Quote: “The life of man is so short that ordinary people simply cannot afford to be
born” End quote.
This is a quote from the famous Icelandic novel, Independent People by Halldor Laxness.
He was the only Nobel Prize Winning author from Iceland so he has a towering figure when
it comes to Icelandic literature.
And Independent People is his most well-known novel.
You cannot talk about Icelandic literature without mentioning the Icelandic Sagas as
building blocks of its literature.
Saga incidentally means saying or speech but in this context it means stories.
Legends, myths and epics are produced in every human culture but what is unique about Icelandic
Sagas is that they were written down in prose, not in verse and about real people.
The Icelandic Sagas were written from 600-800 years ago.
They are some of the most well-known examples of written literature in the world.
Inspired by Norse legends, the Icelandic sagas are basically long stories about heroes or
several generations of a family that settled on Iceland with their roots in Norway and
other parts of Scandinavia.
Author: Okay let me tell you about the author.
Halldór Laxness was born in 1902 and died in 1998, lived almost the entirety of the
20th century.
He was the first and last Icelandic to win the Nobel prize for literature in 1955.
For a country of 300,000 people, it is an amazing achievement.
He was influenced by Sweden’s August Strindberg and Norway’s Knut Hamsun, which I will discuss
in separate video on Norway and Sweden.
For a period, he became a catholic and belonged to a group that wanted to revert Nordic countries
from Lutheranism to Catholicism.
But later he turned socialist and got very close to the Soviet Union.
His love affair with the Soviets somewhat ended with the suppression of the Hungarian
Revolution.
I think at heart Laxness was an individualist with a deep care for the weak and vulnerable.
He was a nomad like most writers of the 20th century, moved between ideologies as they
travelled between countries and ideas.
Nietzsche had a profound influence on a lot of writers of this period.
In Laxness, individual freedom, not in a selfish libertarian sense, but a more inner freedom,
freedom of consciousness, is important.
Novel: Independent People was published in two volumes
in 1934 and in 1935.
When I first heard of this title, I thought it was a political novel.
But it deals mainly with one man and his family.
The Icelandic title Sjálfstætt fólk (Shelfshtat Fork) means self-standing or self-reliant
folk.
Basically being your own boss.
The protagonist, Bjartur, wants to have his own farm and his dream is to owe nothing to
anyone.
He’s the kind of man who would be burning credit cards because he doesn't want to have
debt.
Interestingly in 2008 after the financial crisis Iceland unlike other countries, didn't
bail out its banks and let them collapse.
I can see Bjartur enjoying that moment.
Ok, what is it about?
The main character Bjartur, which incidentally means bright in Icelandic, has worked for
18 years as a shepherd for someone else whom he hates.
This experience has made him love sheep more than people.
But his shepherd days are in the past.
He has bought a farm and a house called Winter-house which he renames as Summerhouse.
His goal is to pay the mortgage or debt and be free at last.
But there is something wrong with the farm.
The land is cursed by a witch who used to kill men for their blood and marrow.
After her death, her ghost continues to do the same things, hunting and killing men.
Bjartur is a rational and sensible man who doesn’t believe in ghosts and evil spirits
like everyone else.
But his wife Rosa is scared.
According to my internet research many Icelandic people still believe in elves, trolls, ghosts
and such.
Perhaps that’s the reason that 60% of Iceland’s population lives in Reykjavik.
So trolls, elves and ghosts can roam freely in the rest of the country.
And tourists and photographers as well.
One night when Rosa is pregnant, incidentally with someone else’s child, craves for some
meat.
She is sick of eating fish every day.
In the novel fish is plenty and readily available.
This surprised me as I thought on a farm meat would be the staple diet.
Farm animals are like expensive car, while fish is everywhere.
So she secretly kills one of the sheep.
Bjartur thinking the sheep has escaped, leaves his heavily pregnant wife alone and embarks
on a search in the stormy weather that almost kills him, but by the time he returns home,
he finds Rosa dead at childbirth and the dog has saved the baby by keeping it warm.
He names her Asta and she survives.
I think the novel should have ended here.
The rest of the novel deals with his second wife, their three children and ultimately
Bjartur losing everyone, and the farm for which he fought tooth and nail.
Finally he moves into an abandoned house that belongs to his mother-in-law and invites,
his estranged daughter Asta who has her own child by then.
There is a hint that Asta might be the ghost that terrorized men in the legends.
So at the end, the dream of being independent didn't materialise for Bjartur, but he did
reconcile with his daughter.
Now let me talk about some of the themes of this novel.
A free man?
Freedom is an important theme in the novel.
Bjatur is a difficult character.
On the one hand his desire to be independent which makes him a likeable character.
Freedom appears so fundamental as a principle for him that sometimes you questions his extremist
idea of being free and disentangled from others at any cost.
In fact he is so proud of his independence that he refuses any offer of help.
His idealistic principle makes him suspect everyone’s intention as nothing but cunning
and deceitful, which is sad.
I can understand his pain at being a shepherd for a despicable man, but at times he talks
about his independence as if that’s the only thing matters in life.
Nothing else.
Not his wife.
Not his children.
Nobody else.
This makes him a really tragic figure, stubborn to the point he no longer feels any empathy
towards others whom he thinks are encroaching on his freedom.
The tragedy of his wife’s death and the final tragedy is the loss of the farm.
