ABSTRACT: This essay addresses the interrelations of film and literature in the
Icelandic context by focusing primarily on two case studies. The first regards
an early twentieth-century group of Neoromantic writers, commonly known as the
Varangians, whose plays and novels provided the narrative material for the first
fiction features set in Iceland. The second addresses the conspicuous lack of
adaptations made from either the medieval sagas or the work of Iceland’s most
celebrated novelist, Halldór Laxness. It is argued that this lack stems from the
high regard in which literature, and these works in particular, is held in
Iceland—suggestive of a certain anxiety in tackling its literary heritage.
Ultimately, the two case studies point towards the strong ties between
literature and national identity. As a result Icelandic cinema has swayed
aberrantly from an overt reliance on literature to attempts at distancing itself
from it. According to the essay, both strategies are characteristic of
filmmaking in a nation whose national identity privileges language and
literature.
RÉSUMÉ: Cet essai s’intéresse aux interrelations du film et de la littérature dans
le contexte islandais en se concentrant d’abord sur deux études de cas. La première
étude concerne un groupe d’auteurs néoromantiques du début du vingtième siècle, les
Varègues, dont les pièces et les romans ont fourni le matériel narratif des premiers
longs-métrages islandais. La deuxième s’intéresse au manque évident d’adaptations
inspirées de sagas médiévales ou de l’oeuvre du plus célèbre romancier islandais,
Halldór Laxness. Il est argumenté que ce manque s’explique par la haute estime dans
laquelle sont tenues la littérature et ces oeuvres en particulier en Islande - laissant
suggérer une certaine appréhension à confronter son héritage littéraire. Enfin, les
deux études de cas démontrent de forts liens entre la littérature et l’identité nationale,
ayant ainsi pour résultat un cinéma islandais oscillant entre une dépendance évidente
vis-à-vis la littérature et une tentative de s’en distancer. Selon cet essai, ces
deux stratégies sont les caractéristiques d’une réalisation cinématographique au sein
d’une nation dont l’identité nationale privilégie la langue et la littérature.
The year before Engels and Marx first met in 1842,
another great German scholar of Economics, if less well known today, Friedrich
List, published his magnum opus Das nationale System der
politischen Ökonomie [The National System of Political Economy]. List claimed that the nation-state was the ideal unit for maximizing
economic development. However, for such a development to take place the national
population needed to be large and its geographical territory extensive.
Accordingly, for him, nationhood became synonymous with large nations. List
dismissed the idea of small nations: “A nation restricted in the number of its population
and in territory,
especially if it has a separate language, can only possess a crippled
literature, crippled institutions for promoting art and science” (quoted by Hobsbawm
30-31). In other words List saw the limitations
of a small “national economy” resulting in inferior art and culture.
The early 1840s also saw national revival reach new heights in Iceland, with
increasing demands for secession from Denmark—itself a rather small nation in
terms of territory and population. The population of Iceland itself hardly
amounted to that of a modest-sized European town, or barely 60,000 inhabitants,
and although larger in surface than Denmark it was mostly uninhabitable. If
Iceland thus had none of the national qualifications outlined by List, it
ultimately turned his theory upside down by constructing its very national
identity on its separate language and a literature that
was seen to be anything but crippled. Language and literature were, in fact, all
Iceland had of its own, as it was mostly devoid of a national economy and
industry, monuments and buildings, and other traditional arts. Ever since, other
forms of art and culture have been relegated to a secondary status, and been
compelled to draw upon the literary heritage—cinema being no exception.
In this essay I would like first to discuss somewhat broadly the relevance of
literature for Icelandic national identity, as a necessary preparation for
thinking about film adaptation in the Icelandic context, before moving on to two
distinct but related case studies. The former concerns plays and novels written
by Icelandic Neoromanticists in Copenhagen and adapted to the screen during the
silent era, while the latter addresses the role that the medieval sagas of
Icelanders and the novels by Halldór Laxness have played in the history of
Icelandic cinema.
