Independent People
Encyclopedia
Independent People is an epic novel
by Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness
, originally published in two volumes in 1934 and 1935; literally the title means "Self-standing [i.e. self-reliant] folk". It deals with the struggle of poor Iceland
ic farmers in the early 20th century, only freed from debt bondage
in the last generation, and surviving on isolated croft
s in an inhospitable landscape.
The novel is considered among the foremost examples of social realism
in Icelandic fiction in the 1930s. It is an indictment of materialism
, the cost of the self-reliant spirit to relationships, and capitalism
itself. This book, along with several other major novels, helped Laxness win the Nobel Prize in Literature
in 1955.
The "first chapter summons up the days when the world was first settled, in 874 AD—for that is the year when the Norsemen arrived in Iceland, and one of the book's wry conceits is that no other world but Iceland exists. ... The book is set in the early decades of the twentieth century but ... Independent People is a pointedly timeless tale. It reminds us that life on an Icelandic croft had scarcely altered over a millennium". As the story begins, Bjartur ("bright" or "fair") has recently managed to put down the first payment on his own farm, after eighteen years working as a shepherd at Útirauðsmýri, the home of the well-to-do local bailiff
, a man he detests. The land that he buys is said to be cursed by Saint Columba
, referred to as "the fiend Kolumkilli", and haunted by an evil woman named Gunnvör, who made a pact with Kólumkilli.
Defiantly, Bjartur refuses to add a stone to Gunnvör's cairn to appease her, and in his optimism also changes the name of the farm from Winterhouses to Summerhouses. He is also newly wed to a young woman called Rósa, a fellow worker at Rauðsmýri, and is determined that they should live as independent people.
However, Rósa is miserable in her new home, which does not compare well to the luxury she was used to at Rauðsmýri. Bjartur also discovers that she is pregnant by Ingólfur Arnarson Jónsson, the son of the bailiff. In the autumn, Bjartur and the other men of the district ride up into the mountains on the annual sheep round-up, leaving Rósa behind with a gimmer
to keep her company. Terrified by a storm one night, desperate for meat and convinced that the gimmer is possessed by the devil, Rósa kills and eats the animal.
When Bjartur returns, he assumes that Rósa has set the animal loose. When he cannot find her when it comes time to put the sheep inside for the winter, he once more leaves his wife, by now heavily pregnant, to search the mountains for the gimmer. He is delayed by a blizzard
, and nearly dies of exposure. On his return to Summerhouses he finds that Rósa has died in childbirth. His dog Titla is curled around the baby girl, still clinging to life due to the warmth of the dog. With help from Rauðsmýri, the child survives; Bjartur decides to raise her as his daughter, and names her Ásta Sóllilja ("beloved sun lily").
The narrative begins again almost thirteen years later. Bjartur is now remarried to a woman who had been a charity case on the parish, Finna. The other new inhabitants are Hallbera, Finna's mother, and the three surviving sons of Bjartur's second marriage: Helgi, Gvendur (Guðmundur) and Nonni (Jón).
The rest of the novel charts the drudgery and the battle for survival of life in Summerhouses, the misery, dreams and rebellions of the inhabitants and what appears to be the curse of Summerhouses taking effect. In the middle of the novel, however, World War I
commences and the prices for Icelandic mutton and wool soar, so that even the poorest farmers begin to dream of relief from their poverty. Particularly central is the relationship between Bjartur and Ásta Sóllilja.
There are strong economic themes, a discussion of the co-operative movement in Iceland and the exploitation of crofters like Bjartur by Danish merchants and rich Icelanders like Jón the Bailiff.
Independent People also reveals Laxness's anti-war leanings in a chapter that depicts Icelandic farmers sitting around talking about the economic benefits of the Great War
.
The ancient Icelandic sagas and Icelandic folklore are still alive in the stories and fables that the characters live with on a daily basis. The imaginations of the characters are inhabited by elves
, ghosts and demons. Bjartur is also a talented poet, a living embodiment of the great oral tradition of the sagas.
"The author's ironical appraisal is already expressed in the title of the novel, and also in the titles of some of the chapters ... : "Free of Debt", "Years of Prosperity"."
wrote the two-volume novel, Dalafólk (People of the Valleys) as a reaction to Independent People. In contrast to Laxness' bleak view of rural life in Iceland, Hulda presents a somewhat idealized picture of the old manorlike farmsteads.
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness
Halldór Laxness
Halldór Kiljan Laxness was a twentieth-century Icelandic writer. Throughout his career Laxness wrote poetry, newspaper articles, plays, travelogues, short stories, and novels...
, originally published in two volumes in 1934 and 1935; literally the title means "Self-standing [i.e. self-reliant] folk". It deals with the struggle of poor Iceland
Iceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
ic farmers in the early 20th century, only freed from debt bondage
Debt bondage
Debt bondage is when a person pledges him or herself against a loan. In debt bondage, the services required to repay the debt may be undefined, and the services' duration may be undefined...
in the last generation, and surviving on isolated croft
Croft (land)
A croft is a fenced or enclosed area of land, usually small and arable with a crofter's dwelling thereon. A crofter is one who has tenure and use of the land, typically as a tenant farmer.- Etymology :...
s in an inhospitable landscape.
The novel is considered among the foremost examples of social realism
Social realism
Social Realism, also known as Socio-Realism, is an artistic movement, expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts social and racial injustice, economic hardship, through unvarnished pictures of life's struggles; often depicting working class activities as heroic...
in Icelandic fiction in the 1930s. It is an indictment of materialism
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
, the cost of the self-reliant spirit to relationships, and capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
itself. This book, along with several other major novels, helped Laxness win the Nobel Prize in Literature
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
in 1955.
