Halldór Þorgeirsson

Anti-American Wins Nobel Prize

Halldór Kiljan Laxness was born in 1902 in Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, but spent his youth in the country. From the age of seventeen on, he traveled and lived abroad, chiefly on the European continent. He was influenced by expressionism and other modern currents in Germany and France. In the mid-twenties he converted to Catholicism, but Laxness's religious period did not last long; during a visit to America he became attracted to socialism, which would later on get him into trouble with the Icelandic authorities and eventually blacklisted in the U.S regardless of excellent sales and good reviews.

Ragnar í Smára

No description found

Under the Glacier

Our hero is Umbi (an acronym for emissary of the bishop), sent by him to undertake an important investigation at Snæfell-glacier. In particular he is to look into the conduct and behavior of Jón Prímus, the old pastor at Snæfell. Fantastic rumors are rife: amongst other things it is said that a corpse is lodged in the glacier! Armed with his tape recorder and notebook, Umbi embarks upon his mission. He tries to question the weird locals, a weird lot, but gets evasive answers. Slowly he is dragged into a quagmire of strange happenings and his efforts to understand only make him confused. If at the beginning he is a chipper, a mere device, by the end of the story he is inextricably involved, a committed participant in the bizarre events.

Halldór Laxness: "I shall or I die"

A documentary film about the Icelandic writer Halldór Laxness, who received the Nobel Prize in 1955 for "... renewing the Icelandic tradition of saga-literature and the Icelandic language". The film gives a portrait of this great writer who was very much disliked as a young artist, when he was describing the situation in Iceland between the first and the second world wars. To date, he has written over 70 books, novels, essays, plays and memories which have been translated into more than 50 languages.