Hi all. I've recently read Salka Valka and Independent People, and I'm curious what kind of cultural place, so to speak, these works hold in Iceland and Icelandic literature.
I'm neither Icelandic nor speak the language, so I'm limited in how much I can find, but while researching the novels and the author, I came across a brief line in a small article that claimed that "Salka herself is a literary icon, beloved character, and role model for generations of Icelandic girls and women, as I’ve been told by my Icelandic friends." Does this ring true (even if only for older generations)?
More broadly this also made me wonder how large these works loom in Iceland. I've read a couple details in English reviews that claim they are monumental, against which all later Icelandic writing tends to be compared, but it's hard to discern whether such details are laudatory excess or accurate descriptions when one doesn't speak the language nor know the culture. Are these books read by pretty much all Icelanders, do people name-drop Salka Valka, Bjartur, or Rauthsmyri (possibly Rauðsmýri in the original) with metaphorical meaning? Or are these novels just books everyone knows about because their parents and grandparents read them, but they're not so significant anymore in contemporary Icelandic (literary) culture. I'd love to learn more about how they feature in Icelandic culture and literary culture, if anyone can shed light on that.
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shotgunsforhands
3 comments
I am halfway through Independent People and struggling to finish it. But I do see a lot of references to Laxness.
Everyone that didn’t drop out of “high school” had to read that shit.
My mother made a great point the other day about growing up as an Icelander. You read Independent people by Halldór Laxness as a child or a teen and most likely you will hate it or at least hate the protagonist. Then you read it again years later, once you’ve grown up and then you will love it fiercely.