Background
Halldór Laxness was born on April 23, 1902, in Reykjavík. His parents moved to the Laxnes farm in nearby Mosfellssveit parish when he was three. He started to read books and write stories at an early age.
Halldór Kiljan Laxness with his parents
Halldór Kiljan Laxness
Halldór Kiljan Laxness
Halldór Kiljan Laxness
Halldór Kiljan Laxness
Halldór Kiljan Laxness
Halldór Kiljan Laxness
Halldór Kiljan Laxness
(First published in 1946, this humane epic novel is set in...)
First published in 1946, this humane epic novel is set in rural Iceland in the early twentieth century. Bjartus is a sheep farmer determined to eke a living from a blighted patch of land. Nothing, not merciless weather, nor his family will come between him and his goal of financial independence. Only Asta Solillja, the child he brings up as his daughter, can pierce his stubborn heart. As she grows up, keen to make her own way in the world, Bjartus' obstinacy threatens to estrange them forever.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679767924/?tag=2022091-20
1997
(As an unloved foster child on a farm in rural Iceland, Ol...)
As an unloved foster child on a farm in rural Iceland, Olaf Karason has only one consolation: the belief that one day he will be a great poet. The indifference and contempt of most of the people around him only reinforces his sense of destiny, for in Iceland poets are as likely to be scorned as they are to be revered. Over the ensuing years, Olaf comes to lead the paradigmatic poet’s life of poverty, loneliness, ruinous love affairs and sexual scandal. But he will never attain anything like greatness. As imagined by Nobel Prize winner Halldor Laxness in this magnificently humane novel, what might be cruel farce achieves pathos and genuine exaltation. For as Olaf’s ambition drives him onward–and into the orbits of an unstable spiritualist, a shady entrepreneur, and several susceptible women–World Light demonstrates how the creative spirit can survive in even the most crushing environment and even the most unpromising human vessel.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375727574/?tag=2022091-20
2002
(Sometimes grim, sometimes uproarious, and always captivat...)
Sometimes grim, sometimes uproarious, and always captivating, Iceland's Bell' by Nobel Laureate Halldór Laxness is at once an updating of the traditional Icelandic saga and a caustic social satire. At the close of the 17th century, Iceland is an oppressed Danish colony, suffering under extreme poverty, famine, and plague. A farmer and accused cord-thief named Jon Hreggvidsson makes a bawdy joke about the Danish king and soon after finds himself a fugitive charged with the murder of the king's hangman. In the years that follow, the hapless but resilient rogue Hreggvidsson becomes a pawn entangled in political and personal conflicts playing out on a far grander scale. Chief among these is the star-crossed love affair between Snaefridur, known as Iceland's Sun, a beautiful, headstrong young noblewoman, and Arnas Arnaeus, the king's antiquarian, an aristocrat whose worldly manner conceals a fierce devotion to his downtrodden countrymen. As their personal struggle plays itself out on an international stage, Iceland's Bell creates a Dickensian canvas of heroism and venality, violence and tragedy, charged with narrative enchantment on every page.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400034256/?tag=2022091-20
2003
(The Fish Can Sing is one of Nobel Prize winner Halldór La...)
The Fish Can Sing is one of Nobel Prize winner Halldór Laxness’s most beloved novels, a poignant coming-of-age tale marked with his peculiar blend of light irony and dark humor. The orphan Alfgrimur has spent an idyllic childhood sheltered in the simple turf cottage of a generous and eccentric elderly couple. Alfgrimur dreams only of becoming a fisherman like his adoptive grandfather, until he meets Iceland's biggest celebrity. The opera singer Gardar Holm’s international fame is a source of tremendous pride to tiny, insecure Iceland, though no one there has ever heard him sing. A mysterious man who mostly avoids his homeland and repeatedly fails to perform for his adoring countrymen, Gardar takes a particular interest in Alfgrimur’s budding musical talent and urges him to seek out the world beyond the one he knows and loves. But as Alfgrimur discovers that Gardar is not what he seems, he begins to confront the challenge of finding his own path without turning his back on where he came from.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307386058/?tag=2022091-20
2008
(Published in 1952, Wayward Heroes is part of the body of ...)
Published in 1952, Wayward Heroes is part of the body of works for which Laxness was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1955. It is a masterfully written tragicomedy about the oath-brothers Thorgeir and Thormod, inspired by the old Icelandic sagas Saga of the Sworn Brothers and Saga of Saint Olaf. The brothers fight for glory, raid for treasure, and seduce women against the backdrop of a new cult of Christianity. But where the old sagas depict their heroes as glorious champions, Laxness does the opposite. As Thormod avenges Thorgeir's death, he demonstrates the senselessness of violence and the endlessly cyclical nature of obsession.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B019B6QBH4/?tag=2022091-20
Halldór Laxness was born on April 23, 1902, in Reykjavík. His parents moved to the Laxnes farm in nearby Mosfellssveit parish when he was three. He started to read books and write stories at an early age.