Literature and language are always intertwined. Although I will be discussing a
notable exception, Icelandic literature is defined first and foremost by being
written in Icelandic. Domestically, the Icelandic language continues to be held
in high regard despite (or perhaps because of) the global influx of English,
which in the latter half of the twentieth century has replaced Danish as the
central lingual “threat” to Icelandic. Extensive state
support is in place for writers, a special committee creates new words from
native Icelandic components to ward off foreign imports, regulations still
govern the introduction of foreign personal names although these have become
more lenient in recent years, and since 1996 the Icelandic language has its own
annual celebration on the 16th of November (the birthday of the acclaimed
nineteenth-century poet Jónas Hallgrímsson). The underlying anxiety is that
without the Icelandic language, the nation itself might wither away under the
homogenizing power of globalization.
The Icelandic language would appear to have changed remarkably little since the
settlement era, as the earliest surviving manuscripts dating from the
mid-twelfth century are relatively close to modern Icelandic. However, it was
with the Romanticists and the nationalists of the nineteenth century that the
language was first broadly deemed to be a valued cultural resource, quite apart
from its use as a tool of communication. Inspired by German Romanticism and
national ideology, the Icelandic nationalists felt that there existed a perfect
harmony between the nation’s medieval literature and its perceived golden age.
This literature is characterized by considerable heterogeneity, including
stories of bishops, European knights, and Scandinavian kings, but it was the
sagas of the Icelanders that were most celebrated by the Romanticists. Although
the surviving manuscripts stem mostly from the early fourteenth to the sixteenth
centuries, there is much evidence to suggest that the majority of the sagas were
composed in the thirteenth century, while relying on even older oral traditions (Ólason
17-20).
Leaving aside questions of literary merit, it is not difficult to understand why
the sagas of the Icelanders were singled out. Not only were they stories of
Icelanders, as explicitly manifested by the collective name given to them, but
they were also open to strong national interpretations. The quintessential
example is found in
Njáls saga [
Njal’s Saga], the most celebrated of them all, when the hero Gunnar decides against
exile in Norway, despite knowing that remaining in Iceland will surely cost him
his life. About to escape in his vessel, Gunnar has a change of heart, when
looking back over his farmland: “Fǫgur er hlíðin, svá at mér hefir hon aldri
jafnfǫgr sýnzsk, bleikir akrar ok slegin tún, og mun eg ríða heim aptr ok
fara hvergi.” [So lovely is the hillside that it has never before seemed
to me as lovely as now] (182; 86). The Romanticists interpreted Gunnar’s decision as a patriotic one—a
national declaration. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in Hallgrímsson’s
poem
Gunnarshólmi [
Gunnar’s Holm] in which the hillside becomes Iceland itself: “‘Sá eg ei fyrr svo
fagran jarðargróða’
… Því Gunnar vildi heldur bíða hel, en horfinn vera
fósturjarðarströndum.” [‘Never before has Iceland seemed so fair.’
…
For Gunnar felt it nobler far to die / than flee and leave his native
shores behind him] (136-38). If “Gunnarshólmi” is notably explicit in this regard,
it is also typical of the broad role that sagas have played in constructing
Icelandic national identity. Gísli Sigurðsson explains:
The sagas civilized the landscape by imparting some meaning to it through
their events and place names, many of which refer back to the settlement
period, thus establishing a direct link through the land back into the
dark past when the heroic ancestors created the nation. The sagas and
the role played by the Icelandic landscape were thus of major
significance in the development of the romantic sense of national
identity among Icelanders. (43-44)
The area where Gunnar is believed to have turned away from the sea is
itself one of these landmarks that bridge the golden age and contemporary
Iceland and is today a popular tourist attraction.
If the sagas of the Icelanders continue to be very much debated in terms of
authorship and historical accuracy, it would seem beyond question that they
share many qualities of novelistic fiction. Extensive in scope of both time and
space, the sagas are a prose fiction focusing on character interactions. Robert
Scholes and Robert Kellogg have argued that no other medieval literature went as
far in combining romance and history, which they consider to lead “the way from
epic to the novel” (43). In fact, following Benedict Anderson’s well-known thesis
on the intrinsic ties between
novel and nation (22-36; Moretti 11-73), the sagas might be the most convincing argument
for claiming a
pre-modern Icelandic nationhood. Icelandic folk tales also began to be
celebrated and collected in the nineteenth century. And although not registering
the nation formally in the manner of novel and arguably saga, they are literally
referred to as “þjóðsögur” [nation-tales], as no distinction is made between nation
and folk in Icelandic.
