Icelandic literature

Icelandic literature refers to written works from the nation of Iceland, typically written in the Icelandic language, and from the Old Norse cultures of Scandinavia. Icelandic literature is dominated by the impact of medieval sagas, tales of migrations, settlements, and family histories from tenth- and eleventh-century Iceland and Norway. The stories are believed to have been based on actual events and often embellished with heroic or slightly mythological elements. The sagas have been a valuable source of information for historians and an inspiration for some of the best-known works in modern music and literature. The sagas also helped spark a love of literature and books among the Icelandic people. Modern Icelandic authors have touched on many subjects in their works, which include poetry, folklore-based novels, and hard-boiled crime mysteries. Among the most famous modern Icelandic authors was Halldór Laxness, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1955.

Brief history

Iceland is a geologically active island in the North Atlantic Ocean. Despite its name, the country has a relatively temperate climate considering its location in the far northern latitude. This is the result of the warmer waters of the Gulf Stream, which flow from the tropical latitudes into the North Atlantic. According to legend, the Greek explorer Pytheas may have first sighted the island during his journey into the North Atlantic in the fourth century BCE; however, many scholars question that the land he found was Iceland.

Later Icelandic accounts claim seventh-century Irish monks were the first settlers on the island, but no archeological evidence exists to support that theory. The first known landing on Iceland was by a Norse sailor named Naddoddr who was blown off course to the island in the ninth century. Naddoddr did not settle there, but stories of a land over the northern ocean began to reach the ears of explorers back home. One of those explorers was Norseman Flóki Vilgerðarson, who set out for the island in the mid-ninth century. Flóki briefly settled there before returning back home in the wake of a particularly cold winter. After observing a pack of drift ice in the narrow fjords, Flóki named the island Iceland.

Iceland’s first permanent resident was Ingólfur Arnarson, who settled with his family on the island’s southwestern coast in 874. According to legend, Ingólfur threw two stone tablets into the sea and vowed to live where the tablets washed ashore. The tablets were said to have landed near modern-day Reykjavík, which was where Ingólfur established his settlement. In the decades that followed, a host of Norse settlers sailed to Iceland, many to escape the harsh rule of Norway’s King Harald. By about 930, much of Iceland was settled and the island’s leaders established one of the first governing parliaments in the world. The original Icelandic settlers were pagans who worshiped the Æsir, or Norse gods. Attempts to convert the population to Christianity were made in the 990s, but those attempts nearly resulted in civil war. As a compromise, Iceland officially became a Christian nation in 1000, but the population was allowed to keep their pagan practices in private.

Overview

The account of Iceland’s founding was recorded in great detail in the Landnámabók, or “Book of Settlements.” The five-part manuscript provides a history of the discovery of the island as well as records for more than 3,000 people and the 1,400-plus settlements in which they lived. It also lists brief family histories and anecdotal stories about individuals and families. In addition, the book also contains tales from Norse mythology. The original Landnámabók has long since been lost, with the oldest surviving copies dating from the thirteenth century.

The Sagas. Like most ancient societies, the Norse and Icelandic peoples were storytellers, recounting their histories through oral tradition and passing down this information over the generations. Sometime in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Icelandic authors began chronicling their oral histories and legends in written works known as sagas. A saga, which means “story” or “what is said” in Old Norse, is told in a relatively fact-based manner with a structure reminiscent of a modern novel. The subject matter of the sagas involved tales of Norse kings, voyages, history, legends, and family genealogies from the eighth through the tenth centuries. Although the sagas were supposedly about true historical events, some were embellished with a larger-than-life quality that gave them the feel of legend.

The sagas were divided into several categories by subject matter, with the best-known being the Kings’ sagas, the Legendary sagas, and the Sagas of the Icelanders. The Kings’ sagas consist of historical accounts of the linage of Norse kings, often using poetic language to describe their great deeds. The Legendary sagas were seemingly written as forms of entertainment that combined mythological elements with historical figures from the distant past. However, some scholars believe these served as a way to mask pagan beliefs to keep alive the people’s traditional Norse religion in the face of a Christian world.

The best known of the Legendary sagas is the Völsunga Saga. Völsung was a great king who was descended from the god Odin. One day, Odin came to Völsung’s hall and thrust a sword deep within the trunk of a huge tree. He promised the sword to any man who could pull it from the tree. Völsung’s son Sigmund was the only one able to accomplish the feat. Years later, Sigmund became a king himself and used the sword until Odin returned and broke it in battle. Before he died, Sigmund prophesized that his son Sigurd would again wield the sword.

When Sigurd was old enough, he sought to earn riches and glory by defeating a poison-breathing dragon named Fafnir. Using his father’s sword, which had been repaired, Sigurd was able to kill the dragon, but before it died, it warned Sigurd not to remove the treasure from the cave. Among the treasure was a golden ring that had been cursed to bring misfortune to any who possessed it. Eventually, the ring fulfilled its prophesy and led to Sigurd’s betrayal and death. This saga has a profound impact on later literature and music, inspiring elements in the nineteenth-century opera The Ring of the Nibelung by German composer Richard Wagner, and the fantasy novel The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkien.

The Sagas of Icelanders tells the stories of the island’s settlers from the ninth to eleventh centuries, often tracing family lineages in the process. Some recount known historical events, such as the discovery of Greenland and the arrival of Viking explorers in North America about 1000—told in the Saga of the Greenlanders and the Saga of Erik the Red. Others describe likely true, but exaggerated, accounts of real people and events.

