The Brooklyn Rail

If Honoré de Balzac’s Human Comedy invited Realism into the house of the novel—only for Gustave Flaubert to remove its coat, pour some tea, and draw out the depths of domestic confidences and desires—a doppelganger of Realism still wandered the moor. This shadow Realism, where the landscape generates emotion and character, emerges in the novels of George Sand only to condense and explode in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. In contrast to Flaubert’s domestic Realism, the wild geographic Realism of Sand, Brontë, Walter Scott, Thomas Hardy, Knut Hamsun, and, importantly for this short introduction, Halldór Laxness, obeys an entirely distinct notion of time. Feeling forms over generations and recedes at a glacial pace. Like their ancestors in the Sagas, the Icelanders in the novels of Laxness are heroically stubborn, and investigations into the hidden motivations of their actions yield little more than one would get from psychologizing a stone. In Laxness, the boundary collapses between inward and outward. Nowhere is this more on display than in the novel released by Archipelago Books this month, A Parish Chronicle. 

The particular landscape, which sculpts farmers, sheep, and spirits alike, is the Mosfell Valley (Mosfellsdaulur) about a day’s walk northeast of Reykjavík. Surely one of the reasons A Parish Chronicle feels like a high-fidelity representation of Laxness’s soul is because he grew up here and knows the history in the marrow of his bones. Laxness reminds us that this is not the land of reason; Icelanders routinely “take on herculian tasks to oblige their friends and relatives,” and recount their undertakings with a wry and ludicrous humor that is authentically Icelandic. I can think of no better introduction to the entire ouevre of Laxness than the three short chapters excerpted here in Philip Roughton's animating translation. 

***

At that time an open stream flowed through our capital, and was called the Stream; in it were sticklebacks. Occasionally, you could see an eel there, too, migrating from the Sargasso Sea to a pond, called the Pond, located behind the Alþingi House and the cathedral. By his own later account, the northerner told of in the preceding chapter busied himself during his first year in the capital with catching sticklebacks and sometimes an eel by hand at the Pond.

As mentioned earlier, his father got up at five o’clock each morning and pushed his famous wheelbarrow, which, according to the theory of evolution, the Chaldeans invented in continuation of astrology. By the time Stefán Þorláksson woke in the morning, his father had long since gone out. But there was always a bit of rye bread, sometimes dried out and sometimes moldy, in the kitchen. Sometimes there was also half-dried lumpfish and a bite of cured skate, both of which emit an odor unknown in Iceland’s north. Often, there was also a bucket of water. There was no one to talk to when Stefán woke up in the morning. Elsewhere, he had neither friends nor others to chat with, except for a few bigger boys on their way to school, who yelled “Hey hey, ha ha” at Stebbi Shorty-Láki’s son. So he had no other company but those strange fish from the Stream. Soon, however, he found the path down to the seashore and watched the fishermen return with fish of various colors and shapes, some large, including a shark, which happens not to be unknown to the folk in the north. The boy was very fond of these fish because they were the only ones he’d seen in the north and in fact the only creature, not excluding humans, that he recognized here in the south.

It was mentioned earlier that his father had an old barrel that collected rainwater from a gutter on the roof of the small half-stone house, which gave the boy the idea of producing shark in the barrel. His common sense told him that this would be possible by catching eels from the Stream and raising them in the barrel. In his view, the eels were so slender because they had too little to eat in the Pond—no other fish are found there. So he put sticklebacks in the barrel along with the eels, expecting that if an eel ate enough sticklebacks it would eventually become a shark or at least as portly as a shark. Then he would sell the shark and buy himself new shoes with the money he earned. Unfortunately, the sticklebacks died before their time in the barrel and the eels died as well, so there were never any sharks. Nor shoes, either.

His father habitually stopped carting ashes at six o’clock every Saturday. He would then come home. He would bring his son a cornet of candies and frequently two types of sweet breads, one called “Sturla bread” because it was bought in Sturla Jónsson’s store, while the other was called “letter bread” because it came in pieces that were shaped like letters and no bigger than a fingernail. Sturla bread was rock-hard and a little sweet, whereas letter bread was crispy and airy inside, and not really sweet even though it was sold as such. Þorlákur had heard that the children of better-placed parents learned to read by eating this bread.