On the other hand, the novel itself arrived quite late on the Icelandic literary
scene—or not until national revival was in full bloom, thereby offering further
support for the strong ties between nation and novel. The first Icelandic novel
Piltur og stúlka [
A Boy and a Girl] by Jón Thoroddsen was published in 1850, the year before the pivotal
national assembly in which the Icelandic delegates under the leadership of
independence hero Jón Sigurðsson refused to adopt the Danish constitution.
However, the novel form first rose to prominence with Halldór Laxness, whose
first novel was published the year after the establishing of a sovereign state
in 1918. Following the publication of his major novels in the 1930s and 40s, the
novel became the national art form par excellence. Perhaps the only cultural
event of the 20th century of greater significance than Laxness’s Nobel Prize
award in 1955 was the return of the original manuscripts of the medieval sagas
from Denmark beginning in 1971. In fact, it is imperative to address Laxness’s
oeuvre in the context of Iceland’s literary heritage:
Laxness helped make the novel a significant genre in Iceland. Through his
[novels of the 1930s] he changed the shape of literary history, creating
a new artistic mirror of national importance … Laxness was of course
making his own entrance into literary history by first elevating the
genre of the novel, and then bringing about a kind of settlement of saga
and novel … He became the champion of a national epic identity, which
was defined by history but rejuvenated through his modern, realist
narrative. (Eysteinsson and Þorvaldsson 265-66)
This is evinced not only in his own fiction—for example, the old
manuscripts are at the centre of
Íslandsklukkan [
Iceland’s Bell] and the saga heritage is being rewritten in
Gerpla
[
The Happy Warriors]—but also various extra-textual activities like his controversial
publications of the sagas in modern spelling in the 1940s.
Halldór Guðmundsson opens his recent biography of Laxness by claiming that he “was
Europe’s last national poet” (2008 1). However hyperbolic this claim might be thought,
the extensive national
readership of Laxness may very well be somewhat exceptional. Even after his
death in 1998 he continues to be debated extensively, with the debates far
transcending literary circles as politicians chime in as well. One suspects that the debates over Laxness’s life
and work are this heated because they are ultimately about Icelandic national
identity itself. All in all, Laxness may be the paramount example of the
explicit ties between nation and novel. A case in point, Hallgrímur Helgason
chose the title Höfundur Íslands [The Author of Iceland] for his novel addressing the life of Laxness. In analyzing Helgason’s
literary struggle with Laxness in this work and elsewhere Alda Björk
Valdimarsdóttir reverts to Harold Bloom’s theory of anxiety of influence
(147-52) which describes how writers respond to and grapple with the artistic
reputation of their predecessors. As we will see, the notion of an anxiety of
influence is equally apt in describing the relationship between Icelandic
filmmakers and the national literary heritage.
One of the numerous merits of Pascale Casanova’s essential work La République mondiale des letters [The World Republic of Letters] is her explication of an
“international literary space”. It strives to explain how national literatures are evaluated
through international competition. As with most other things, there is great
inequality to be found between large and small nations. Casanova defines small
countries by their marginalized languages and their lack of literary tradition
(as compared to English or French). As regards
the first criterion Iceland may be small, but its long and voluminous literary
tradition grants it some weight in the international literary space: “In the world
republic of letters, the richest spaces are also the oldest,
which is to say the ones that were the first to enter into literary
competition and whose national classics came also to be regarded as
universal classics” (82-83). The active promotion of the literary heritage abroad, organized or not,
attempts to further centre Icelandic literature (and by implication the nation)
in the international literary space: “In proclaiming the antiquity of their literary
foundation and stressing
the continuity of their national history, nations seek to establish
themselves as legitimate contestants in international competition” (2004 240).
