Independent People [Paperback]

Halldor Laxness (Author), Brad Leithauser (Introduction)

Book Description

Release date: January 14, 1997

This magnificent novel—which secured for its author the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature—is at least available to contemporary American readers. Although it is set in the early twentieth century, it recalls both Iceland's medieval epics and such classics as Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter. And if Bjartur of Summerhouses, the book's protagonist, is an ordinary sheep farmer, his flinty determination to achieve independence is genuinely heroic and, at the same time, terrifying and bleakly comic.

Having spent eighteen years in humiliating servitude, Bjartur wants nothing more than to raise his flocks unbeholden to any man. But Bjartur's spirited daughter wants to live unbeholden to him. What ensues is a battle of wills that is by turns harsh and touching, elemental in its emotional intensity and intimate in its homely detail. Vast in scope and deeply rewarding, Independent People is a masterpiece.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Originally published in 1946 and out of print for decades, this book by the Nobel Prize-winning Icelandic author is a huge, skaldic treat filled with satire, humor, pathos, cold weather and sheep. Gudbjartur Jonsson becomes Bjartur of Summerhouses when, after 18 years of service to the Bailiff of Myri, he is able to buy his own croft. Summerhouses is probably haunted and is certainly unprepossessing, but Bjartur is a stubborn, leathery old (whatever his age) coot, and he soon has his new bride and few head of sheep installed in a sod house. When his wife dies cold and alone giving birth to the daughter of the Bailiff's son, Bjartur takes the child on almost as another test of his independence. Bjartur survives another wife, three sons that lived and several dead ones, all with his "armour of scepticism," which "endowed him with greater moral fortitude than that possessed by the other men." Through hard times (in the guises of worms and a cow that threaten his precious sheep), Bjartur maintains his ferocious and self-destructive independence, one aimed not so much at bettering his condition as being able to tell his former employer where to get off. Laxness is merciless with the hypocrisy of the upper classes, as exemplified by the Bailiff's poetess wife, who applauds the simple life of poor country people, or the Bailiff's son, whose social-welfare schemes help him but undermine the crofters. Laxness is not easy on Bjartur, who is bloody-minded in the extreme, but he is tender enough to compose a poem to his exiled adoptive daughter, and bold enough to engrave a simple marker in honor of the misunderstood ghoul who has haunted his farm and family. He's a figure that Snorri Sturluson would have recognized.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Reader rejoice! At last this funny, clever, sardonic and brilliant book is back in print. Independent People is one of my Top Ten Favourite Books of All Time." —Annie Proulx

"There are good books and there are great books and there may be a book that is something still more: it is the book of your life. . . . My favorite book by a living novelist is Independent People." —Brad Leithauser

"This beautiful and heartbreaking novel has haunted me ever since I was lent a rare copy years ago, and I am delighted that what is clearly a masterpiece by a relatively uncelebrated genius will now be available to a wide audience of book lovers. If there is any justice in the world, the name Laxness will soon become a household word, at least in those households where timeless works of the imagination are cherished." —Joel Conarroe

"Laxness has a poet's imagination and a poet's gift for phrase and symbol. . . . Bjartur is a magnificent and complex symbol of peasant independence." —The New York Times Book Review

"A strange story, vibrant and alive. . . . There is a rare beauty in its telling, a beauty as surprising as the authentic strain of poetry that lies in the shoving, battering Icelander." —Atlantic Monthly

"A saga that somehow contrives to recapture the broad, clear air of older Icelandic tales." —The Observer (London)

"[Laxness] gives a large picture of life under primitive conditions, [he] writes vividly, using irony with vigorous effect; amid the brutality and squalor there are rich moments of humor and poetry." —The Spectator (London)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st Vintage International Ed edition (January 14, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679767924
• ISBN-13: 978-0679767923
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 1.1 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (107 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #25,309 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

