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- Title
Att förhandla det förflutna Historiebilden i Halldór Laxness Islands klocka och dess samtida reception.
- Authors
Gustafsson, Harald
- Abstract
In the years 1943, 1944, and 1946, the Icelandic author Halldór Laxness published the three parts of his novel Íslandsklukkan (called Iceland's Bell in Philip Roughton's excellent recent translation). This is a historical novel, set around the turn of the seventeenth century. The way Icelandic history is depicted in the novel, and the way this was discussed in the reviews in Icelandic papers and journals at the time, is here regarded as a process of negotiating history. Laxness's bid in this negotiation is seen against the dominant script - the tradition of interpreting Icelandic history in national terms. The novel has two dominant tendencies: national and social. In national terms, it depicts Iceland as oppressed by the Danes, in economic and political terms; in social terms, it is a country consisting of a small elite sustained by a large, poor, repressed peasantry. However, the reviewers focus with very few exceptions on the first of these tendencies. The period is seen as the time of the deepest ever humiliation and oppression of the Icelandic nation, and the fact that in the novel this nation is also described as socially divided is hardly mentioned. The reason for this selective reception was that the national tendency fitted well into the traditional script of Icelandic historical consciousness, while the social perspective fell outside the National Romantic view of a unified nation. Laxness's bid failed to elicit any response, since the traditional script dominated even among his fellow left-wing critics. In this way, Laxness involuntarily came to side with his worst political opponents, and contributed to the continuing vigour of the traditional Icelandic historical narrative.
- Publication
Scandia, 2014, Vol 80, Issue 1, p11
- ISSN
0036-5483
- Publication type
Article