A Son of the Rock

An Epic.

Vintage International, 1997, 486 p, plus xii p Introduction by Brad Leithauser. Translated from the Icelandic, Sjállfstaett fólk, by J A Thompson. First published 1946.

This is the book which established Laxness as the most important contributor to Icelandic literature since the sagas and paved the way for his Nobel Prize. It is the story of the life of Bjartur of Summerhouses, (Gudbjartur Jonsson,) a traditional poet, dedicated to both internal and external rhyming – unlike the new-fangled modern stuff with its simpler structures – and his interactions with family, neighbours, local merchants and the authorities in his determination to be an independent man. His most important relationship though is with his sheep. He is obsessed by them: so much so that he even looks a gift cow in the mouth. Independent People is in part a threnody to a lost way of living, an intense attachment to the land, a frugal kind of existence (in turf-roofed huts with no furniture unless built-in and rotting tables nailed to window ledges) that had lasted over a thousand years.

There is also a crossover element of fantasy as Summerhouses is thought (by all but Bjartur) to be haunted by the legendary fiend Kolumkilli, and his handmaiden Gunnvor or Gudvor. On the way to Summerhouses from Utirausthmyri there is a cairn to Gunnvor where the credulous leave a stone in propitiation. About halfway through the book there is an apparently supernatural act of violence upon Bjartur’s flock. Laxness does not resolve the nature of the culprit one way or the other though there is the later thought that “Supernatural phenomena are most unpleasant for this reason: that having reduced to chaos all that ordered knowledge of the world about him which is the foundation a man stands on, they leave the soul floating in mid-air, where it does not rightly belong.”

The book proper starts with Bjartur, after serving out his time at Utirausthmyri, bringing home his young bride, Rosa, from where she had been in service to the Bailiff. She demands to stop at Gunnvor’s cairn but Bjartur will have none of it. Rosa’s existence at Summerhouses is miserable, not helped by Bjartur’s suspicions that her pregnancy predates their marriage and that therefore he cannot be the father of her child. Rosa’s secret killing of a ewe to provide her with the sustenance which Bjartur does not, precipitates a tragedy and the novel’s central relationship. Bjartur goes out looking for his lost ewe (he knows every single one) and strays too far in a winter storm. When he gets back Rosa is dead and her new born child all but; kept alive only by Bjartur’s dog having kept her warm. He names the girl Asta Sollilja and brings her up as his own.

At the funeral someone recites a version of the Lord’s Prayer which sounds remarkably Scottish in tone, “Our Father, which art in Heaven, yes, so infinitely far away that no-one knows where You are, almost nowhere, give us this day just a few crumbs to eat in the name of Thy Glory, and forgive us if we can’t pay the dealer and our creditors and let us not, above all, be tempted to be happy, for Thine is the Kingdom.” The assembled company converses about the state of Iceland and the loss of youth “to a land even more remote, America, which is farther than death.”

Bjartur marries again and has children of his own but the relationship between himself and Asta Sollilja is strong, endangered only once when on a trip to the nearest town they stay over in the communal sleeping quarters. Asta Sollilja’s fear of the other is such that she huddles close to Bjartur and he nearly succumbs to the temptation of her flesh. His sudden withdrawal and departure to fetch their horse leaves Asta Sollilja wondering what she has done wrong.

Bjartur is so set on independent ways that he will have no truck with the new-fangled co-operative societies and keeps his trust in the merchants he has always used even though they may be fleecing him.

Bjartur’s son Nonni thinks to himself of the adult topics of conversation, “everyone competing with everyone else to get a word in somehow, so as to get at least a little attention, everyone grumbling about parish paupers and the burdens of old folk, who never seemed to die off at a respectable age. And the taxes these days, man alive! They complained bitterly of the extravagant habits of young women, the migration of youth to the towns, the difficult times, the high price of corn ….” It was ever thus. Bjartur himself, “disliked tears, had never understood them, and had sometimes lost his temper over them.”

To these Icelanders the Great War comes as “the most bountiful blessing that God has sent our country since the Napoleonic Wars saved the nation from the consequences of the Great Eruption and raised our culture from the ruins with an increased demand for fish and whale-oil.” The price of sheep and wool increased. Good times arrived.

So much so that Bjartur builds a new house – a project which turns out to be with fraught with problems, doors too small to allow furniture in, no hinges for them in any case, a lack of insulation so that they all freeze in the winter. Such are the trials which assail the man who strives to be independent.

In among all this I was struck by the apparent central importance of coffee to Icelandic hospitality.

The good times pass and a starving man about to take part in a protest tells Bjartur, “Capitalism punishes people much more for not stealing than for stealing,” and Bjartur himself goes on to think “The lone worker will never escape from his life of poverty. He will go on existing in affliction as long as man is not man’s protector, but his worst enemy,” and that, “In its own way misery no less than revelry is varied in form and worthy of note wherever there lurks a spark of life in the world.” In a consideration of life’s inequity we have, “it is utterly pointless to make anyone a generous offer unless he is a rich man. … To be poor is simply the peculiar human condition of not being able to take advantage of a generous offer.”

In a reflection of Bjartur’s times we are given his thought that “Housekeepers differ from married women in this respect: that they insist on doing as they please, whereas married women are required to do what they are told. Housekeepers are continually demanding things, whereas married women may think themselves lucky for getting nothing at all. Most things are considered by housekeepers as being beneath their dignity, but who bothers listening to a married woman if she starts grumbling? No one is any the worse for it but her … and it’s hard, surely, to have to marry a woman just to be able to tell her to keep her trap shut.”

The novel’s title is of course ironic. Bjartur’s story is that of a man who sowed his enemy’s field his whole life. In its relentless unfolding of that life it is a story that will linger in the memory.

Aside: the text somewhat jarringly mentions dollars, a dime, a quarter, even two quarters, terms which jarred with me. I wondered; why not use the names of coins circulating in Iceland (which, being a dependency, actually used Danish currency till 1914)? Usage of Scottish words – bigging, kennings, muckle – made me wonder if the translator was Scottish. I discovered he was born in Berwick. Close enough. Such terms are perhaps appropriate. I have perceived before the similarities between the Icelandic and Scottish experience as expressed in the fiction they produce. In particular description of landscape as here is one of the notable features of the Scottish novel.

Sensitivity note: reference is made to the Negroes of Darkest Africa.

Pedant’s corner:-  quartrain (quatrain,) apothegm (apophthegm,) “waked up” (woken up. Thompson invariably uses ‘waked’ for ‘woken’,) plus points though for ‘homœopath’, insured (ensured,) Guthvor (misprint? Or another variant spelling of Gunnvor/Gudvor?) “Jesus’ names” (Jesus’s,) “this new motive” (motif? It was embedded in a musical metaphor.) “Many a little makes a mickle, as the saying goes” (the saying – in Scotland anyway – is ‘mony a mickle maks a muckle,) “a house build of stone” (built of.)