Welcome!

Statement of Intent

This site is for people who have an interest in the works and life of Halldór Kiljan Laxness, the greatest Icelandic author of the 20th century. It is also maintained to counteract the effects of link-rot, recency bias, commercial search engine optimization as well as generative engine optimization when searching for Laxness and his works. Recent developments in Artificial Intelligence and AI search engines have led to a tsunami of over-simplification, misinformation, AI slop, and even hallucination! Scholasticus cave. All the entries here are written by real people and were selected for their human insights and perspectives.

How This Site Works

Each entry in the sidebar leads to a page featuring a Halldór Laxness novel or some other aspect related to the author. In addition, the numerous additional links at the bottom of most pages are portals to worlds of additional information. Those of us without a fluency in Icelandic are limited the titles listed in the sidebar and most most of them are readily obtainable. Far from being definitive statements on the selected works, these essays are presented in the hope of spurring further interest to new readers.

Problems and Promises of Translation

As I am not an expert in Icelandic to English translation, I will leave final judgment concerning the quality of the English versions of these books to experts (although you are welcome to state your opinion.) The biggest challenge with reading Laxness in translation is that his writing is so deeply steeped in Icelandic culture that those of us who are not native Icelanders miss many of the references; it has been stated that Laxness has done more to shape the Icelandic sense of national identity than any other author has for any other culture. On the other hand, reading Laxness—even in translation—exposes those of us who are útlendir to new facets of Icelandic history, culture and psychology.

Solicitation for New Material

If you have any reviews, corrections, essays, appreciations, travel stories, etc., about Halldór or his writings please feel free to leave a comment or email me directly. I regularly search for new Laxness content but might miss some and I am always eager to consider incorporating new work into these pages. On-topic commenters (anonymous is ok) are always welcome.

On behalf of all of the contributors and translators,

Stephen Cowdery, administrator, Laxness in Translation

stephencowdery@gmail.com