Independent People

Sjálfstætt fólk · Independent People · published 1935 · ISBN 9780679767923

Halldór Laxness — Halldór Laxness (1902 – 1998) — Iceland, writing in Icelandic. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1955.

“for his vivid epic power which has renewed the great narrative art of Iceland” — The Nobel Committee citation

About Halldór Laxness

Icelandic novelist who brought rural life, Nordic saga and the conflicts of the twentieth century into a voice at once epic and satirical. His characters are bound by land, debt, religion and the dream of independence, observed with severity, humour and compassion.

How it came to be

Published in two volumes in 1934 and 1935 as Iceland moved from an agrarian society toward modernity, the novel borrows the scale of saga while filling it with credit, capitalism, rural politics and the human cost of taking a noble ideal to an extreme.

Summary of Independent People

After eighteen years as a farmhand, the sheep farmer Bjartur buys a poor holding in the Icelandic highlands and vows never to depend on another person. Independence soon hardens into dogma: his family must endure hunger, debt and loss to keep the land, while Asta Sollilja, the daughter he loves most, pays the deepest price for his pride.

Analysis & legacy

Bjartur is both admirable and frightening. He resists landlords, church authority and every form of dependence, yet makes his family into sacrifices to his private definition of freedom. The landscape is not romantic scenery: wind, snow, illness and sheep form a brutal economic system. Laxness mixes epic gravity with irony to ask what independence means when it leaves no room to receive or offer care. The result reaches beyond Iceland to become a major novel about property, dignity and fatherhood.

Themes: Independence and dependence · Land and debt · Family · Pride · Rural modernisation

Rating: 4/5 from 5 ratings (Open Library).

What critics say

• Independent People was the early English translation that carried Laxness’s peasant epic to a broad international readership. — NobelPrize.org, Thư mục tác phẩm Halldór Laxness

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Frequently asked questions

What is Independent People about?

After eighteen years as a farmhand, the sheep farmer Bjartur buys a poor holding in the Icelandic highlands and vows never to depend on another person. Independence soon hardens into dogma: his family must endure hunger, debt and loss to keep the land, while Asta Sollilja, the daughter he loves…

Is Independent People worth reading?

On booknest, Independent People is rated 4/5 from 5 ratings on Open Library. Bjartur is both admirable and frightening. He resists landlords, church authority and every form of dependence, yet makes his family into sacrifices to his private definition of freedom. The landscape is not romantic…

When did Halldór Laxness win the Nobel Prize, and why?

Halldór Laxness won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1955: “for his vivid epic power which has renewed the great narrative art of Iceland”

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