Iceland - Butterflies in November et. al.

Country: Iceland               
Book: Butterflies in November (Rigning í nóvember)
Author: Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, Brian FitzGibbon (Translator)
Publication Year: 2004 (2014)
Genre: Fiction

Country: Iceland               
Book: Icelandic Folk Tales
Author: Hjörleifur Helgi Stefánsson
Publication Year: 2020
Genre: Folklore

Country: Iceland               
Book: The Prose Edda
Author: Snorri Sturluson, Jesse Byock (Translator)
Publication Year: 1220 (2005)
Genre: Norse Mythology

Country: Iceland
Book: Saga: A Novel of Medieval Iceland
Author: Jeff Janoda
Publication Year: 2005
Genre: Historical Fiction

Iceland is a country which fascinates me. Straddling the Atlantic ridge between the Eurasian and America tectonic plates, it is a land famous for its volcanoes and lava fields. Indeed, over the last few years there have been a number of prominent volcanic eruptions on the island, the live streams for which I have often played in the background while reading.

Even before then, my awareness of Iceland as a place of wonder begins with the 1959 film adaptation of Journey to the Centre of the Earth, staring James Mason, and later the book, which began my love of Jules Verne (see: Le Rayon Vert for more).

In Journey to the Center of the Earth (Voyage au centre de la Terre), German Professor, Otto Lidenbrock finds a note written in runic script in an old book of Icelandic saga. When decoded, the note gives the reader coded instructions on how to gain entrance to the centre of the Earth.

Lidenbrock, accompanied by his nephew, Axel, travels to Iceland, to the stratovolcano of Snæfellsjökull in the west of the island. On certain days at the end of June the sun casts shadows that point the way towards a tunnel which leads into the bowels of the planet. Many have seen in this, and other plot points, as an influence for JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit. They initially take the wrong tunnel and have to double back. Once on the right track, the adventures never return to Iceland, finally emerging during a volcanic eruption on the Italian island of Stromboli.

Iceland beguiles with its apparent smallness. Although only 500km at its widest point, the coastline runs for more than 6,500km. Which provides more than enough space for the roadtrip featured in the first Icelandic book proper under consideration, Butterflies in November by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir.

The unnamed narrator, a translator of more than 11 languages, has been left by her husband for his pregnant mistress. She has ambitions of travelling abroad, but when a friend is hospitalised for several months, she find herself the temporary guardian of their 4 year old, hearing impaired son. And so the two set out on a journey around the 1300km long Ring Road that encircles Iceland.

The novel has certain similarities to Arto Paasilinna’s The Year of the Hare (see: Finland). Just as Paasilinna’s book begins with the winging of the titular hare, so Butterflies in November begins with the narrator hitting and killing a goose in her car. The lives of the protagonists of both books alter or unravel in the immediate aftermath of these incidents, resulting in them journeying through the wilderness of their respective countries.

It’s a decent enough novel in its way and I will return to Ólafsdóttir’s books at a later date. However, as others have pointed out, it does contain some problematic language. Like "a child with a Senegalese father" being identified as being disabled because of their dual heritage. The narrator’s husband is a misogynist and bully of the highest order, with his pronouncements and personal attacks on her going unchallenged. There is even a brief reconciliation between the two at one point. The book is one of those that just kind of ends without any resolution being achieved. I want to read more as I’m interested to see if this is emblematic of Ólafsdóttir’s oeuvre or of Icelandic literature in general.

Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

For now, let’s move on to Icelandic Folk Tales by Hjörleifur Helgi Stefánsson. The image of traditional Icelandic literature is one of the great sagas and Edda (see below). In turning to Iceland, I knew I wanted to read some Icelandic folklore and found a number of examples. Stefánsson’s short collection of folk stories is a more modern rendering of a number of folklore tropes, but all the familiar characters are here. Demons. Witches. Elves. Sooo many trolls. If ever we needed reminding just how much influence Icelandic folklore had on the shaping of Tolkien’s Middle Earth, we can find it in these pages.

I say this is a modern retelling as Stefánsson’s framing is of oral tales passed down by his parents and grandparents. It is also very much a national collection, with each area of Iceland featuring at least once. Yet the well worn, clichéd language of the fairytale is also present, with all of the usual, ‘There once was a’ and suchlike that we find in Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm. The stories are new and old at the same time, reminding the reader just how old a country Iceland really is.

For a sense of how old Iceland is, we turn to the 13^th century Prose Edda. This is the one. The book that inspired Tolkien’s entire mythology, from Middle Earth, the name he took for his mythical world, to names of several of the dwarfs that set out with Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, to the name of Frodo in The Lord of the Rings series, who is here a character called, Frodi.

As well as well Tolkien, The Prose Edda was used by Richard Wagner for much of his Ring Cycle, the Black Sabbath album, Tyr, as well as all of those Marvel movies. Indeed, whenever anyone makes reference to the Valkyries, Berserkers. Valhalla, Ragnarok, Yggdrasill, Thor, Odin or Loki, they are ultimately referring back to the Prose Edda.

