Halldór Laxness

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Halldór Laxness

Halldór Kiljan Laxness (ˈhaltour ˈcʰɪljan ˈlaxsnɛs (help·info)) (born Halldór Guðjónsson) (April 23, 1902 – February 8, 1998) was a 20th century Icelandic author of such novels as Independent People, The Atom Station, Paradise Reclaimed, Iceland's Bell, The Fish Can Sing and  World Light. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1955.

[edit] Some facts

Halldór Kiljan Laxness was the son of Sigríður Halldórsdóttir (born 1872) and  Guðjón Helgason (born 1870). He lived in Reykjavík during his early years, then moved to Laxnes in Mosfellssveit in 1905. Forty years later, he moved to Gljúfrasteinn, Mosfellsveit.

He soon started to read books and  write stories, and  when he was 14 years old, his first article was published in Morgunblaðið under the name H.G. Not much later he published an  article (about an  old clock) under his own name in the same paper. During his career he wrote 51 novels, poetry, many newspaper articles, plays, travelogues, short stories and  more.

He was married twice and  had four children. Laxness died at the age of 95.

Several biographies have  been written about Laxness, some of them controversial, such as the three volume work by Hannes Hólmsteinn Gissurarson. Laxness’ widow has filed suit against Gissurarson for alleged plagiarism, accusing him of editing and/or re-prhasing whole passages from her late husband's works and  passing them on as his own. Gissurarson, a long-time outspoken conservative, claims these allegations are  motivated by politics or  even personal ill-will.

The single volume biography by Halldor Guðmundsson won the Icelandic literary prize for best work of non-fiction in 2004. In 2005 the Icelandic National Theatre premiered a play by Ólafur Haukur Símonarson, called Halldór í Hollywood (Halldór in Hollywood) about the years that Laxness spent there.

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Laxness with his Nobel Prize certificate in 1955. His second wife, Auður Sveinsdóttir, is  also on the picture.

[edit] Catholicism

In the end of 1922, Laxness joined an  abbey in Clervaux, Luxembourg. The monks of the abbey, named Abbaye St. Maurice et St. Maur, followed the rules of Saint Benedict of Nursia. Laxness was baptised and  confirmed in Catholicism early in 1923. it  was at that occasion he adopted the family name Laxness and  added Kiljan after his first name, Halldór. Killian was an  Irish martyr and  saint. (N.B.: Iceland is  one of the few countries in the world which retains the patronymic tradition under which people do not usually bear "family surnames" but instead are  called "X son of Y" or  "X daughter of Y". Hence his original name, Halldór Guðjónsson, meant "Halldór son of Guðjón" just as his own parents' names meant, respectively, "Sigríður daughter of Halldór" and  "Guðjón son of Helgi".)

Inside the walls of the abbey, he practised self-study, read books, studied French, Latin, theology and  philosophy. it  was also there that the story Undir Helgahnjúk, which was published in 1924, was written. Laxness published the book under his new name; Halldór Kiljan Laxness. While in the abbey, Laxness became devout and  even orthodox. Soon after his baptism, he even became a member of a group which prayed for reversion of the Nordic countries back to Catholicism.

Laxness wrote of his Catholicism in the book Vefarinn mikli frá Kasmír, published in 1927.

Halldór Laxness

[edit] Socialism, war, independence

Laxness started to lean towards socialism after having traveled to the United States to try to make films. This is  evident in his book Atom Station, about the fight of some ordinary people to find a place in a new Iceland controlled by the Cold War invasion of an  American bomber base into the hearts and  minds of the politicians. it  is told from the point of view of a poor country woman who moves to the city, finds work as a maid for one of said politicians, and  who somehow sees the folly of the whole thing, and  who campaigns for what she sees as a bigger priority, social welfare from the government. Laxness won the Stalin International Award in 1949.

Independent People is  a sort of deadpan tragedy. it  is the story of a man's life from just after he escapes his virtual enslavement to a local rural family on a remote end of Iceland, up through his attempts to build a family, a home, and  a future for himself. However, from reading it, it  is never explicitly stated that the setting is  a remote part of Iceland. The reader only knows what the character thinks about it; and  as far as he is  concerned, it  is a good plot of land. it  is all he's ever known, he hasn't wandered in his mind to France or  Germany or  America. So as far as the reader knows, the land is  just his Land.

It reveals some of Laxness's anti-war leanings in a chapter that consists of Icelandic farmers sitting around talking about how the livestock sales sure have  gone up since the Europeans started murdering each other for no good reason. Also displayed is  hatred of politicians, as he depicts them as all bosom buddies, part of some exclusive mindset that renders them too busy hobnobbing with each other and  fulfilling grand ideals for them to actually care about what the poor people are  going through.

Readers may also interpret it  as an  indictment of the idea of independence — not the good kind of independence, but independence taken to such an  extreme that it  becomes willful ignorance, and  a sort of slavery of family members to the patriarch's ideas. To him his ideas are  unquestionable, and  inherently linked to his 'freedom'. This ends with alienating his family, in tragedy, in every minuscule and  minute detail that Laxness paints with. Then he pulls back, and  the reader realizes that just about every person out there on this part of the Icelandic ground was going through similar experiences. Poor health, near starvation, exploitative merchants, ignorance, hatred, etc. People will probably notice that Laxness, although he shows clearly that the main character destroyed the lives of some members of his family, the author seems to have  a deep understanding of how that character came to exist, of why he exists, of why everything happens. Laxness still manages to dig out some shred of hope and  love from the abysmal rural disenfranchised powerless poverty depicted in the book, and  to find some human tenderness inside the burly troll monster of the main character.

[edit] Publications

The following is  a partial list of publications written by or  connected with Laxness:

[ and  external links">edit] References and  external links

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Halldór Laxness