Download or read book Miss Iceland written by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2020-06-16 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Will appeal to readers of Elena Ferrante and Margaret Atwood . . . the unusual setting offers an interesting twist on the portrait of an artist as a young woman.” —Bookpage In 1960s Iceland, Hekla dreams of being a writer. In a nation of poets, where each household proudly displays leatherbound volumes of the Sagas, and there are more writers per capita than anywhere else in the world, there is only one problem: she is a woman. After packing her few belongings, including James Joyces’s Ulysses and a Remington typewriter, Hekla heads for Reykjavik with a manuscript buried in her bags. She moves in with her friend Jon, a gay man who longs to work in the theatre, but can only find dangerous, backbreaking work on fishing trawlers. Hekla’s opportunities are equally limited: marriage and babies, or her job as a waitress, in which harassment from customers is part of the daily grind. The two friends feel completely out of place in a small and conservative world. And yet that world is changing: JFK is shot. Hemlines are rising. In Iceland, another volcano erupts and Hekla meets a poet who brings to light harsh realities about her art—as she realizes she must escape to find freedom abroad, whatever the cost. Miss Iceland, a winner of two international book awards, comes from the acclaimed author of Hotel Silence, which received the Icelandic Literary Prize. “Only a great book can make you feel you’re really there, a thousand miles and a generation away. I loved it.” —Kit de Waal, author of My Name is Leon “[A] winning tale of friendship and self-fulfillment.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

Download or read book A Companion to Old Norse Icelandic Literature and Culture written by Rory McTurk and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-03-11 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This major survey of Old Norse-Icelandic literature and culturedemonstrates the remarkable continuity of Icelandic language andculture from medieval to modern times. Comprises 29 chapters written by leading scholars in thefield Reflects current debates among Old Norse-Icelandicscholars Pays attention to previously neglected areas of study, such asthe sagas of Icelandic bishops and the fantasy sagas Looks at the ways Old Norse-Icelandic literature is used bymodern writers, artists and film directors, both within and outsideScandinavia Sets Old Norse-Icelandic language and literature in its widercultural context

Download or read book Independent People written by Halldor Laxness and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1997-01-14 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Nobel Prize-winning Icelandic author, a magnificent, epic novel—"funny, clever, sardonic and brilliant" (Annie Proulx)—at last available to contemporary American readers. Set in the early twentieth century, Independent People recalls both Iceland's medieval epics and such classics as Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter. If Bjartur of Summerhouses, the book's protagonist, is an ordinary sheep farmer, his flinty determination to achieve independence is genuinely heroic and, at the same time, terrifying and bleakly comic. Having spent eighteen years in humiliating servitude, Bjartur wants nothing more than to raise his flocks unbeholden to any man. But Bjartur's spirited daughter wants to live unbeholden to him. What ensues is a battle of wills that is by turns harsh and touching, elemental in its emotional intensity and intimate in its homely detail. Vast in scope and deeply rewarding, Independent People is a masterpiece.

Download or read book The History of Iceland written by Gunnar Karlsson and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Iceland is unique among European societies in having been founded as late as the Viking Age and in having copious written and archaeological sources about its origin. Gunnar Karlsson, that country's premier historian, chronicles the age of the Sagas, consulting them to describe an era without a monarch or central authority. Equating this prosperous time with the golden age of antiquity in world history, Karlsson then marks a correspondence between the Dark Ages of Europe and Iceland's "dreary period", which started with the loss of political independence in the late thirteenth century and culminated with an epoch of poverty and humility, especially during the early Modern Age. Iceland's renaissance came about with the successful struggle for independence in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and with the industrial and technical modernization of the first half of the twentieth century. Karlsson describes the rise of nationalism as Iceland's mostly poor peasants set about breaking with Denmark, and he shows how Iceland in the twentieth century slowly caught up economically with its European neighbors.

Download or read book A History of Icelandic Literature written by Daisy L. Neijmann and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 748 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As complete a history as possible of the literature of Iceland.

Download or read book Old Icelandic Literature and Society written by Margaret Clunies Ross and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-09-21 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive account of Old Icelandic literature set within its social and cultural context.