98 of 101 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Bleak and Beautiful, an Astonishing Tale August 16, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Independent People is not a book for everyone. It is a long, slow and sometimes punishing read. Laxness paints the sheep farmer's life in bleak tones. Think of Solzhenitsyn's Siberia or Rolvaag's Dakota prairie. So dismal is the mood at times that the reader feels the imminent onset of seasonal affective disorder. But Independent People also contains moments of pure, distilled beauty so arresting they seem to stand out from the cold landscape like stars in the ink of darkness. Bjartur of Summerhouses is a true epic hero. As Monte Christo is to vengeance, Bjartur is to self-determination. His emotional intransigence and the suffering he visits on all those close to him is balanced only by the enormity and brute force of his will. Asta Sollilja, his daughter, is the only possible counterweight to his obstinacy, in both emotional and literary terms. She is strong and sensitive, beautiful and grotesque, half Bjartur, half anti-Bjartur. Her duality provides the story's central drama and the book's over-arching metaphor. Masterfully constructed of vignettes woven into small books, Independent People is seamless. Laxness's voice is clear and lyric, never showy. The writing is fresh and modern, yet seems to be channeled from Iceland's mythic past. This is a land populated by many dark spirits and one never feels quite free of their presence here. Certain images from Independent People are indelibly etched on my consciousness. A man violently and accidentally riding a reindeer. A girl longing by a window for a stranger she's met just once. A young man seduced back to the home he has left by a siren on horseback. There is something more to why I love this book. I spent a week in Iceland in July 1998, and was transfixed by its rugged, austere beauty.... The feeling I had while reading Independent People was the same feeling that possessed me the entire time I was in Iceland. It was the cold, astonishing sensation of stepping outside your self and gazing on the topography of your own heart. Read more ›

89 of 93 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Independent People June 2, 2003

By Robin Friedman HALL OF FAMETOP 50 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

I first read "Independent People" in 1996 after reading Brad Leithauser's essay in the "New York Review of Books." Leithauser's praise of the book and the author were so intriguing that I went to the library that day and found an earlier edition. I recently had the opportunity to read the book again, with Leithauser's essay serving as an introduction. A single reading cannot exhaust this outsize, obscure novel by the 1955 Nobel-prize winner from Iceland.

On a simple level, "Independent People" deals with the lives of the poor sheep grazers in Iceland early in the 20th Century. The hero is a farmer named Bajartur of Summerhouses who, after 18 years of working for another, the baliff, earns enough money to buy his own small farm. Bajartur's goal is to be independent and self-sufficient, to take what he earns and not take or give to others. In addition to this simple economic credo for independence. Bjartur is an "independent person" emotionally in his relationships with his wives -- he is twice married in the book -- his three sons and his daughter -- actually his first wife's daughter but not Bjartur's -- whom Bjartur names Asta Sollija the "beloved sun -lily" whom he refers to as his soul's "one flower." Much of this long, multi-faceted book involves Bjartur's relationship with Asta Sollija -- their estrangement and ultimate reconciliation.

Bjartur and Asta Sollija and their relationship frames but hardly exhausts this book. There is a picture of Iceland -- or of modernizing society in general with its conflict between farmer and town. There are long discussions of poetry and literature, of war, of politics, and particularly of philosophy and religion, see below.... For all its length and seriousness, much of the book is funny, almost satirical in tone in the way it pokes fun at Bjartur and his intellectual and emotional limitations. The reader still comes to admire Bjartur for his fortitude and stubborness.

The book is timeless in character and the chronology is blurred. World War I plays a pivotal role in the middle of the book but the times before and the times after seem to be endless and undefined. There is something that is prototypical and archetypical about this book -- it is hardly an exercise in the realistic novel.

From a subsequent essay about Laxness by Brad Leithauser, I learned that Laxness was the kind of person generally called a seeker. This made me admire him and this book all the more and informed greatly my second reading. Growing up in a small, isolated nation, Laxness read exhaustively and put something of himself into his readings. He changed his mind many times during his life, being at various stages entirely secular, a socialist with perhaps communist leanings, and an adherent of various forms of Christianity. He took a rare delight in important ideas and showed an openness and fluidity to them that I find reflected in the themes of "Independent People." Most obviously, their is Bjartur's character with its emphasis on economic self-sufficiency and laissez-faire. This attitude leads to Bjartur's heroism but also his poverty, and it is contrasted artfully with the cooperative movemement and, implicitly, with a socialist approach to society in the early 20th century.

