Independent People. What can I even say about this book? I'm stunned that I even finished it. It took me eight months to read. The text is some sort of facsimile of an older edition; it's small, dark, close-set. Hard to read.

This is technically a narrative. The same way that pitch is technically a liquid, despite the fact that it takes years for a drop of it to fall. It's appropriate that Independent People is so slow-moving; Iceland is the country of glaciers, after all. But it's not the slowness that bothers me. It's the construction of the thing. Dropped plot threads. An utter lack of propulsion. The sudden appearances and disappearances of characters. So much rich interiority of the main characters for no reason—all that's ever front of mind is the status of the sheep, the hay, the horse, the sheep, the floorboards, the sheep, the grass, the sheep, the sheep, the sheep. It is agony.

I am completely baffled how celebrated authors can blurb this as "one of the best books of the twentieth century" (Jane Smiley) or "funny, clever, sardonic, and brilliant" (E. Annie Proulx). I just have to shrug and acknowledge that we all have different tastes, and sheep dung is not mine.

Thank god this one is over.

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Global Challenge: Iceland

Some reviews have suggested this is a book about sheep, perhaps in the same way Moby Dick is about whales. You won't find that here - as one character, Einar, says, sheep are sheep, and there's no point for Laxness describing the minutiae of turn-of-20th-century Icelandic rural life, as much as that would (in all seriousness) interest me. So no proto-posthumanist insight, but instead a novel about one particularly stubborn man who persists in sticking to his rigid but vaguely defined notions of independence, no matter how many wives and children this kills or alienates. I found it exhausting - a character like Bjartur isn't really capable of either a heroic or tragic arc, which makes it tough to anchor a five-hundred-page book around him.

Dans l'autobus, quelqu'un m'a demandé de quoi parlait mon livre. Des moutons & de la misère, que je lui ai répondu. Des moutons pour asseoir sa vie sur un lopin de terre; un gros chat pour dérouter les esprits qui voudraient les égorger; un chien pour les rameuter; une vache pour se donner du trouble; une poignée d'enfants, vivants & morts, parce qu'on ne vivra pas mille ans. Bjartur, le héros de Independent People, sait ce qu'il veut & n'en démordra pas, peu importe ce que les saisons & les fantômes lui réservent. Il sait que life [is] not much to boast about, especially when one examine[s] it with a critical eye. (p. 369)

J'ai commencé le roman au début du mois de novembre. Il a pogné l'eau une coupelle de fois, j'ai fait craquer sa reliure avec délectation à chaque tranche de cent pages, je l'ai glissé dans ma poche de manteau avant de partir au travail le matin. C'est rare que j'habite un livre aussi longtemps. J'ai beaucoup pensé au temps long de son histoire, une histoire qui commence avant que le temps soit compartimenté autrement que par les saisons, une espèce de vie circulaire qui n'a qu'elle-même comme point de référence. Les événements ne se fragmentent qu'à partir du dernier tiers, quand l'autarcie de Bjartur & de sa famille, l'isolement farouche qu'il leur impose, se délie à cause d'une Grande Guerre livrée sur le continent. Le monde rattrape Bjartur. Il s'engouffre dans sa fermette. Comme lectrice, je l'attendais depuis si longtemps que j'ai été choquée de voir à quel point il peut être porteur de destruction.

Bjartur, obstiné & souvent cruel, poète dans sa tête, s'acharne à construire une liberté qui ne s'appuie sur rien d'autre que lui-même. Si le personnage était plus sympathique, ça tomberait peut-être dans le pathos; comme il est insupportable, le tracé de son ascension & de son éventuel déclin a quelque chose d'à la fois frustrant & incroyablement poignant. Le monde est opaque pour Bjartur. Ses brefs moments de prospérité, ses prix en chute libre, ses crises économiques, ses grands travaux publics, ses premières grèves ouvrières -- il ne s'y retrouve pas. Il connaît par coeur les vers des grandes sagas islandaises, celles qui parlent de héros & de monstres, de batailles franches qui se terminent dans le sang. Il admet mal qu'il y ait, dans un recoin de sa poitrine, de frêles sentiments. Il aime contre son gré les agneaux & les bébés, une lignée de chiennes pleines de poux, sa fille adoptive. Il est animé par la crainte, souveraine, de rester là où il était au tout début.

Quand j'ai commencé Independent People, début novembre, il neigeait; il neigeait encore le 1er décembre, quand je l'ai terminé. J'ai eu le temps de lâcher ma job & une partie de l'image que j'avais de moi. Mais je mesure encore mal ce qui a changé entretemps; je pousse fort, mais je reste avec la peur de revenir toujours au même endroit.

“Independence is the most important thing of all in life. I say for my part that a man lives in vain, until he is independent. People who aren’t independent aren’t people.” p37

On the back cover of Halldór Laxness’ book, ‘Independent People’, is a quote by Jane Smiley, an American novelist and Pulitzer Prize winner. She simply says, “I love this book... I can’t imagine any greater delight than coming to Independent People for the first time’. I couldn’t agree more, having finished this incredible novel for the first time. It’s been on my TBR list for a while now and as a lover of Iceland and Icelandic fiction, this book is so insightful, informative, reflective and mesmerising to read. The translation flows beautifully and while I have no idea how accurate the translation actually is, the version I have read cites that it is widely regarded the finest translation of this masterpiece.

Independent People reads like a saga in some ways. It tells the story of Bjartur, sheep farmer, set in Northern Iceland early in the 20th century. It’s not a narrative in the sense that it simply chronicles the story of Bjartur, it’s more like a study of a personality that weathers the storms both literally and metaphorically, witnesses the changes in the political and social landscape, and remains steadfastly himself, holding firm to all he is, believes, and stands for, unswayed by the tide of change.