Download or read book Islendingabok written by Ari Thorgilsson Frodi and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 89 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Book of Reykjavik written by Friðgeir Einarsson and published by Comma Press. This book was released on 2021-08-12 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reluctant to observe a new family tradition, a boy finds himself stranded outside a graveyard on the night before Christmas... Three farming brothers, forced to relocate to the city by poor harvests, discover an unexpected demand for their green-fingered talents... Residents of a new apartment block are woken in the early hours by the eerie sound of a table saw that once operated on the building’s grounds... Iceland is a land of stories; from the epic sagas of its mythic past, to its claim today of being home to more writers, more published books and more avid readers, per head, than anywhere in the world. As its capital (and indeed only city), Reykjavik has long been an inspiration for these stories. But, as this collection demonstrates, this fishing-village-turned-metropolis at the farthest fringe of Europe has been both revered and reviled by Icelanders over the years. The tension between the city and the surrounding countryside, its rural past and urban present, weaves its way through The Book of Reykjavik, forming an outline of a fragmented city marked by both contradiction and creativity. Includes a foreword written by award-winning Icelandic author Sjón. Translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb, Philip Roughton, Lytton Smith, Meg Matich and Larissa Kyzer. Published with the support of the Icelandic Literature Center.

Download or read book Bard of Iceland written by Dick Ringler and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bard of Iceland makes available for the first time in any language other than Icelandic an extensive selection of works by Jónas Hallgrímsson (1807-1845), the most important poet of modern Iceland. Jónas was also Iceland's first professionally trained geologist and an active contributor in a number of other scientific fields: geography, botany, zoology, and archaeology. He played a key role as well in Iceland's struggle to gain independence from Denmark. "Descriptive power and fullness of spirit were the hallmarks of his soul," wrote a contemporary admirer. Dick Ringler, one of the premier scholars of Icelandic literature in the world, offers a substantial biography of Jónas, a representative selection of his most important poems, and some of his prose work in science and belles lettres. Ringler also provides extended commentaries and an essay on Icelandic prosody. The poems are translated into English equivalents of their original complex meters in Icelandic and Danish. As a poet Jónas was intimately familiar with his nation's medieval literary inheritance--the sagas and eddas--and also with the groundbreaking work of contemporary German and Danish Romanticism (Chamisso, Heine, Oehlenschläger). A master of poetic form, Jónas not only exploited and enlarged the possibilities of traditional eddic and skaldic meters, but introduced the sonnet, triolet stanza, terza and ottava rima, and blank verse into the Icelandic metrical repertory.

Download or read book World Light written by Halldor Laxness and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 626 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A magnificently humane novel from the acclaimed Icelandic Nobel Prize winner: as an unloved foster child on a farm in rural Iceland, Olaf Karason has only one consolation, the belief that one day he will be a great poet. The indifference and contempt of most of the people around him only reinforces his sense of destiny, for in Iceland poets are as likely to be scorned as they are to be revered. Over the ensuing years, Olaf comes to lead the paradigmatic poet’s life of poverty, loneliness, ruinous love affairs and sexual scandal. But he will never attain anything like greatness. As imagined by Nobel Prize winner Halldor Laxness in this extraordinary novel, what might be cruel farce achieves pathos and genuine exaltation. For as Olaf’s ambition drives him onward—and into the orbits of an unstable spiritualist, a shady entrepreneur, and several susceptible women—World Light demonstrates how the creative spirit can survive in even the most crushing environment and even the most unpromising human vessel.

Download or read book Wasteland with Words written by Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Iceland is an enigmatic island country marked by contradiction: it’s a part of Europe, yet separated from it by the Atlantic Ocean; it’s seemingly inhospitable, yet home to more than 300,000. Wasteland with Words explores these paradoxes to uncover the mystery of Iceland. In Wasteland with Words Sigurdur Gylfi Magnússon presents a wide-ranging and detailed analysis of the island’s history that examines the evolution and transformation of Icelandic culture while investigating the literary and historical factors that created the rich cultural heritage enjoyed by Icelanders today. Magnússon explains how a nineteenth-century economy based on the industries of fishing and agriculture—one of the poorest in Europe—grew to become a disproportionately large economic power in the late twentieth century, while retaining its strong sense of cultural identity. Bringing the story up to the present, he assesses the recent economic and political collapse of the country and how Iceland has coped. Throughout Magnússon seeks to chart the vast changes in this country’s history through the impact and effect on the Icelandic people themselves. Up-to-date and fascinating, Wasteland with Words is a comprehensive study of the island’s cultural and historical development, from tiny fishing settlements to a global economic power.