Plot summary
Independent People is the story of the sheep farmer Guðbjartur Jónsson, generally known in the novel as Bjartur of Summerhouses, and his struggle for independence.The "first chapter summons up the days when the world was first settled, in 874 AD—for that is the year when the Norsemen arrived in Iceland, and one of the book's wry conceits is that no other world but Iceland exists. ... The book is set in the early decades of the twentieth century but ... Independent People is a pointedly timeless tale. It reminds us that life on an Icelandic croft had scarcely altered over a millennium". As the story begins, Bjartur ("bright" or "fair") has recently managed to put down the first payment on his own farm, after eighteen years working as a shepherd at Útirauðsmýri, the home of the well-to-do local bailiff
Bailiff
A bailiff is a governor or custodian ; a legal officer to whom some degree of authority, care or jurisdiction is committed...
, a man he detests. The land that he buys is said to be cursed by Saint Columba
Columba
Saint Columba —also known as Colum Cille , Colm Cille , Calum Cille and Kolban or Kolbjørn —was a Gaelic Irish missionary monk who propagated Christianity among the Picts during the Early Medieval Period...
, referred to as "the fiend Kolumkilli", and haunted by an evil woman named Gunnvör, who made a pact with Kólumkilli.
Defiantly, Bjartur refuses to add a stone to Gunnvör's cairn to appease her, and in his optimism also changes the name of the farm from Winterhouses to Summerhouses. He is also newly wed to a young woman called Rósa, a fellow worker at Rauðsmýri, and is determined that they should live as independent people.
However, Rósa is miserable in her new home, which does not compare well to the luxury she was used to at Rauðsmýri. Bjartur also discovers that she is pregnant by Ingólfur Arnarson Jónsson, the son of the bailiff. In the autumn, Bjartur and the other men of the district ride up into the mountains on the annual sheep round-up, leaving Rósa behind with a gimmer
Glossary of sheep husbandry
The raising of domestic sheep has occurred in nearly every inhabited part of the globe, and the variations in cultures and languages which have kept sheep has produced a vast lexicon of unique terminology used to describe sheep husbandry...
to keep her company. Terrified by a storm one night, desperate for meat and convinced that the gimmer is possessed by the devil, Rósa kills and eats the animal.
When Bjartur returns, he assumes that Rósa has set the animal loose. When he cannot find her when it comes time to put the sheep inside for the winter, he once more leaves his wife, by now heavily pregnant, to search the mountains for the gimmer. He is delayed by a blizzard
Blizzard
A blizzard is a severe snowstorm characterized by strong winds. By definition, the difference between blizzard and a snowstorm is the strength of the wind. To be a blizzard, a snow storm must have winds in excess of with blowing or drifting snow which reduces visibility to 400 meters or ¼ mile or...
, and nearly dies of exposure. On his return to Summerhouses he finds that Rósa has died in childbirth. His dog Titla is curled around the baby girl, still clinging to life due to the warmth of the dog. With help from Rauðsmýri, the child survives; Bjartur decides to raise her as his daughter, and names her Ásta Sóllilja ("beloved sun lily").
The narrative begins again almost thirteen years later. Bjartur is now remarried to a woman who had been a charity case on the parish, Finna. The other new inhabitants are Hallbera, Finna's mother, and the three surviving sons of Bjartur's second marriage: Helgi, Gvendur (Guðmundur) and Nonni (Jón).
The rest of the novel charts the drudgery and the battle for survival of life in Summerhouses, the misery, dreams and rebellions of the inhabitants and what appears to be the curse of Summerhouses taking effect. In the middle of the novel, however, World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
commences and the prices for Icelandic mutton and wool soar, so that even the poorest farmers begin to dream of relief from their poverty. Particularly central is the relationship between Bjartur and Ásta Sóllilja.
Themes
The most important theme of the novel is independence, what it means and what it is worth giving up in order to achieve it. Bjartur is a stubborn man, often callous to the point of cruelty in his refusal to swerve from his ideals. Though undoubtedly a principled man, his attitude leads to the death and alienation of those around him.There are strong economic themes, a discussion of the co-operative movement in Iceland and the exploitation of crofters like Bjartur by Danish merchants and rich Icelanders like Jón the Bailiff.
Independent People also reveals Laxness's anti-war leanings in a chapter that depicts Icelandic farmers sitting around talking about the economic benefits of the Great War
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
.
The ancient Icelandic sagas and Icelandic folklore are still alive in the stories and fables that the characters live with on a daily basis. The imaginations of the characters are inhabited by elves
Elf
An elf is a being of Germanic mythology. The elves were originally thought of as a race of divine beings endowed with magical powers, which they use both for the benefit and the injury of mankind...
, ghosts and demons. Bjartur is also a talented poet, a living embodiment of the great oral tradition of the sagas.
"The author's ironical appraisal is already expressed in the title of the novel, and also in the titles of some of the chapters ... : "Free of Debt", "Years of Prosperity"."
Reaction
The popular Icelandic poet Unnur Benediktsdóttir Bjarklind HuldaHulda (poet)
Unnur Benediktsdóttir Bjarklind who wrote as Hulda was an Icelandic poet and prose writer. A proponent of symbolism, she was the most prominent figure in a group of writers who revived and revitalized the þulur genre of oral litany.Having a librarian as a father Hulda received an extensive home...
wrote the two-volume novel, Dalafólk (People of the Valleys) as a reaction to Independent People. In contrast to Laxness' bleak view of rural life in Iceland, Hulda presents a somewhat idealized picture of the old manorlike farmsteads.