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Gunnar Gunnarsson (1889-1975) |
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Prolific Icelandic novelist, dramatist, essayist, and poet, largely self-educated as a writer, whose work celebrate the courage and dignity of the common people of the North. Gunnarsson published his books in Danish to gain a wider audience and to break out the geographical and linguistic isolation. With Kristmann Guðmundsson (1901-1983) and Halldór Killian Laxness (1902-1998), Gunnarsson was among the first internationally known authors of his country. Gunnarsson's fiction was austere in tone and show a deep psychological understanding, individualism, and religious mysticism. "What else was his life, what else was one's pilgrimage through life, than an unceasing service, which, however, leaned on hope, expectation, and preparation?" (in The Good Shepherd, 1936) Gunnar Gunnarsson was born in Fljótsdalur, the son of Gunnar Helgi Gunnarsson, a farmer, and Katrín Þórarinsdóttir, the daughter of a farmer-fisherman. The death of his mother, when he was eight years old, left him with an emotional trauma; the shattering of an idyllic world was a theme to which Gunnarsson returned again and again. Gunnarsson grew up in Vopnafjörður, where the family moved in his childhood. Until the age of 18, Gunnarsson attended country schools and helped on the farm. In 1907 he moved to Denmark, studying at Askov Folk High School for two years. As a writer Gunnarsson started his career before the age of 17. He published two collections of verse, Vorljóð and Móðurminning (memories of my mother). From 1910 he devoted himself entirely to writing. Although Gunnarsson wrote his early works in Danish, the stories were set in Iceland. Some of novels were translated into Icelandic by Halldór Laxness. The first volume of Gunnarsson's family saga, Af Borgslægtens Historie (1913-14), became a Scandinavian bestseller in 1912. It was followed with other three parts and was made into a feature film by the Danish director Gunnar Sommerfeldt in 1920. The nostalgic novels, recalling a Kain and Abel story, depicted three generations of an Icelandic farm family. One of the farmer's two sons is a dreamer, torn between the call of his art and the call of the soil, while his brother is a demonic evildoer. Gunnarsson's work showed the influence of Selma Lagerlöf, the Swedish Nobel Prize author, who wrote in romantic style. World War I led Gunnarsson to pessimism, which reflected in his fiction, among others in Sælir eru einfaldir (1920, Seven Days' Darkness), which dealt with the eruption of Mount Hekla and the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918. The dualism, tension between two opposite forces, which marked the author's earlier stories, also gave basic structure to Livets Strand (1915). It depicted a clergyman who comes in conflict with his faith and reason. Varg i Veum (1916) was about a young man in rebellion against bourgeois standards. In 1921 Gunnarsson moved from Copenhagen to Grantofte and in 1929 to Fredsholm. Between 1920 and 1940, Gunnarsson lectured throughout Scandinavian countries, and also in Germany, where his books sold well, and published several essays on culture and social problems. A selection of these writings was published as Det nordiske rige (1927). Gunnarsson's great dream was the unification of the Nordic countries into one state; this pan-Scandinavian sentiment partly motivated his interest in historical subjects. When he met the Finnish writer Olavi Paavolainen in the Dichterhaus, founded by Nordische Gesellschaft, he said: "There is no other country in Europe than Germany that gives a traveler crossing the border such a feeling of tranquility." Gunnarsson returned from Denmark to his home country with his wife Franzisca in 1938, and wrote from then on only in his native language. He also began to translate his earlier works into Icelandic. In 1940, Gunnarsson met Adolf Hitler while lecturing in Germany. However, his work was there known well before the Nazis came to power and along with such authors as Knut Hamsun, Trygve Gulbranssen, Selma Lagerlöf, and Sigrid Undsen, he was one of the most frequentlty reprinted Scandinavian authors. Known for his Nazi sympathies, Gunnarsson's house was searced by American soldiers at the end of WW II. Until 1948 he remained a farmer at the parish of his birth. The last period of his life Gunnarsson lived in Reykjavík. Gunnarsson's works include over 40 novels, short stories, articles and translations. After his five-volume autobiographical suite, Kirken paa Bjerget (1923-1928), about Uggi Greipsson's struggle to fulfill his destiny as an a writer, Gunnarsson started a long series of novels, planned as a narrative of Iceland's history. He choose sensational or stirring episodes from history, as in Jón Arason (1930), the dramatic story of the last Catholic bishop of Iceland, who was executed with his two sons in 1550. Other works include Edbrødre (1918, The Sworn Brothers), about the first two settlers in Iceland, Hvide-Krist (1934), about the arrival of Christianity to Iceland around the year 1000, and Gråmand (1936), exploration of the incipient dissolution of the Icelandic Commonwealth during the 13th-century. After returning to Iceland, Gunnarsson planned a five-volume series of novels on life and social developments in his home country during the first half of the 20th-century, but managed to compile only two. Svartfugl (1939, The Black Cliffs), was about a double murder that took place under the 'pestilential atmosphere' of an inaccessible farm, and Vikivaki (1932) examined the responsibility of a writer. The novella Aðventa (1936), about a shepherd who every Advent season goes to the mountains in search of forgotten sheep, posed the question, is not all of life a sacrifice? This story was published in German as Advent im Hochgebirge (1936) and in English as The Good Shepherd (1940). Gunnarsson was a honorary professor at the University of Iceland, at Reykjavík, and was granted a honorary Ph.D. from Heidelberg. He was a Commander of the Icelandic Falcon and Knight of Danneborg, a Danish order. Gunnarsson's last novel was Brimhenda (1954). He died in Reykjavík on November 21, 1975, and was buried in the cemetery at Viðey Island. About six of his books have been translated into English. For further reading: A History of Icelandic Literature by Stefán Einarsson (1957); Gunnar Gunnarsson islänningen by S. Arvidson (1960); Leiðin til skáldskapar by S. Björnsson (1964); Mynd nutimamannsins: um tilvistarleg viðhorf i sogum Gunnars Gunnarssonar by Matthias Viðar Sæmundsson (1982); World Authors 1900-1950, vol. 2, ed. by Martin Seymour-Smith and Andrew C. Kimmes (1996); Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, Vol. 2, ed. Steven R. Serafin (1999); Tru i sogum: um heiðni og kristni i sogum og samti´ma Gunnars Gunnarssonar by Halla Kjartansdottir (1999); Skáldalíf by Halldór Guðmundsson (2006). Selected works:
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