Asta while pregnant is kicked out of the house.
Despite his harsh life, the man lives in his head most of the time anyway.
He writes poetry to keep himself alive at one point.
I guess Laxness wanted to show the power of idea over one man’s life.
The idea of individual freedom we take for granted today, was a new concept about a 100
years ago for ordinary people and still is in most of the world.
If anything, the harsh environment of Iceland doesn't bring people together but keeps them
apart as they pride their space and freedom.
Here is a quote that sums up this idea.
“Two human beings have such difficulty in understanding each other - there is nothing
so sad as two human beings.”
So it is best to live a life that has minimal dealings with other.
the second thing I noticed was its Icy cold realism,
When he finds his wife dead, he is indifferent.
No emotion.
In fact not a single person shows emotion at her death.
I found this very cold.
Nobody cries, screams or even sobs.
Also the news of her death is taken as no surprise by anyone as if a goat died.
Bjartur thinks about his missing sheep more than his dead wife.
Here is a quote: “So I see no reason why, just because a couple of womenfolk have kicked
the bucket, people should start writing religion about them.”
end quote.
Religion is quite prominent in the novel, which made me wonder how a religion originating
in the desert of Middle-East found its way in the coldest place on earth.
Anyway, what fascinated me more was how cold weather influence the characters.
Individualism, isolation are counter-balanced by the parish as a practical support community.
In fact the first pension scheme was developed by two priests in Scotland, the Scottish widow,
now the largest pension and insurance company.
The Nordic countries are also known for having the best welfare system.
So cold weather does bring people together on a more practical level rather than tears
and screams.
People are more pragmatic than emotional.
One thing that this novel busts is the myth and the romanticism of living in the country.
It’s bloody hard work.
Nothing is softened for the reader.
One thing I found interesting was how much coffee people drank.
Here is a quote: “Presently the small of coffee began to fill the room.
This was morning’s hallowed moment.
In such a fragrance the perversity of the world is forgotten, and the soul is inspired
with faith in the future…”
I have the same feeling about my morning coffee, full of optimism but only to realise in the
evening that I managed nothing worthwhile.
Well most days anyway.
Raw nature: Nature is at the heart of this novel.
“Finna didn’t bear a child that winter.
Her body wasn’t ready for some reason.”
Life is simplified to its basic natural state.
For example, “That winter everyone survived.”
They counted their children and animals in the autumn and then in the spring to know
who has survived.
Winter is a real ordeal in northern countries, which make animals are very significant in
this novel.
Bjartur loves his sheep as much or even more than his wife.
Sheep has an almost divine role for him, which shows he hasn't forgotten his 18 years as
a shepherd.
He respects dogs for their intelligence.
The novel spends more time talking about the arrival of a cow in the family than the arrival
of new wife and kids, which shows that when it comes to the basics of nature we give importance
to things that help us survive.
Animals symbolises survival, security, comfort and everything in between.
While people means more mouths to feed.
Change: It’s a novel of change and transition.
The novel starts with Bjartur buying a farm that he renames summerhouse.
There is optimism in the air that Iceland is changing.
Bajtur’s house is located on the road so travellers, farmers and holiday makers pass
the house all the time.
It’s a period of transition for the people as well as the country.
At one point, Bjartur takes his daughter, Asta, to town.
Seeing all the tall buildings and so many people, she feels so insignificant and small.
She notices everyone and everything.
Town people, on the other hand, have developed a skill to not see others.
Treat them like trees and plants.
But ultimately despite Bjartur’s best effort to change his life, he failed to establish
his own independent farm.
In a way, this is the harsh reality of life.
No matter how hard you work, sometimes you cannot change your life in the way you had
dreamt.
Writing: The writing is very lyrical about dreams shattered
by the rain and the sound of thunder and ghosts in the mountains and the restless sheep giving
birth.
It’s full of amazing sentences.
For example.
Quote: “A land even more remote, America, which is farther than death.”
This sentence alone tells you so much about the people, isolated country of Iceland and
how America symbolises a land of dreams but only dreams.
The poetry cited in the novel are also beautiful and capture the raw nature of Iceland and
its harsh, yet beautiful landscape.
Weaknesses: The narrative is not smooth.
As I said before I think the novel should have focused more on the couple and how their
conflict symbolised the conflict with others and nature.
After Rosa’s death, the novel loses the narrative drive a bit.
The early energy somewhat dissipates.
Bjartur as a character is pretty frustrating at times.
He’s the kind of person who goes in the middle of winter in search of a lost sheep
and ends up fighting with a moose, an epic ride on a river.
He recites poetry to keep his spirit up.
Funny as it’s, he seems a bit delusional.
When he finds his wife dead and a little child hanging for dear life under the body a dog,
he doesn't know what to do.
When he goes to the village for help, it takes him hours to tell the actual news of the death,
after reciting some poetry and his tale of adventure at the mountains.
Overall, it is a very profound novel.
It’s one of those novels, which the author didn't flinch in telling the story in its
rawest.
A profound novel of ice cold realism.
That is what you expect from Iceland.
Despite its name, Iceland is very green.
Some people say Greenland and Iceland should swap their names, because Greenland is mostly
ice while Iceland is mostly green.
This just shows how random humans are at naming things.
I would love to hear what you think.
Thank you for watching.