Icelandic Literature

One of these Sagas is Landnámabók (Book of Settlement), book compiled in the early 12th century, 200 years after the first settlements, and from Islendingabok that was written in the 10th century by a man named Ari Thorhilsson,also named The Wise.

He tells about the Irish monks called Papar by the Vikings, who arrived in Iceland at least 100 years before the Vikings. They seem though, to have left shortly after the Vikingsarrived, but there is still a small island off the east coast that is named after them, Papey.

Landmannabok tells us about a man named Floki Vilgerdarson, named also Hrafna-Floki that sailed to Iceland deliberately. He was not the first to land on the island though.

He settled for one winter, and it was a cold winter. He was the one that named the island Iceland when he spotted ice drifting in the fjords and that name have remained.

The book says that the first permanent settler was IngolfurArnason, a Norwegian chieftain that settled in Iceland withhis family in 874.

He choose the place for his settlement that is today the capitalReykjavik.

The Icelandic Sagas relate also that many Norse chieftainsfollowed Ingolfur with their families and slaves. People ofNorwegian, Irish and Scottish origin. It is said that the Irish and Scottish people were slaves and servants of the Norsvegian chiefs.

It is best known for the sagas written in mediaeval times.

The mediaeval Icelandic literature is usually divided into three parts:
· Eddaic poetry
· Skaldic poetry
· Sagas

The Elder Edda or Poetic Edda (originally attributed to Sćmundr fróđi, although this is now rejected by modern scholars) is a collection of Old Norse poems and stories originated in the late 10th Century.

Although these poems and stories probably come from the Scandinavian mainland, they were first written down in the 13th Century in Iceland.

The first and original manuscript of the Poetic Edda is the Codex Regius, found in the southern Iceland in 1643 by Brynjólfur Sveinsson, Bishop of Skálholt.

The Younger Edda or Prose Edda was written by Snorri Sturluson, and it is the main source of modern understanding of the Norse mythology and also of some features of medieval Icelandic poetics, as it contains many mythological stories and also several kennings. In fact, its main purpose was to use it as a manual of poetics for the Icelandic skalds.

Skaldic poetry mainly differs from Eddaic poetry by the fact that skaldic poetry were composed by well-known skalds, the Icelandic poets. Instead of talking about mythological events or telling mythological stories, skaldic poetry was usually sung to honour nobles and kings, commemorate or satirize important or any current event (e.g. a battle won by their lord, a political event in town etc.). Skaldic poetry is written with strict metric system and many figures of speech, like the complicated kennings, favourite among the skalds, and also with much “artistic license” concerning word order and syntax, with sentences usually inverted.

The sagas are prose stories written in Old Norse, that talk about historic facts of the Germanic and Scandinavian world;

The Icelanders' sagas are a literary phenomenon from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. They are focused on history, especially genealogical and family history. They reflect the struggle and conflict that arose within the societies of the second and third generations of Icelandic settlers.

There are many different sagas:

Brennu-Njáls saga - considered by some the greatest of Icelandic prose sagas.

Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar - tells of the adventures of Egill Skalla-Grímsson, the warrior-poet and adventurerEiríks saga rauđa

Gísla saga Súrssonar, (two versions) of an outlaw poet
and many more.

In 1262, Iceland united to the Norwegian monarchy, and lost its independence, starting a decline in literature. A great translation of the Bible was published in the sixteenth century. Important compositions of the time from the 15th century to the 19th centure include sacred verse, most famously the Passíusálmar of Hallgrímur Pétursson, and rímur, rhymed epic poems with alliterative verse that consist in two to four verses per stanza, popular until the end of the nineteenth century.

In the beginning of the nineteenth century, there was a linguistic and literary revival. Romanticism arrived in Iceland and was dominant especially during the 1830s, in the work of poets like Bjarni Thorarensen (1786-1841) and Jónas Hallgrímsson (1807-45).

Jónas Hallgrímsson, also the first writer of modern Icelandic short stories, influenced Jón Thoroddsen (1818-68), who, in 1850, published the first Icelandic novel, and so he is considered the father of modern Icelandic novel.

This classic Icelandic style from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were continued chiefly by Grímur Thomsen(1820-96), who wrote many heroic poems and Matthías Jochumsson (1835-1920), who wrote many plays that are considered the beginning of modern Icelandic drama, among many others. In short, this period was a great revival of Icelandic literature.

Realism and Naturalism followed the Romanticism. Notable Realistic writers include the short-story writer Gestur Pálsson (1852-91), known by his satires, and the Icelandic-Canadian poet Stephan G. Stephansson (1853-1927)noted for his sensitive way to deal with the language and for his ironic vein.

In the early twentieth century, many writers started to write in Danish, among them even some really noteworthy, like Gunnar Gunnarsson (1889-1975), one of the best-known and most translated Icelandic authors, considered a master in characterisation. However, the best-known Icelandic author is Halldór Laxness (1902-98), winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1955, author of several articles, essays, poems, short stories and novels, like the best known Expressionist works Independent People, Salka Valka and Iceland's Bell.

After World War I, there was a revival of the classic style, mainly in poetry, with authors such as Davíđ Stefánsson and Tómas Guđmundsson, who later became the representant of traditional poetry in Iceland in the twentieth century. Modern authors, from the end of World War II, tend to merge the classical style with a modernist style.