. Thus, as
with many other things, national pride is generated by foreign appreciation.
Casanova’s model applies equally well to the intrinsic ties between national
revival (or the modern construction of nationhood) in Iceland and the rise of
Romanticism in the nineteenth century along with that of the novel in the
twentieth. As she says: “In the case of ‘small’ countries, the emergence of a new
literature is
indissociable from the appearance of a new nation” (104). The Icelandic Romanticists instigated a “nascent literary space”
by turning what were “merely” stories, oral or written, into
literature through a process Casanova defines as littérisation: “Ancient legends and traditional narratives, unearthed and ennobled,
gradually came to inspire countless poems, novels, stories, and
plays” (2004 226). As already mentioned, this process culminated in the novels of Laxness,
whose international pedigree further enforced his national pedigree and cultural
capital. It is noteworthy that the novels by Laxness (save for his late
modernist period) have arguably more in common with the nineteenth-century novel
than early twentieth-century European modernism. Again, Casanova’s historical
model provides an explanation by claiming that it is only after a national
tradition has established itself that formal revolts can take place: “Whereas national
writers, fomenters of the first literary revolts, rely
on the literary models of national tradition, international writers draw
upon this transnational repertoire of literary techniques in order to
escape being imprisoned in national tradition” (2004 327). As the novel had only just about established
itself as the national medium in Iceland at mid-twentieth
century, the arrival of modernism was accordingly delayed. If the 1960s saw a
formal revolt take place in Icelandic prose, including Laxness’s own novel
Kristnihald undir jökli [Under the Glacier], Icelandic national cinema took little notice of it when established
in the early 1980s (following the founding of the Icelandic Film Fund in 1978)
and reverted to the older tradition. However, the precedent was set long before,
when explicitly national stories began gracing the silver screen in the early
twentieth century—but with a notable twist.
Although the Romanticists had instigated an Icelandic literary space, a country
of less than 100,000 inhabitants, most of whom were poor farmers, offered little
in terms of writing careers. In fact, Hallgrímsson and most of his fellow
Romanticists were students in Copenhagen who composed poetry in their free time.
Thus, when in the first decades of the twentieth century a new generation of
aspiring writers desired to devote themselves fully to literature it was only
logical that they should try their luck in Copenhagen—since Iceland was at the
time a colony of Denmark, they were Danish citizens after all. Falling within
that brief return to Romanticism in the early twentieth century imaginatively
titled Neoromanticism, they have been grouped together in Icelandic literary
history as the Varangians, evoking the travels of Vikings during the golden
age.
Most prominent of the Neoromantic Varangians were Jóhann Sigurjónsson, Guðmundur
Kamban and Gunnar Gunnarsson. Their work could be defined as transnational, with
one nation being displayed/narrated for the audience/readership of another, as
it dealt almost solely with Iceland but was written in Danish.
Consequently the national status of the Neoromanticists was and remains shrouded
in uncertainty, and the writers in question have been somewhat marginalized in
Icelandic literary history as they wrote primarily in Danish, and mostly erased
from Danish literary history as they were Icelandic. In this they were primary
examples of what Casanova has named the tragedy of translated men:
As “translated men,” they are caught in a dramatic structural
contradiction that forces them to choose between translation into a
literary language that cuts them off from their compatriots, but that
gives them literary existence, and retreat into a small language that
condemns them to invisibility or else to a purely national literary
existence. (2004 257)
Considering their transnational status, albeit a qualified one, it is
perhaps a little surprising that their work should be the first
“Icelandic” literature to be adapted to the global medium
of cinema.
