two daughters by this mar-
riage. They are Sigrid, 12, and Gudny,
9. He has a son, Einar, by his first
marriage. The is an historian.
The wife of Laxness appears to be a
truly fine companion of a famed
writer, who works side by side with
him and also carries the brunt of the
family’s social life and everyday
routine. She is cultured, charming and
alert to the times.
She remarked that Rekjavik had
stood still for many years but “all at
once had come to life.” She comment-
ed “About 10 years ago Reykjavik
started moving and it is still doing so
at a faster pace—with much new build-
ing.”
A third guest at the dinner in the
Laxness home was a friend of Mrs.
Laxness. She was a Swiss woman, Do-
linda Tanner, married to a lawyer, Ol-
afur Bjornsson, and now living in the
isolated village of Seidisfjordur. Born
in Switzerland and educated at univer-
sities there, she also had lived in Eng-
land and Sweden before she came to
Iceland. She stayed for two years, went
back to Switzerland but returned to