Sometimes he walked hand-in-hand with his son to church on Sunday mornings, but wouldn’t bring him along when he was carting ashes, feeling it too flippant to involve his children in the responsible duty of carting away the ashes of distinguished persons in the community. The one scribbling all this down now remembers the late ashman, Þorlákur, quite well. He was the spitting image of the late Michelangelo Buonarroti; I think everyone who has had any reason to compare them would agree.

In the winter it was sometimes cold in Þorlákur’s house; the stream was frozen, the sticklebacks weren’t there, and the eels had gone to the great depths of the Sargasso Sea, as Stefán Þorláksson told the person writing this. The boy caught a cold and lay in bed for much of the winter, until his father managed to get him a decoction of Iceland moss from a fortune teller out on Seltjarnarnes. His father was busy all Christmas straightening bent, rusty nails. Stefán Þorláksson said that he couldn’t recall there having been much sun that winter, either. Yet in the end, that celestial body started peeking through Láki’s window, as it sometimes does in the north. Finally, finally. Then the tern arrived and screeched sleepily in Vassmýri. A pale boy crawled out of bed and went down to the Stream to check on his friends the sticklebacks and eels; and they started arriving, too. But no shark ever came of it, as told of before.

***

Now the story turns once more to Mosfellsdalur, the parish that we left earlier, after the benefice there was dissolved and the church leveled to the ground, and everyone long since having started to think about more pressing matters. Yet although times change, the autumn rains in that district never do. And most wearisome are the southeasterlies with their ever-present gusts. I don’t recall if I’ve mentioned it before, but in that district, the seasons and weather are gauged with regard to sheep, not people. It had been a rather bad autumn for sheep. At this point in the story, it was around time for the final sheep sorting, and not too long afterward, the lambs would be brought into their sheds and fed hay there. It was wetter and muddier now at Hrísbrú, where the road leads north. The wind blew against the window of the late Finnbjörg as she knitted by dim lantern light, which burned even when all other lights in the valley were extinguished. The lads were securing the doors for the night, what with the rain and wind pressing in from that direction.

In the midst of this storm, something living happens to be scrambling along the road where it meets the path to the house. In short, this creature makes it through the mud and up onto the walkway, where it sits down on the doorstone in the rain, right in the gleam coming from Finnbjörg’s family-room window.

Although the father and his sons were of course not very keen-sighted in daylight, they could see surprisingly well in the dark. Now, as far as they could tell, crawling up from the mire out front came a young lad of smallish stature, hardly bigger than Írafellsmóri, who had long been the most famous character and most prominent ghost in the countryside around Mount Esja, although he doesn’t figure in these meager pages.

Ólafur’s sons say to their father: “Someone has come.” “Is it a man?” asks Ólafur.

“It doesn’t appear otherwise,” they say.

Although, at that time, the late Ólafur could barely see well enough to pee in daylight, as he himself said, his sons trusted him better than anyone to discern the difference between a man and a ghost in the dark, and asked him to decide on this matter. Farmer Ólafur steps out onto the pavestones and asks:

“Where have you come from in this weather, chum?”

“I’ve come from the south,” answers a little boy.

“And where are you going?” they ask.

“I’m going north,” said the boy.

“In whose charge are you?” they ask.

“Sólrún’s,” said the boy.

“And who is Sólrún?” they said.

“She’s dead,” said the boy.

“How far north are you going?” they say.

“To Eyjafjörður,” said the boy.

“You know the way to Eyjafjörður?”

“Yes,” said the boy.

“Aren’t you afraid?” they said.

“Yes,” said the boy.

“Don’t you know that it’s a journey of fourteen days by pack train north to Eyjafjörður?” they ask.

“I don’t have a pack train,” said the boy.

“The route crosses the worst rivers in the country.”

“That doesn’t matter,” said the boy. “I’ve had to wade three times today.”

“Weren’t our rivers here in this district, Kaldaklofslækur and Kortúlstaðá, deep enough for you?”

“No,” the boy said, “they only came up to my neck.”

Then Farmer Ólafur asks: “What are you afraid of, chum, if it’s not wading in water up to your neck?”

“I stole Ash-Láki’s sou’wester,” replies the boy. “I was so afraid of people I met on the road recognizing me.”

“You thought you’d get a spanking, huh?” said the men of Hrísbrú.

The boy said: “I turned my hat around on my head. I had the back facing forward so no one would recognize me.”