Jóhann Sigurjónsson came to prominence earliest when his play Bjærg-Ejvind og hans hustru [The Outlaw and his Wife] became a major hit when staged in Copenhagen in 1912. It was based on the life of the
eighteenth-century Icelandic outlaw Mountain-Eyvindur whose legend had achieved
mythical status. In the play Eyvindur, disguised under the name Kári, works as a
labourer at a rich farm owned and run by the widow Halla, and the two soon
become romantically involved. However, Halla is also being pursued by the county
magistrate Björn who exposes Kári’s real identity when she refuses Björn’s
marriage proposal. Halla and Eyvindur escape to the mountains where despite
considerable hardship they live happily for years along with their daughter Tóta
and fellow outlaw Arnes. Eventually, though, their hide-out is discovered by
Björn and his posse. Again Halla and Eyvindur escape, but not without a
sacrifice. At the play’s climax Halla throws Tóta, now three years old, down a
waterfall rather than have her captured by Björn. The final scene depicts Halla
and Eyvindur as having grown distant from one another and suffering from hunger
in old age as a blizzard rages outside their shelter.
In addition to setting and characters, local specificities are presented in
referencing the sagas, the location of Eyvindur’s hideout in Hveravellir, and the national cuisine in the form of shark and the
spirit brennivín—which also remains a quintessential
national signifier in more recent films like Stuttur
Frakki [Behind Schedule] (1993, Gísli Snær Erlingsson) and Á köldum
klaka [Cold Fever] (1995, Friðrik Þór Friðriksson). A strong correlation is made between
Iceland’s extraordinary nature and the play’s larger-than-life characters.
Eyvindur himself proclaims: “Jeg er Bjærgenes Konge. Ilden paa min Arne gaar aldrig
ud, hverken Dag eller Nat.
Hele Landet er mit, saa langt jeg kan øjne. Det er mine Jøkler, som danner Elvene;
naar jeg bliver vred, vokser de—Stenene skærer Tænder under Strømmen…” [I am king of the hills! The fire on my hearth never dies, day or night. The country
is mine, as far as my eyes can reach. Mine are the glaciers that make the streams!
When I get angry, they swell, and the stones gnash their teeth against the current…] (1911 69-70; 1916 36). This exotic primitivism was to become typical of the representation
of
Iceland in the works of the Varangians.
Following its success in Copenhagen Bjærg-Ejvind og hans
hustru was widely translated and staged around Europe. In Sweden it
was directed by Victor Sjöström, who also played the role of Eyvindur.
Sigurjónsson himself encouraged Sjöström, who had already directed a number of
films, to adapt the play. The resulting film was released in 1917 and was to
become pivotal for the international breakthrough of Swedish cinema at large and
the career of Sjöström in particular, which would take him to Hollywood a few
years later. Sigurjónsson on the other hand was to die prematurely in 1919.
Presenting dialogue through intertitles in often unchanged form, Sjöström’s film
adaptation is remarkably faithful in every regard. As a consequence certain
portions of the film are quite theatrical, but the film comes into its own
during the mountain scenes. It is ultimately the representation of nature that
sets the film apart from the play. Certainly, the play goes to great lengths in
presenting harrowing natural settings, e.g. the rather detailed scene at the
beginning of the third part involves a deep river canyon, a waterfall, a glacier
and walls of lava. Clearly, it is a scene that is not easily staged
realistically in a theatre, while cinema can capture nature without any props or
special effects. Filmed in the Lapland of northern Sweden, as Iceland was not a
feasible option due to WWI, Berg-Ejvind och hans hustru [The Outlaw and his Wife](1917) captures the robust and harrowing natural settings of
Sigurjónsson’s play in a manner not possible on stage. Sigurjónsson himself
acknowledged this: “[The] heaven above [Eyvindur and Halla.] The stars. The night.
The
morning with its gentle light and the day with its long shadows.
Sjöström has penetrated deeply into the heart of the poem before
translating it to the screen, so as if to give it back to me, enriched
and saturated with beauty … I have no hesitation in declaring what
Victor Sjöström has succeeded in doing here as metteur-en-scène and
director, as being a work of genius” (as quoted by Forslund 68). In a review of Bjærg-Ejvind og hans hustru the
influential French critic Louis Delluc also picked up on the particular ability
of cinema to capture nature: “And the public is swept away with emotion. For the public
is awestruck by
the barren landscapes, the mountains, the rustic costumes, both the
austere ugliness and the acute lyricism of such closely observed
feelings, the truthfulness of the long scenes which focus exclusively on
the couple, the violent struggles, the high tragic end of the two aged
lovers who escape life through a final embrace in a desert-like
snowscape” (188). The few changes Sjöström made involved first and foremost staging
scenes
that had only been presented through dialogue in the play. Most important of
these is the scene in which Eyvindur can be seen hanging off a high and steep
cliff on a rope, while Arnes (Nils Arehn) infatuated by Halla (Edith Erastoff)
flirts with the idea of cutting the rope. In the play Arnes does confess to
Halla about the incident, but it is never staged. The film scene created on the
basis of the dialogue is striking evidence of cinema’s particular ability to
capture nature.
