A Parish Chronicle by Halldór Laxness
Icelandic Fiction
Original title: Innansveitarkronika
Translator: Philip Roughton
Source – Personal copy
I have three other books by Halldór Laxness from the years he was a writer. I like him because he had a long career, and his books feature a variety of styles and examine various aspects of Icelandic culture, past and present, at the time he wrote. This is one of the last books he wrote, and so far the last to be translated into English; there is one more book, A Narration of God’s Gift, yet to be translated into English. What I missed in this edition, I hadn’t noted either: I got the UK Penguin edition, and it doesn’t have Salvatore Scibona’s foreword, which is in the US Archipelago Books edition. I was looking forward to that, as I love Scibona’s debut novel from many years ago. I knew he was a huge fan of Laxness; this is set in the area where Laxness grew up. He, as ever, looks into Iceland’s relationship with its past and the Sagas. I would love to do a Nobel project one day with this, and another recent Nobel winner reading reminds me of how many more winners I need to read
At the end of the Middle Ages, after the land had been gnawed down to its roots and defaced by every available means of destruction, as is currently being done in Vietnam, and soil erosion left entire districts barren, people began living again like Robinson Crusoe. They contented themselves with rowing out to sea and hauling in “those damned four” instead of growing grain and brewing ale. And thus did they plod through the cen-turies, even forgetting to bathe for seven hundred years, despite having more hot water than any other nation on earth.
In such a valley, there was in fact no way forward and no way back. The theory of evolution had not yet been born and the goal was to stand still, at most to resemble one’s grandfathers.
The Past is something Laxness focuses on
The book is about a church and the history of the place where it is built, where the Skull of the famous Viking warrior Egill Skallagrimsson is buried, and how, over the years, this small country church grew up on that spot as well. The book follows when, finally, a hundred years after a decree to take down the church in the 1770s, it is ordered to be torn down and its historic past lost. But when the local farmer in the valley, Olafur, takes it to court to stop this from happening, we get the story now in the 1880s, and it is the story of a local serving girl, Gudrun, who gets by bartering her services. It is about family ties, as Olafur feels he is descended from Egill. What is captured is a world long gone, one that Laxness would have seen the dying embers of as a child, a world where people would barter to get by. Where people had Honour and would go without to be seen as honest. Beauty and darkness, as ever, are at the heart of Laxness’s work.
That same morning, around the usual time that people in the district started to stir, Reverend Jóhann rode out to collect signatures in support of the unification of the churches. He and the parish council chairman, Kolbeinn of Kollafjörfur, had arranged to meet. Reverend Jóhann spoke slowly and in a somewhat dusky tone, like a voice from the deep, whereas Kolbeinn of Kollafjörfur had humorous anecdotes at his fingertips that got others laughing, all except Reverend Jóhann. Now, as is often the case when such worthies feel out their fellows, they encounter little by way of rebuttal from the other parishioners, and in fact, find most of them agreeable to the business at hand.
The local vicar is also a character
I have reviewed a number of Laxness’s works; he always deals with his own country and its past, and sometimes with the country’s absurd nature. I feel this is a book by an old writer looking back on something he heard of as a youth; supposedly, he came up with the story whilst travelling, but the setting is where he grew up in one of the remote valleys. He likes to look back at Iceland’s past through the use of Egil, but sees how those sagas and myths have transferred to the contemporary setting, or, as in this case, the late Victorian age. I also found Gudrun, as a character from a long-ago age, a true old-fashioned, country-type servant. She was called a freewoman for the way she lived. Thus, getting by on handwork to make a living. For me, this is a gateway book to his writing, as it is so short that it can be read in a single day. Have you read Laxness yet?