Then he goes on with the story of his journey: “The path lay over a terribly long, stony hill, and I got scared again. I ran as fast as I could. I fell and fell. There was no house. No person. No animal. I thought robbers would come and attack me. But I escaped. Then I got scared for the third time. It was getting dark and the path lay along the foot of a terribly big mountain. I thought the mountain would tumble down on top of me. I couldn’t help but run the whole way from the path down to the sea so I wouldn’t be under the mountain when it crumbled.”

Previously, it was mentioned that the folk at Hrísbrú weren’t in the habit of asking strangers how things were with them, even if they happened to be passing through the farmyard. For some reason, they broke their habit that night. The late Ólafur, who had little interest in where others bedded down for the night, even says this to the traveler:

“Where are you thinking of staying tonight?”

“I don’t know,” said the boy.

“Have you had anything to eat?” says Farmer Ólafur.

“Yes, yes,” says the boy.

“When?” asks Farmer Ólafur.

“The other day,” said the boy.

“The other day? What blasted day?” asks the farmer.

“I don’t really remember,” said the boy.

Then Ólafur says to his sons: “Don’t lose him to the wind and rain while I pop in and ask Fimmbjörg.”

After a short spell, the late Ólafur felt his way back to the front door and invited Stefán Þorláksson to stay the night.

He stayed there for twenty years.

***

It would be a useful man who could write the story of Stefán Þorláksson, but the inkman at work here doesn’t have what it takes to do so. As soon as this houseguest came to Hrísbrú, a new line appeared in the face of the district: the boy who wanted to produce shark in a barrel. He was the leaven that heralded traffic and competition in this bread.

Stefán Þorláksson was always trading knives, which the men of Hrísbrú never did. He acquired all sorts of knives, starting by swapping like for like, but then trying to get a big knife for a small one or two for one. Once he came home with a machete for his foster father Ólafur so that he could go to battle, but Farmer Ólafur said that he no longer had the sight for fighting and told the boy to take it to Finnbjörg. The woman sent the weapon to the kitchen and said that it would be useful for cutting fish.

When Stefán was confirmed, they gave him a pipe but no tobacco. He found it a strange gift, but Finnbjörg said that more people had died from tobacco smoke than that of hay leavings and peat, which has always led to the most unbreathable air in Iceland. The boy understood this woman, despite her offering guidance in a rather roundabout way, and it has been said of this houseguest that throughout his life, he never put any stock in any other person’s advice. He would laugh at most of what others said, and because of it, was considered a lighthearted man, but he kept Finnbjörg’s wishes close to his heart all his life, and said of his foster mother that she’d been so far ahead of others that though they climbed the highest hill, they would but glimpse her in the distance. Once he got his pipe, he abstained from tobacco and never touched it his entire life; on the other hand, he acquired nine tobacco pipes after a week (eighteen, legend has it).

He was given a colt and waited one winter for it to become a horse. In the autumn, he attended the Kollafjörður sheep-sorting to separate out the Hrísbrú sheep, being sharp-eyed when it came to earmarks. Yet despite already having more than enough on his plate that day, he did find time to do some horse trading. When he returned home, it turned out that he’d given away his horse, but brought back three in its place: a brood mare and its suckling foal, and an adult packhorse, as well.

At that time, the first automobiles were being imported into the country, introducing new marvels to this nation of farmers who had worked with the same implements since the year 900—around the time of the bizarre, wondrous manifestations called the Fróðá Marvels. Soon, surrounded by these new, uncanny inventions, no farmer recognized himself any longer, and the poets began lamenting their loss of identity in print. One fine day, Stefán drives a car that he himself owned up to the homefield wall at Hrísbrú and parks it there, not trusting it in the mire out front of the farmhouse. Cars that came to this country back then were apparently rattletraps, at first, having been transported from Canada, where they’d seen far better days. Once here, they stopped running, particularly on thoroughfares. Their drivers walked backwards pushing these vehicles up hills, down which they’d immediately roll, in keeping with the law of gravity. Yet everyone admired automobiles and began to believe in them—Stefán Þorláksson the most. For many people, they replaced Írafellsmóri and those poor old sheep and schnapps; for some they replaced the identity they’d lost. It was thought a great idea to drive a car on Sundays from Reykjavík all the way east to Þingvellir, 50 kilometers, to buy a bottle of belch water.