I also draw attention to this scene because a very similar scene forms the
climax of Guðmundur Kamban’s play and film Hadda Padda.
Working as a playwright and a stage director in Copenhagen, Kamban had his first
and perhaps greatest success when Hadda Padda was
staged in 1914. Although set in contemporary Iceland, Hadda
Padda was clearly somewhat influenced by Bjærg-Ejvind og hans hustru
in that it relies on a similar romantic correlation between Iceland’s barren
nature and the emotional extremes of its characters. Kamban was soon to turn to
more cosmopolitan and modern themes, setting many of his plays in New York, but
he reverted to Hadda Padda (1924) when directing his
first film ten years later. The title character (Clara Pontoppidan) is devoted
to her parents and fiancé Ingólfur (Svend Methling) while her younger sister
Kristrún (Alice Frederiksen) mischievously replaces one boyfriend with another.
Hadda Padda’s character changes quickly after Ingólfur breaks off their
engagement having been seduced by Kristrún. At the play’s climax Hadda Padda
tries to take Ingólfur with her when she throws herself down a sheer cliff.
Apart from the role of Kamban himself, both film and play were first and
foremost Danish productions. In fact, the film’s indoor scenes bear a much
greater resemblance to Danish interiors than Icelandic ones, as they were shot
in a studio in Copenhagen. However, in line with the work’s romanticization of
Icelandic nature, the outdoor scenes were shot in Iceland. Stage descriptions had
created various challenges for theatrical productions, as in the case of Bjærg-Ejvind og hans hustru earlier, and almost resulted
in the play not being staged at all. Most notable in this regard is the fourth
and last part where the final encounter between Ingólfur and Hadda Padda is set
in a deep ravine, with a waterfall in the background and a receding mist. If the framing and other camerawork of the filmed scene
remains theatrical, the film images fully capture the harrowing natural setting.
Ingólfur and supporting character Steindór (Paul Rohde) help Hadda Padda rappel
down a ravine with a rope tied around her waist as she claims to have dropped a
jewel off the edge. Her devious and desperate plan is to pull Ingólfur, who has
the other end of the rope wrapped around himself, down with her and thus unite
both in death as they had been previously in life. Being pulled towards the edge
Ingólfur and Steindór finally realize her intentions. The latter calls out to
Ingólfur: “Du maa slippe Rebet. Det er det eneste Raad. Det er bedre, hun styrter
ned alene,
end at hun trækker os begge med sig. Du maa slippe. Ellers slipper jeg.” [You must
let go of the rope. That’s all you can do. It is better that she falls alone,
than that she drag both of us with her. You must let go. Or I’ll let go.] (1914 121;
1917 79). Ingólfur will not hear of it but when he is about to succeed in pulling
Hadda Padda back to safety she cuts the rope with a knife and falls to her
death.
The similarities between this scene and the one in Bjærg-Ejvind
og hans hustru are striking: the harrowing natural setting, the
central character hanging on a rope off a sheer cliff, the question of letting
go of the rope, and close-ups in both films of the knife cutting at the rope. In
this as much else, the first two major Icelandic successes on the Danish stage
appealed to the audience by extensive paralleling of Icelandic nature and the
high emotional intensity of their central characters, and when filmed revealed
the medium’s unique capability in capturing extreme natural settings. Nature has
ever since remained the defining character of much Icelandic cinema.
