Independent People 
by 

Halldór Laxness, 

 

James Anderson Thompson (Translator)

 

Better Red Than Dead

Entering into Independent People with no introduction, one could be forgiven for thinking it a merely charming review of early 20th century Icelandic culture, an update of the sagas and a chronicle of the rugged life of the North. Laxness apparently promotes this in his opening paragraphs with his references to local legends of Norse colonisers, Celtic demons, and the various Icelandic myths of national origin. He describes a timeless scene, “...the centuries lie side by side in unequally overgrown paths cut by the horses of the past..."

But Laxness is not unlike the late US Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, generally acknowledged as the most powerful congressman of his day. When asked by a reporter his view about a particular issue, he responded "Aw shucks, I'm just a country boy; I don't know nuthin' about politics."

Laxness uses just this tone of rural naïveté to superb dramatic effect. Independent People is an acknowledged masterpiece. It helped Laxness win the Nobel Prize. Yet it presents itself in a dead pan Thurmondesque way that offers no clue about the book's subtlety or profundity. The first hint comes when Icelandic timelessness is suggested as other than desirable. The tradition alluded to is interminable rather than merely long. “...[F]or a thousand years they have imagined that they would rise above penury..."

The title, it turns out, is of course ironic, indeed only the tip of an iceberg of irony. The independence of the people involved - sheep crofters in the 'up-country' moorlands of Iceland - is imaginary. Debt and drudgery is what they can look forward to. Add to this the irony of even poetry being used to justify virtual enslavement rather than to commemorate freedom - the male protagonist/poet himself is an ignorant bully - and what is presented is a profoundly self-deceptive culture. This is the generalizable subject of the book: the social illusions that we adopt without awareness or, consequently, recourse.

Laxness describes a destructive yet self-satisfied Icelandic culture in remarkable and absorbing detail. The life of moorland crofters is brutal, tedious and lonely, especially for the women who have fewer chances for social interaction and, of course, must tend the menfolk as well as share in their heavy labour.

These country folk survive physically, if they do, on 'refuse fish', rye biscuits, and oatmeal. For some reason sugar and coffee is in plentiful supply but neither milk nor meat, even mutton, is not to be had except on the large estates or in the cities. And, whether for religious or economic reasons, neither spirits nor beer are generally available (something particularly odd for a sea-faring nation). Coffee, consumed in obviously unhealthy quantities, is the stimulant and social lubricant of choice.

The crofters survive socially on an infrequent diet of seasonal gossip, rumour and hearsay; and follow an agricultural routine dictated by shibboleths and superstition: "This land will not betray its flocks...Where the sheep lives, there lives man.... Independence is better than meat." Conformity of opinion could hardly be greater in a totalitarian state but each perceives himself as wisely free in assimilating these treasures of conventional wisdom.

Despite the prevailing poverty, aesthetics is a central issue among the men. Poetry is an art form that requires no resources except thought, not even paper since the oral tradition is taught from birth. However, the issues are of form not content. What arrangement of metre and rhyme is best? Independence in this domain means adopting an opinion without reasons other than personal preference and proclaiming it vehemently.

Children are plentiful but die off readily for all the usual reasons of malnourishment, disease, and accident. Those who survive often leave by taking up the sea, usually never to be heard from again because living in “...a land even more remote, America, which is further than death." This is considered a normal if not inevitable state of affairs for those who are truly independent.

The social structure is curiously egalitarian; class distinctions are grounded on wealth not birth. Hereditary wealth isn't institutionalised into permanent titles of nobility. Nonetheless there is a medieval system of obligation formalised through debt-relations to the large land-owners who hold mortgages, augment cash flows in bad times, and administer the markets for sheep and fish. In theory the smallholders are able to drive their sheep over the moors for days to get a better price. But of course they ‘choose’ to deal with the local merchant at a severe discount because its more convenient.

The church is tolerated as an inevitable burden which would clearly go unsupported and unattended if not for a national mandate. Its social role is the solemnisation of life events - birth, death, marriage - but weekly gatherings are infeasible given distances and the intensity of agrarian work schedules. The connection between their ‘rates’ and the cost of the local pastor is not one they seem to make.

It is not religion, therefore, that creates social cohesion. What religious awareness there is seems a mixture of Lutheran piety, pagan habit, and residual anti-papal sentiment. Rather, the core of Icelandic identity is portrayed as centred on the idea of independence, a condition universally valued in the country and gradually revealed as an ideology. "Independence is the most important thing of all in life." the newly wed husband says to his wife with obvious irony as she commences her virtual slavery in their croft on the moors.

The ideology of independence, no matter how contradictory to experience, is shared because it meets everyone's needs. It gives the impoverished crofters some vague hope of improvement as well as an ideal for which their suffering may be justified. It gives the gentry a rationale for their success and an image to be admired and emulated by the striving crofters. It gives the city-born local lady of the manor a reason to live in the bleakness of the Icelandic outback. Mainly the ideology of independence ensures social peace while encouraging maximum productive and exploitative effort by all concerned. Independence is, therefore, a pyrrhic reward since even "Elves are much happier than men."

The continuing tales of the protagonist’s search for independence hardly lead to a surprising denouement. The ideology of independence is a chimera, a monster hybrid of myth, illusion, stubbornness, and ignorance. In the form Laxness gives it, independence is a decadent form of patriotism that consumes not just its adherents but their families and children as well. 

When taken seriously, this book is not easy to take at all by those who adopt a similar idolatry of abstract formulae. Laxness was a socialist who was not only creating an artistic work, he was also justifying the emerging politics of Iceland after WW II. For this he was condemned by the FBI as a Communist agitator and, despite his Nobel award was banned from the United States. One suspects the real reason for the ban was that by portraying the Icelandic ideology of independence Laxness was just a little to accurate in describing its American variant.