A Parish Chronicle

                        This is the music you remember when you live to be 100.

Innansveitarkronika

By Halldór Laxness
Translated by Philip Roughton
Introduction by Salvatore Scibona

Archipelago Books, 2026

The unifying thread in this short novel is a small parish church in Hrísbrú, Mosfellsbær, near Reykjavík, Iceland. The church in question was slated for demolition and the parish congregation was expected to relocate to a new one in a lower valley a short distance away. The church had fallen into disrepair, was dismantled and then (in a surprising turn of events) a new one arose. Several intertwined threads merge to form a satisfying climax. A reader not familiar with the intrigues of Icelandic church politics might be baffled by this story arc, but this chronicle deals with more fundamental issues than theology. The conflict here is between  the locals and outside forces working for the destruction of this humble place and in the process effectively erasing the identities of the people who lived there.

What can a story of a small parish church in rural Iceland possibly offer the worldly reader?

The book opens with a discussion about the bones and, in particular, the skull of ‘Iceland’s national hero and chief poet’ Egill Skallagrímsson. Those remains may have been interred at the first church in the parish in the 12th century, although he was a heathen.

Are you still with me?

Further chapters elaborate on the history of the place, introduce the farmer Ólafur (and his bed-ridden wife, Finnbjörg), travails with Priest Jóhann and his maid Guðrún, parish council chairman Kolbeinn, ash-collector Láki and his son Stéfi, and the machinations that ensue when the order to demolish the church is given (an order which had been made a century earlier!) Laxness even refers to himself as the narrator “Inky” in numerous side-stories making for an incredibly rich panorama in such a short book.

I recently participated in a Zoom meeting with the book’s translator, Philip Roughton. During the session he told the story of how he had become intrigued by Icelandic literature while he was doing research for his masters thesis. He was struck by how time and time again features of the countryside were related to historical events by his guides—some of the stories had been written down many hundreds of years ago. In a similar vein, A Parish Chronicle is an intensely local book where most of the story takes place within a few miles from where Halldór had grown up and, later in life, had built Gljúfrasteinn, his home for 50 years. While A Parish Chronicle is fictional, the characters in it were no doubt taken from local histories. Laxness and his keen powers of observation are evident in all his novels (this book is no exception) with characters and situations richly drawn; anyone that has grown up in a small community will find much here to smile about. The first draft of this book was made in Rome in 1963 and finished in 1970 as a ‘memoir-novel’.

In 2015 I took a bike trip through this area where I photographed a picturesque church sitting on a small hill. I had no way of knowing that it was the church in this story:

Mosfellskirkja, 2015

Still, many believe that God’s wisdom and long-suffering achieved a certain victory in this matter here in Mosfellsdalur, even if it took some time, and the world might well take notice of this, although there may may in fact be something to the viewpoints of those who think differently.

The world would do well to take notice of this slender volume.

This page prepared by Stephen.