At times I loved Bjartur and at times I hated him. His commitment to independence and his love for his sheep overrides all else and comes at a cost that I would personally not be able to bear. He is fiery, passionate, exceptionally hard working, resolute and tethered to no one, not even his wives or children. Laxness captures Bjartur when he writes: “He was in a passion now. He floundered madly about in the snow, dumping himself with all his might, and did not sit down again till he had overcome all those feelings of the body that cry for rest and comfort, everything that argues for surrender and hearkens to the persuasion of fainthearted gods.” p114

Independent People is set against the backdrop of harsh Icelandic peasant life of a hundred years ago. I am honestly in awe of the strength, stamina and fortitude of Bjartur who in reality represents so many Icelanders living in the elements, counting their age by the number of winters survived and eking out an existence from the unforgiving land. The novel chronicles the social and political outworking of the development of cooperatives, banking, and the voting of members of the Althingi.

The one person throughout the novel who influences Bjartur subtley is Ásta Sóllilja, the girl he brings up as his own daughter, surviving at birth only through the mothering instinct of Bjartur’s faithful dog. Ásta Sóllilja is Bjartur’s little flower, the flower that exists on the wall of the turf cottage when all is covered in post winter desolation. I love the way Laxness describes how she nestles into Bjartur’s bearded neck and finds her security. The heart warming ending to the novel is precious and highlights Bjartur’s journey, fiercely independent still but realising perhaps not quite so independent as he had once been.

This is my favourite read for 2022 so far. I borrowed it from the library but will purchase it now because I want to read it again and again.

When you say the word 'culture', watch out. The traps within the simple word are many, a loving gaze on the self and a objectifying fascination with the other, idealization and discrimination two shafts of light within the same grimy crystal. Nothing conveys this truth so well and so thoroughly as literature, as many throughout the centuries bring up their utensil of inkish intent and lay down their views, all for the most part bound within their single subset of country, family, faith. Nothing sells a turn of phrase like the simplicity of a forthright declaration, adulation and condemnation downright refusing to coexist in any measure, each shying away from the other as if the smallest admittance to the other would be the phrase that broke the novel's back. We have had our reactions to all this, true. Modernism, post-modernism, a straining towards the truth that is often only as effective as its level of readerly defibrillation, which I have applauded many times in the past and will continue to do so in the future, but. This is not the only way.

For, no matter how confabulated the methodologies, no matter how esoteric the means and ends by which the words display their worth in full, still there may remain the subtle divide between outright embracing and downright rejection, an implicit answer of no to the question of, is it possible to love, and still critique? Hate, and still recognize as valid? To accept the facts for what they are, and bring them to a plain more beautiful without an instance of warp and waiving over?

Laxness can.

Now, I know the dangers of first encounters, and this book exemplified so many. My first Icelandic author, my first experience of Iceland as conveyed in literature, my first acknowledgement of this Nobel Prize Laureate for Literature, the final category littered with so many pompous landmines as to make a catastrophic debacle of its own right. And yet, I say, if you must choose a first, or for some tragic reason an only, piece of Icelandic literature to root around in a fervent search for whatever you read for, choose this one. Some say this would ruin the a large portion of future choices, to enjoy something of this supreme caliber as an initial course rather than a triumphant conclusion, but to that I say, life is short, and time is an awful thing to stretch and sap through other works, sustained by only lack of experience. For independence is all very well, but when it comes to living, I will never forgo the chance for change. I have enough confidence in my personal quirks to risk them in something new.

For here, you will find the piece of literature that others unconsciously grasp for when they decry the lack of reality of [b:The Lord of the Rings|33|The Lord of the Rings (The Lord of the Rings, #1-3)|J.R.R. Tolkien|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1347257199s/33.jpg|3462456]. Here, you will soak in the bliss of gorgeous sights of nature and shudder at the fearful legends of heritage, but do not think you will be left to ride out the course of history in an icy land without the slightest glimpse of the morbid grip it has on its inhabitants. Does the biological workings of shit and parasites in sheep and other creatures make you turn up your nose? Do you frown on the turnings of politics as matters of little concern, disengaged as they seem from the livelihood you attempt to chase? Do you drown yourself in bucolic meanderings, flee from the slightest turn of horrors wreaked by the elements in all their gorgeous lashes against the alive, only take the idealized pieces of a single collective people of epic and landscape and curious traditions and leave the rest as not worth your readerly time? If so, this is not for you, for while it is heartbreakingly obvious that Laxness loved his people, here he does not coddle their faults, nor does he use them as an excuse to excise all the wonder generated in such a harsh world. You will love, and you will hate, and at the end you will be left with the accumulation of this one story of a man, an independent man, and it is for you to decide whether to cry on his shoulder or tear him to pieces with your teeth.

The great workings of the world beyond continue to wheel through the many cultures and the countless souls bred upon each and every one, and there is both singing and sorrow to be found within the lands and tongues and vibrancy of this turning sphere of ours. In this piece of work, you will discover one that you may have only heard trickles of tales, of Vikings, of bank failures, of volcanoes and of a small, cold land, where it is reported that one in ten will publish a book. If you are intrigued, don't hesitate for a moment. Love or hate, you will feel, and learn, and perhaps even appreciate this wide plain of existence we live and die upon, and all that comes out of the throes to be shared with those who follow.

Breathtaking shout for what Halldór Laxness understands for human freedom. If you have in mind all the medieval storytelling style, as well as the icelandic literature, you can think of this book as the 'reinasance' of the sagas right in the middle of 50's.

Five stars also go to narrator Michael Page. What a spectacular performance!
As for the book itself: a tough read at times, but still relevant in 2024.