The book is pervaded by a strong spiritual tone. Bjartur for most of the book represents a position of independence and utter skepticism, but at key moments he does things not fully consistent with his stated beliefs. The book is framed by old Icelandic pagan legends and by spirits who are said to continue to haunt Bjartur's farm. We see various Christian ministers who in general are satirized in the course of the novel. But I was most impressed with the following erudite, and well-taken reference to Zoroastrianism, the religion of good and evil,which is alluded to many times during the course of the book and frames its story. In a moment of irony, Laxness puts the following speech early on, at Bjartur's first wedding, into the mouth of the bailiff's wife.

"I don't know whether you are aquainted with the religious beliefs of the Persians. This race believed that the god of light and the god of darkness waged eternal warfare, and that man's part was to assist the god of light in his struggle by the tilling of the fields and the improvement of the land. This is precisely what farmers do. They help God, if one may say so; work with God in the cultivation of plants, the tending of livestock, and the care of their fellow men. There exists no calling of greater nobility here on earth. Therefore, I would direct these words to all husbandmen, but first and foremost to our bridegroom of today: You sons of the soil whose labour is unending and leisure scanty, know, I bid you, how exalted is your vocation. Agriculture is work in co-operation with the Creator Himself, and in you is He well pleased." (p. 25)

I am intrigued by the repeated references to the "religion of the Persians" and to its appropriateness for the story. This quote,and its irony, reminds me of the sermon in "Moby Dick", a book which shares in its obscurity and in its questing character many of the qualities of this one. The speech shows the author's ability to adopt material from little-known traditions into his own ideas and work, and to make them live for the reader. It was one of the qualities that leapt out at me in my second reading of "Independent People."

This book remains a little-known masterpiece. It will reward those readers willing to take the time with it. Read more ›

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I Must Learn to Read Icelandic! February 8, 2000

By Richard S. Harman

Format:Paperback

Having just read INDEPENDENT PEOPLE, I feel as though I have been drawn into the vortex of some great hurricane and am being carried around the globe by it, high above the surface, trapped in its gravity.

This story has captured me and will not let me go. It is above all the heroic struggle of a Viking farmer to be free and his refusal to grieve in loss and defeat that grip me. He never grieves. Why then did I continually grieve for him? And why am I grieving for him still?

The answer must be that my character is weak in comparison. Laxness may have spoken for all survivors everywhere. "Never mourn what you have lost."--"rather content yourself with what you have left, when you have lost what you had."

Some people learn Russian to read Pushkin. I want to learn Icelandic to read Laxness.

As for politics and ideologies, not to worry. They are just a little dust here and there on the floor of the croft, at times a little distraction. The story unfolds outside and above and all around them and in its enormous weight little concerns them.

Could this book possibly have been written just for me? To enjoy it most, a reader should probably have lived at least a thousand years.

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Powerful and Often Funny November 10, 2002

By -_Tim_-

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This novel looks nostalgically at rural life in Iceland and regrets the effects of a market economy on rural people with simple wants and needs. The protagonist, Bjartur of Summerhouses, is an obstinate, reactionary, and sometimes cruel herdsman who nonetheless possesses fine perception. Through this book, we learn a lot about the ecology of Iceland (it's a nice place to visit but don't try to raise sheep there), Bjartur, his family, and the society he belongs to. Author Halldor Laxness makes you appreciate the difficulties these people face but can also make you laugh out loud when he satirizes Bjartur's neighbors and the local gentry. I was impressed with this book and read many passages to my family. Unfortunately, there are also parts of the book where not much of interest happens for what seems like 50 or 75 pages at a time. I'm tempted to say that this would have been a better book if it were shorter but then Laxness won the Nobel Prize for literature and I didn't.