Halldór Laxness attended the technical school in Reykjavík from 1915 to 1916.
In his late teens, Laxness wrote his first novel, Barn Natturunnar (“A Child of Nature”). After making his debut at 16 with a novel on the neo-Romantic back-to-nature theme, Laxness soon embarked on travels in Scandinavia and Germany. On the subject of his conversion into Catholicism, he wrote the great introspective novel Vefarinn mikli fra Kasmir (1927; The Great Weaver of Cashmere, 1927), the expressionistic, surrealistic manner of this work marking an important turning point in Icelandic prose style. Writing under the pseudonym Halldor Laxness, he penned “fiction depicting the hard living conditions of the lower classes.”Many of his later writings continued to reflect political, religious, and social themes.
After three years in the United States, Laxness returned to a study of his people from a leftist point of view. This new approach is manifest in three novels: Salka Valka (1931-1932; English trans. , 1936), a portrayal of the independent village girl; Sjalfstatt folk (1934-1935; Independent People, 1946), which depicts the stubbornly heroic small crofter; and the four-volume work Ólafur Ljósvíkingur (1937-1940; World Light, 1969), the story of a long-suffering poet of the people. In the historical trilogy composed of Íslandsklukkan (1943; "The Bell of Iceland"), Hithljósa man (1944; "Bright Maiden"), and Eldur íi Kaupinhafn (1946; "Fire in Copenhagen"), Laxness immortalized the stubbornness, pride, and love of learning that have been the mainstays of the Icelandic people through many centuries of distress. In Atómstöthin (1948) he deplored the demoralization caused by World War II in Iceland from a communistic and nationalistic point of view, and in Gerpla (1952; Happy Warriors), he satirized the warlike spirit common to the Viking Age and our modern times.
Laxness's later novels include Brekkukotsannall (1957; The Fish Can Sing, 1967), about a singer growing up in Reykjavik at the turn of the century; Paradisarheimt (1959; Paradise Reclaimed, 1962), a story of the quest of some Icelanders for the Mormon Paradise in the 1850's; and Kristnihald undir jokli (1968; "Christianity under the Glacier"), concerning a cleric's efforts to help a rural community in contemporary Iceland.
In 1970 Laxness published an influential ecological essay Hernaðurinn gegn landinu (The War Against the Land). He continued to write essays and memoirs throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s.
In addition to novels, Laxness published plays, poetry, short stories, critical essays, and translations, and he edited several Icelandic sagas. In the 1970s and ’80s he published several volumes of memoirs, including Sagan af brauddinu dýra (1987; The Bread of Life) and Dagar hjá múnkum (1987; “Days with Monks”).
Halldór Kiljan Laxness died on February 8, 1998, at the age of 95 years.
(Sometimes grim, sometimes uproarious, and always captivat...)
2003(The Fish Can Sing is one of Nobel Prize winner Halldór La...)
2008(As an unloved foster child on a farm in rural Iceland, Ol...)
2002(Published in 1952, Wayward Heroes is part of the body of ...)
(First published in 1946, this humane epic novel is set in...)
1997The chaos of postwar Germany affected Laxness deeply, and, following the example of the Danish poet Joahnnes Jorgensen, Laxness became a Catholic in 1923.
Laxness grew increasingly disenchanted with the Soviets after their military action in Hungary in 1956.
Laxness traveled to the Soviet Union and wrote approvingly of the Soviet system and culture.
Quotations:
"The worth of any deed depends on how it is assessed by the onlookers... once you have made yourself look ridiculous, you go on being ridiculous whatever you do, perhaps for the rest of your life."
"In the end, one is no longer sure which is the greatest evildoer, the man who gets up early or the man who goes to bed late."
Gudjonsson's books reflected his interests in socialism, communism, Catholicism, Mormonism, and Taoism, among other subjects. He had a strong sense of Icelandic individuality. His pseudonym of Laxness, meaning “salmon peninsula," was taken from the name of his father’s farm.
Quotes from others about the person
"He is an excellent painter of Icelandic scenery and settings. And a social passion underlies everything Halldór Laxness has written." - E. Wesen
Laxness had four children: Sigríður Mária Elísabet Halldórsdóttir (Maria, 10 April 1923 - 19 March 2016), Einar Laxness (9 August 1931 - 23 May 2016), Sigríður Halldórsdóttir (Sigga, b. 26 May 1951) and Guðný Halldórsdóttir (Duna, b. 23 January 1954). He was married to Ingibjörg Einarsdóttir (3 May 1908 - 22 January 1994) from 1930 (divorced in 1940), and Auður Sveinsdóttir (30 June 1918 - 29 October 2012) from 1945 until his death.