The Iceland Page

Iceland is the Cinderella of Scandinavia, a volcanic island adrift in the North Atlantic at the tail-end of the Gulf Stream, with a population the size of a single modest city in the United States. But Cinderella has her accomplishments: she invented parliamentary democracy, abolished slavery, and achieved universal literacy---a thousand years ago. She was the first modern nation to have a female president. Her capitol, Reykjavik, has five excellent daily newspapers. She publishes more than 700 books a year, across the spectrum from high art to glaciology.

Iceland's literary heritage is a long one. Niall's Saga (or Njal's Saga, or The Burning of Niall), the greatest of the ancient sagas, was written in 1280. Niall's subtlety and democratic humanity wasn't achieved again in European literature until the advent of the modern novel. Niall was created as part of an extraordinary literary explosion in the 13th Century, while Iceland's language--essentially Old Viking--has changed so little in a thousand years that school children read it in its original form (compare how English speakers today can no longer easily read Chaucer!).

Niall's characters range from Niall's son, the dark and bloody Skarp-Hedin who grimly chants runes as his house burns around him, to Gunnar, the gentle, unprovocable farmer who kills seven enemies in an astonishing battle, vaults from side to side on his horse at full gallop as he rides home, and then asks his friend, "Am I less a man because I am so slow to anger?" The women of Niall's Saga are as powerful and vivid and complex as the men; the diminishment of women that came with Christianity never really reached (and has not yet reached) Iceland.

Modern Icelandic writing is embodied in one man: Halldor Laxness. Uniquely among the world's writers, Laxness has defined his country's history for its citizens. His polemical, angry, poetic novels were for decades shunned and disapproved; they are now Iceland's truth. Laxness's greatest work is probably Independent People, the saga of Bjartur, a poor crofter. It was published in a fine English translation in 1946, and is still in many American libraries:

Then the old woman dug her hand under her pillow and withdrew a little bundle. It was made up of useless old rags which were wrapped tightly around one another. Numb-fingered and with trembling hands she proceeded to unwind them.

"Are you still there, urchin?" she asked finally when she had reached the heart of the mystery.

"Yes, Grandmother," said the boy.

And what should it turn out to be but those two treasures of hers, the only things of value she possessed: the kerchief and the ear-pick. She was going to give him these treasures at parting, he who had slept beside her in the corner there ever since he was in diapers. She could do no more.

She did not recite any hymns, did not mention Jesus or Kuria, did not warn him against sin. Neither did she ask to be remembered to her sons in America. Nor did she ever on any occasion ask about little Nonni when he had gone.

"There are two things I want you to remember when you are gone," she said, the wrinkled old face trembling more than usual. "I want to ask you never to be insolent to those who hold a lowly position in the world. And never to ill-treat any animal."

"Say thank you to your grandmother, Nonni," said Asta-Sollilja. "She's given you the only thing she has."