Stefán traded his horses and other possessions for a car and, for several years now, was always out on the roads, despite his domicile and refuge being at Hrísbrú. He drove people from one place to another, sometimes for money. He experimented with using kerosene instead of gasoline, the result being a beautiful blue exhaust accompanied by strange pops and churnings in the engine. Sometimes, after the car had stood unmoving for a while up on Mosfell Heath, sophisticated belch-water folk would suddenly turn up and offer their help, holding a flaming match to Stefi’s gas tank; but since the car didn’t blow up immediately, they concluded that it was out of gas. So one of them was sent to try to buy gas somewhere, or at least borrow kerosene. One Ford on such an outing to Þingvellir, with blue smoke trailing behind it, made more of a racket than the combined Ford factories in Detroit. Often a driver had to stay on the heath for days at a time while tinkering with his car’s engine. There are Icelandic poems from those days about people who’d become entangled in their engines like philosophers in their systems (and one could perhaps add nowadays: like idealogues in their universal theories).

Stefi Shorty-Lákason, as the kids called him, became as famous early on for Fordianism as others for Freudianism and various progressive views of life that were starting to take hold at the time. But then he himself said that although Ólafur at Hrísbrú and his sons snorted at the strange bird that had crawled out of its egg among them, they were impressed by him and loved him as a brother born in monstrous form, perhaps with two heads, and whom you mustn’t kick because you don’t understand God’s ways. The Hrísbrú folk never blamed Stefán even if it took him three days to go east to Þingvellir to buy himself a bottle of belch water and he had to spend the nights on the heath with his car. It was as if those ancients sensed that the strange visitor who showed up at their door one autumn evening and introduced traffic and competition to the district had come to stay.

Concerning Stefán Þorláksson’s schooling, there isn’t much to write. He grew up before today’s compulsory education was legislated. Prior to his confirmation, he was sent along with several other children in the same situation to the farmer at Laxnes to learn their catechism and Bible stories, along with arithmetic up to the rule of three and fractions and to study the map in the Book of Þórarinn showing the world split in two like a sheep’s head prepared for boiling.

Christianity wasn’t practiced at Hrísbrú, although Finnbjörg apparently had a collection of sermons that she rarely read and never talked about. Those people’s Christianity had always consisted of going to church; they thought it useless to read about God in a book, and even more senseless now that their church had been razed to the ground. Stefán couldn’t recall prayers and things of that sort during his upbringing after he stopped going to church with Láki in the south; Christianity was of little concern to him, it being impossible to change, anyway, if it happened to be wrong. Sometimes Finnbjörg recited a poem by the late Reverend Jón at Bæsá, but Stefán didn’t pay much attention and she never tried to teach it to him; after all, some of what that fellow wrote wasn’t quite up to par, Stefán said, before reciting the verse “I Pounce on Everything in Front of Me,” which he’d learned from other drivers, and not from his foster mother. On the other hand, she taught her foster boy how to knit socks so that he would have something for his hands to do if he went blind. She had him sit next to her and helped him if he dropped a stitch. Otherwise, by his own admission, Stefán never heard of anything supernatural in Mosfellsdalur during the twenty years that he was there, apart from the aforementioned ghost from Írafell in Kjós. This ghost frequently came over Svínaskarð Pass in the depths of winter, especially during snowstorms. On some farms in the area around Mount Esja, a bit of food was put out for him on top of the farmhouse wall in the evenings, but not at Hrísbrú, although the folk there sometimes got the feeling that he was lurking in the passageways or between buildings at twilight. Finnbjörg refused to allow a bowl of food to be left up on the wall for the ghost, saying that stray dogs or feral cats would gulp it down at night; she didn’t want to attract any vagrant varmints to the place.

Stefán said that he most regretted having forgotten to ask the woman anything during the three or four years that he’d had the opportunity to sit by her sickbed, except for some trifles about knitting. Was she really ill?—this question, he said, he’d often asked himself later. Or maybe everyone was ill but her? Those innumerable women in Iceland who lay bedridden for eighteen years, was there anything wrong with them apart from being too strong to take part in the misery and stupidity that everyone else in this country took for granted and consoled themselves with or even rejoiced in, like beggars and their boils? He said that the air of modesty, composure, and purity that emanated from that woman he had later sought but never found in any other woman, despite having driven incessantly all over the country his whole life.

A small mantel clock with a glass face, and a picture of a flower on the glass, ticked sedately on the shelf above this silent woman’s bed. The above-mentioned houseguest at Hrísbrú could hear that ticking all his life afterward, whenever he had a moment’s peace to listen inwardly; until he finally collapsed out on the road.