Download or read book Iceland s Bell written by Halldor Laxness and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner: At the close of the 17th century, Iceland is an oppressed Danish colony, suffering under extreme poverty, famine, and plague. A farmer and accused cord-thief named Jon Hreggvidsson makes a bawdy joke about the Danish king and soon after finds himself a fugitive charged with the murder of the king’s hangman. In the years that follow, the hapless but resilient rogue Hreggvidsson becomes a pawn entangled in political and personal conflicts playing out on a far grander scale. Chief among these is the star-crossed love affair between Snaefridur, known as “Iceland’s Sun,” a beautiful, headstrong young noblewoman, and Arnas Arnaeus, the king’s antiquarian, an aristocrat whose worldly manner conceals a fierce devotion to his downtrodden countrymen. As their personal struggle plays itself out on an international stage, Laxness creates a Dickensian canvas of heroism and venality, violence and tragedy, charged with narrative enchantment on every page. Sometimes grim, sometimes uproarious, and always captivating, Iceland's Ball is at once an updating of the traditional Icelandic saga and a caustic social satire.

Download or read book Saga written by Jeff Janoda and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2016-04-01 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This retelling of the ancient Saga of the People of Eyri is a modern classic. Absolutely gripping and compulsively readable, Booklist said this book, "does what good historical fiction is supposed to do: put a face on history that is recognizable to all." And medieval expert Tom Shippey, writing for the Times Literary Supplement said, "Sagas look like novels superficially, in their size and layout and plain language, but making their narratives into novels is a trick which has proved beyond most who have tried it. Janoda's Saga provides a model of how to do it: pick out the hidden currents, imagine how they would seem to peripheral characters, and as with all historical novels, load the narrative with period detail drawn from the scholars. No better saga adaptation has been yet written."

Download or read book Secrets of the Sprakkar written by Eliza Reid and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-02 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Canadian first lady of Iceland pens a book about why this tiny nation is leading the charge in gender equality, in the vein of The Moment of Lift. Iceland is the best place on earth to be a woman—but why? For the past twelve years, the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report has ranked Iceland number one on its list of countries closing the gap in equality between men and women. What is it about Iceland that enables its society to make such meaningful progress in this ongoing battle, from electing the world’s first female president to passing legislation specifically designed to help even the playing field at work and at home? The answer is found in the country’s sprakkar, an ancient Icelandic word meaning extraordinary or outstanding women. Eliza Reid—Canadian born and raised, and now first lady of Iceland—examines her adopted homeland’s attitude toward women: the deep-seated cultural sense of fairness, the influence of current and historical role models, and, crucially, the areas where Iceland still has room for improvement. Throughout, she interviews dozens of sprakkar to tell their inspirational stories, and expertly weaves in her own experiences as an immigrant from small-town Canada. The result is an illuminating discussion of what it means to move through the world as a woman and how the rules of society play more of a role in who we view as equal than we may understand. What makes many women’s experiences there so positive? And what can we learn about fairness to benefit our society? Like influential and progressive first ladies Eleanor Roosevelt, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Michelle Obama, Reid uses her platform to bring the best of her nation to the world. Secrets of the Sprakkar is a powerful and atmospheric portrait of a tiny country that could lead the way forward for us all.

Download or read book Iceland written by James Krusoe and published by Dalkey Archive Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul falls in love with Emily, a worker at the Institute, when he goes to pick out a new organ. The memory of their interlude stays with Paul through the rest of his life.

Download or read book Morkinskinna written by Carl Richard Unger and published by Legare Street Press. This book was released on 2023-07-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Morkinskinna is a medieval Icelandic chronicle that recounts the history of the Norwegian kings from the 9th to the 11th century. This English translation by Carl Richard Unger includes detailed descriptions of battles, political intrigue, and the lives of various kings. Morkinskinna is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in medieval Norse history and culture. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Download or read book Stories Set Forth with Fair Words written by Marianne E. Kalinke and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2017-03-23 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an investigation of the foundation and evolution of romance in Iceland. The narrative type arose from the introduction of French narratives into the alien literary environment of Iceland and the acculturation of the import to indigenous literary traditions. The study focuses on the oldest Icelandic copies of three chansons de geste and four of the earliest indigenous romances, both types transmitted in an Icelandic codex from around 1300. The impact of the translated epic poems on the origin and development of the Icelandic romances was considerable, yet they have been largely neglected by scholars in favour of the courtly romances. This study attests the role played by the epic poems in the composition of romance in Iceland, which introduced the motifs of the aggressive female wooer and of Christian-heathen conflict.