The book is in one  sense a teaching aid on how to write epic poetry, using references to earlier Norse poems that are mostly now lost (although a second volume, known as The Poetic Edda, does gather many of these verses together.) Here we get the sense of the age of Iceland, in that these stories were already old when they were gathered together and set down by Sturluson in the early 13^th century. It is telling that the Prose Edda is also known as the Younger Edda.

The Prose Edda is also an interesting document in that it straddles the periods of pagan and Christian Scandinavia. The book starts with reference to Adam and Eve and Jesus Christ, but soon spins off into reference to classical mythology. Thor is made a refugee from the Fall of Troy in the same way as Aeneas in Virgil’s Aeneid. He is made commensurate with Hector, although in most renderings of the story, including the Iliad, Hector was killed by Achilles.

This classical framing was perhaps an attempt to preserve Norse mythology in the face of Christian persecution by making it seem less grandiose and more in the vein of Roman mythology. Thor, in other renderings of the mythos, is commensurate with Zeus or Jupiter, all of them gods of thunder. Yet this would place Thor in direction competition with Jehovah. Thor’s powers are therefore dialed down and transferred to a mythical realm that remained acceptable to the Roman Catholic church because of its Latin associations.

In a similar vein, Loki, chief antagonist for Thor, becomes analogue with Odysseus (or Ulysses, to emphasise the Roman version). Which makes sense. Both are tricksters. The Trojan Horse is said to have been Odysseus’s idea, not to mention his many deceptions on the journey home to Ithaca. Though Hector and Odysseus are never really placed in direct conflict with one another in either Homer or Virgil.

Many of our modern English words come down to us from these tales. Earth (as in Planet Earth). Hell (Hel in the original). Not to mention most of our days of the week, which are all named after Norse gods, in the same way that all Latin derived, romance languages use names derived from pagan Roman gods.

Of all the books we have looked at, or will look at on this journey, we are unlikely to find one that has had more influence on western thought than the Prose Edda.

For a modern retelling of other Icelandic sagas, we turn, finally, to Saga: A Novel of Medieval Iceland by Jeff Janoda. This historic novel takes it queue from the Eyrbyggja saga, written by an anonymous writer sometime in the 13^th century. It describes the feud between two Norse clans that settled Iceland, led by the chieftains, Snorri Goði and Arnkel Goði.

Janoda’s retelling (one imagines, without having read the source material) gives the characters more of an inner life than would have been the convention in medieval literature. Like the Prose Edda, there is a blending of Christian and Norse mythology. Odin and Thor never appear directly, but their influence and patronage or disapproval are keenly felt by all. The supernatural elements of the original do feature, but are open to interpretation. Are visions of the dead real or figments of the imagination? It is for the reader to decide.

Like the best historical fiction, Janoda roots the action in the real world. The Eyrbyggja saga was considered semi-historical to begin with and Janoda’s book would seem to iron out some of the wrinkles to make it closer to the historical reality of 13^th century Iceland while playing fast and loose with the narrative elements of the original story. But isn’t his what happens in all mythology? Building on previous versions of a tale to add to the mythos. We see this with Greek and Elizabethan playwrights, Marvel comics, as well as every adaptation of A Christmas Carol or The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Indeed, as this project likes to draw parallels with the countries and authors it has previously explored, we cannot fail to observe that a certain Robert Louis Stevenson, last seen in Samoa (see: Samoa), wrote 'The Waif Woman: A Cue, from a Saga', a story based on certain elements of the same saga. A cursory reading of the story suggests it was largely based on a minor subplot. It was published posthumously in 1916, more than 20 years after Stevenson’s death in 1894.

We, I, have spent more time and covered more Icelandic authors than any country on this journey thus far. However Iceland perches on the edge of a liminal space between many different worlds. The mythological and the historical; the Norse and the Christian; the European and the American. It bestrides the narrow world like a colossus (to borrow from Shakespeare's Cassius).

One figure absent from Jeff Janoda’s version of the Eyrbyggja saga is Eric the Red, the Viking explorer who ‘discovered’ Greenland and established the first settlements on the island. The Icelandic Edda and Sagas tell us so much about the Vikings who influenced European society far beyond the height of their powers, from trading across Europe and into Asia, to founding the city of Dublin, amongst others, to  ruling the Danelaw across North East and Eastern England for more than two centuries.

Yet while Iceland exists in that liminal space, it is a country in the here and now. Since beginning to read these books, the latest volcanic eruption has begun on the island and has already been going on for more than a week, with no sign of ending just yet. Iceland has given us Björk and Sigur Rós (amongst others), for which I am personally very grateful. It is one of those places that seems to punch above its weight, but also has the same kind of successful social democracy as other Scandinavian countries. A reminder that you don’t need to be the richest nation in the world to provide a high standard of living for your citizens. Indeed, the two things might be mutually exclusive.

As such, you will excuse me writing two thousand words on such a small country, when a behemoth like Argentina or Congo might receive half that word count (*might*: I cannot say what rabbit holes I will stumble into during this project). Iceland exists in that liminal space between the mythical and the real. Its tropes and archetypes flow into western literature into a dozen other places besides. Other than Rome, Athens and Jerusalem, there is nowhere else that has influenced us more.

Jeff Janoda