Halldór Kiljan Laxness, The Bell of Iceland

References

• Talmor , Sascha . 2000 . "Bjartur of Summerhouses, An Icelandic Sisyphus," . The European Legacy , 5 (1) : 87 – 100 .
   Google Scholar
• Laxness had an intimate knowledge of the daily life of Iceland's fishermen and farmers, living as they did in abject poverty, both then and for many years later. In fact, as he wrote in his Notebooks, his main subject was always "the hidden people," the common people, what the French call Ie menu people, Ie bos people, Ie petit people. At the same time, he also showed us ordinary people's simple dignity, people who maintained their traditions, language, and faith under the most difficult conditions, like Jon and his old mother; and those of the higher class, like Amaeus and Snaefrid, who also never gave in to their Danish masters, who cared only for power, money, material possessions and good idle living. It is in his Notebooks that we find Laxness' clearest statement about his intention as a writer in his novel The Fish Can Sing (London: The Harvill Press, 1957; 2000) but it is also true about all his work: "The Hidden People, the ordinary 'unspoilt' people-however infinitely frail from the standpoint of moral theology or other codes of ethics-the book is a hymn of praise to them, proof that it is precisely these people, the ordinary people, who foster all peaceful human values." (From Petur Mar Olafsson's article on Halldor Laxness, 13 January 1998, which he kindly sent me.)
   Google Scholar
• 1907 . The Catholic Encyclopedia Volume 1 , Jon Arason was Iceland's last Catholic Bishop before Christian III, King of Denmark, forced them in 1538 to accept Protestantism as their new official religion. For ten years, until 1548, Jon Arason continued to uphold and defend the Catholic religion. Declared an outlaw by the King, Arason continued his courageous fight and became, in fact, more a war-lord than a bishop. Encouraged in his struggle by a letter from Pope Paul II, he continued his fight against his greatest adversary, Dadi Gudmundsson, but was himself taken prisoner and handed over to the King's bailiff. Without waiting any formal judgement, the decapitation of Arason and two of his sons, Are and Björn, who had been staunch allies of his father, was agreed upon. Some fisherman avenged his death by killing the King's bailiff and his adherents. Moreover, as a sign of their deep veneration for Arason, the people elected his son Jon as his successor. Nevertheless, as in many other European countries, Protestantism triumphed. But the people continue to regard Jon Arason as their national hero and a martyr 1999
   Google Scholar
• In many ways, Jon's mother's journey and struggle brings to mind Berthold Brecht's play Mother Courage (1941). The play opens in a province of Sweden and we recall that Iceland too was involved in the war between Sweden and Denmark. Like the mother of Jon, Mother Courage too struggles all her life to keep her family alive and fed during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) fought between German Catholics and German Protestants. Wandering with her two sons and Kattrin her dumb daughter on her canteen wagon, selling alcohol and clothes to the soldiers, crossing from one province to another while bloody battles rage, she never tires, never gives up hope. For what else can she do? She is only a poor woman, trying to save her family in the midst of the madness of war with all its cruelty, injustice, bribery, punishments found everywhere. Then one son and Kattrin are killed, and the other son is executed. She has lost all her children-but in order to go on living she will continue doing business. Having no horses left, she harnesses herself to the wagon and begins pulling it. This dark and bitter play is a realistic portrayal of people in times of war.
   Google Scholar
• A mineral iron oxide, the most important ore of iron. Powdered hematite is used as a pigment (red ocre). Cambridge Encyclopedia, third edition (1997).
   Google Scholar
• Campbell , Joseph . 1968 . The Hero with a Thousand Faces , Bollingen Series XVII 285 Princeton University Press . The Poetic Edda is a collection of 34 old Norse poems treating the pagan Germanic gods and heroes. The poems were composed by a number of singers and poets (scalds) in various parts of the Viking world (one, at least, in Groenland) during the period AD900-1050. The collection was completed, apparently, in Iceland. See
   Google Scholar
• It is in his most famous novel, Independent People (1935) that Laxness gives us the fullest presentation of his country and his people who were always, even in the most difficult times, in love with liberty and independence. In The Light of the World (1940) he embodies Iceland's very soul. Its central character, the unhappy and unlucky poet Olaf Ljossiking, who has lost everything, still has what really counts for him-the beauty of Iceland's sky and its poetry. Finally we may say that for Laxness the values of his central characters are also his own-liberty, justice, independence, human rights, love of his country and its people, and its beautiful ancient sagas, the oldest sagas of Europe.
   Google Scholar
• Hume , David . 1741 . "Of the Standard of Taste," ” . In Essays Moral, Political and Literary Edinburgh
   Google Scholar