The most famous of the Sagas of Icelanders is Njáls Saga, or the Story of Burnt Njál, a tragic tale of an Icelandic blood feud and its effect on two friends, the lawyer Njál and the warrior Gunnar. During a famine, Gunnar’s wife secretly sends her slave to steal food from a neighbor. Gunnar is furious when he finds out and strikes her. He tries to offer compensation to the neighbor, but is turned down, leading to a further quarrel in which Gunnar kills the neighbor. After the feud escalates and Gunnar kills two more people, he is banished from Iceland but refuses to leave. Now considered an outlaw, he furiously defends himself from his pursuers until his bowstring breaks. He asks his wife for two strands of her hair to make a new string, but she refuses, leaving him to die from exhaustion. When Njál and his sons try to avenge Gunnar’s death, the are trapped in their farmhouse and burned alive.

The Eddas. In addition to the more historical-based sagas, medieval Icelandic literature also included the Eddas, two works of prose and poetry with a focus on Norse mythology. The term Edda means “great-grandmother,” a possible reference to the stores of wisdom found in both the works and the elders. The Poetic Edda was believed written about 1270, possibly by a priest named Sæmundur the Learned. It contains thirty-one epic poems about Norse mythological figures and Germanic legends.

The Prose Edda was written about 1220, and unlike other works of medieval Icelandic literature, its author is known. It was written by Snorri Sturluson, a poet and historian who may have also written some of the Icelandic sagas. The Prose Edda is divided in four parts, with the first part, “The Prologue,” an attempt to define the origins of Norse mythology in a Christian context. The second section, “Tricking Gylfi,” tells of a conversation between king Gylfi and Odin about the creation and destruction of the universe. “The Language of Poetry” is a conversation between Norse deities about the nature of poetry and mythology. Finally, “The Enumeration of Meters,” is a 102-verse poem in which each verse is written in a different style of poetry.

Modern Literature. The legacy of the Icelandic sagas and the Eddas spawned a love of literature and books that endured over the centuries. Into the twentieth century, most Icelandic authors emulated the style of those works, focusing on writing poetry and mythology-inspired fables. In the nineteenth century, poets often wrote about the island’s distinct and beautiful natural landscapes. One of those poets was Jónas Hallgrímsson, who also wrote some of the first short stories in modern Icelandic literature. Torfhildur Hólm was the country’s first female novelist and the first Icelander to make a living as a writer. Her 1962 collection of folktales, Stories and Fairytales—published more than forty years after her death—is notable for putting a feminist spin on classic Icelandic folklore, telling the stories from a female point of view.

In the early twentieth century, some writers began to rebel against the objective, poetic styles of Icelandic literature. Þórbergur Þórðarson experimented with a subjective style of writing that combined different styles and incorporated elements of satire and irony. His 1924 work, Letter to Lára, was a fictional autobiography that mixed letters, essays, short stories, and humor.

Ironically, Iceland’s most famous writer, Halldór Laxness, flat out rejected his nation’s most beloved works—the sagas—and considered them boring. Laxness began writing as a teenager and produced numerous short stories, plays, poems, and nonfiction works; however, his most impactful works were his novels, which focused on the growing social divide between Icelandic tradition and modernization in the early-twentieth century. His novel Independent People, published in two parts in 1934 and 1935, tells the story of an Icelandic farmer facing severe hardships as he attempts to forge his own life free from the bondage of debt. For this novel, and for the numerous other works of his career, Laxness was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1955. He is the only Icelander to win that honor as of 2024.

Contemporary Icelandic writers have both embraced the elements of traditional literature and veered away from them. Author Gerður Kristný followed in the footsteps of Torfhildur Hólm by reframing Norse mythology in a female perspective. Her 2010 epic poem, Bloodhoof, recounts how the fertility god Freyr abducts Gerdur Gymisdottir from the land of giants to be his wife. In 2001’s Gathering of Foes and 2008’s Fury, Einar Kárason draws upon the historical aspects of the sagas with tales about warring clan leaders in thirteenth-century Iceland.

On the opposite spectrum, works such as 1986’s The Thief of Time by Steinunn Sigurðardóttir, incorporate both prose and poetry into a psychological study of a woman’s attempt to wrest happiness out of life as she grows older. In 2003’s The Blue Fox, author Sjón tells the allegorical story of a priest battling nature and his own sanity as he hunts the titular fox. In the twenty-first century, crime novels have also risen in popularly in Iceland, an ironic trend considering the nation has one of the lowest crime rates in the world. Among the most popular crime novelists is Arnaldur Indríðasson, who has written fourteen books featuring the world-weary Detective Erlendur. Yrsa Sigurðardottir is another popular mystery novelist known for her six-book Thóra Gudmundsdóttir crime series. However, her most popular work, 2014’s I Remember You, incorporates supernatural elements into a classic mystery. In the book, three friends are working on restoring an old house in an isolated Icelandic village when they encounter a ghostly presence.

Bibliography

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Dagný Kristjánsdóttir. “From Sagas to Novels.” Icelandic Literature Center, www.islit.is/en/promotion-and-translations/icelandic-literature/from-sagas-to-novels/. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

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Gunnar Karlsson. Iceland’s 1100 Years. 2000. Hurst, 2020.

Lin, Kimberly. “Edda.” Ancient History Encyclopedia, 21 Mar. 2017, www.ancient.eu/Edda/. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Saemund Sigfusson, et al. The Essence of Viking Mythology: Norse Eddas, Sagas & Ballads. Musaicum Books, 2019.

Svanhildur Sif Halldórsdóttir. “Icelandic Literature for Beginners.” Guide to Iceland, 2021, guidetoiceland.is/history-culture/literature-in-iceland. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

“Welcome to the Icelandic Saga Database.” The Icelandic Saga Database, sagadb.org. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.