In the long run the most successful of the Icelandic writers in Copenhagen was
novelist Gunnar Gunnarsson. In 1912 he not only helped Sigurjónsson translate
Bjærg-Ejvind og hans hustru to Icelandic but also
published his first novel Ormarr Ørlygsson. It was to
become the first volume in Af Borgslægtens historie [The Story of the Borg Family] , but it was the third volume Gæst den enøjede [Guest the One-Eyed] that turned out to be his breakthrough, and The Story
of the Borg Family was eventually translated into thirteen
languages. It is characterized by the same
romantic presentation of Iceland as Bjærg-Ejvind og hans
hustru and Hadda Padda. However, it often
makes explicit what is only implicit in the plays. For example, the very opening
of Ormarr Ørlygsson lists over ten place names in
describing its setting. Cultural specificities are described in detail and the
ethnic origins of the Borg family are traced to Norwegians and Celts. Repeatedly
it reverts to characters’ love for both land and nature. Af
Borgslægtens historie is a family saga reflecting the state of the
nation through three generations, including the ties to Denmark and emigration
to North America. In this it fully supports the case made for the extremely
strong ties between novel and nation, although its national status is
complicated by being written in Danish.
At the center of the novel are the rich and powerful farmer Örlygur and his two
sons Ormar and Ketill. Ormar, who is ten years older than Ketill, is described
as lofty and dreamy but also melancholic and heavy-hearted. The emotional range
of the character is romantically seen as stemming from Icelandic nature:
Det tunge Drømmersind, der glødede i hans mørke Øjnes ofte fraværende og fanatiske
Blik, røbede det frodige og barokke Fantasiliv, som den islandske Naturs ensomme,
mægtige—paa engang frodige og barsk-golde—Vælde, har fremelsket som et Hovedtræk i
sine Børns Karakter. (1912 42)
[The wistful, dreamy thoughts that burned in his dark, passionate eyes,
betrayed that rich and abundant imagination peculiar to the sons of
Iceland, fostered by the great solitude and desolate yet fertile
grandeur of the land itself.] (1922 32-33)
The oppositional elements of Ormar’s character are also found in his
equal devotion to both father and farm, and conversely his desire to travel and
see the world outside Iceland. Although not concurring with his son’s dreamy and
artistic bent, Örlygur arranges for him to go to Copenhagen to study his
treasured violin. However, on his debut ten years later, and all set to conquer
the music world with his natural talent, Ormar unexpectedly throws away all
tradition and regresses to “primeval nakedness”: “Og pludselig kom der over ham en
uimodstaaelig Lyst til med et Sæt at give dem Liv.
… [at] ruske i dem og ryste dem til deres inderste Sjæl, slænge, sem Vulkanen slænger
sin glødende Ildmasse.” [Then suddenly there came over him an irresistible desire
to jerk [the audience] back
to life.
… To tear at their sense, to render their innermost souls, to fling at them, like a
fiery volcanic eruption] (1912 92-93; 1922 62). Having thus
forfeited his career by breaking all the rules—however brilliantly—Ormar returns
to Iceland.
His second stay in Copenhagen is more successful as he becomes a respected and
extremely wealthy businessman. The second return to Iceland is, however,
anything but pleasant as his brother Ketill, now a pastor, is also returning
with his new Danish wife Alma despite having earlier seduced their foster sister
Rúna. To save the reputation of the family Ormar marries the pregnant Rúna and
settles at the Borg farm. Having himself had eyes on Borg, Ketill uses the
authority of his pastoral position to turn the congregation against Ormar and
Örlygur. However, in what was to be Ketill’s moment of triumph, the exposure of
Ormar and Rúna’s supposedly illicit child ultimately reveals his own
wrongdoings. The events leave his father dead and his wife mad, and Ketill
disappears and is believed to have committed suicide. The third volume opens
many years later with an encounter between Örlygur, the son of Ketill and Rúna,
and a highly respected ascetic wanderer, the one-eyed Gestur of its title, who
turns out to be Ketill who has returned to Borg before his death. A changed man,
he is redeemed through his faith in God and forgiven by all. Ketill/Gestur can
now be linked to the land like Ormar earlier: “Alt dette …bragte den samtidig i saa stærk en Harmoni med det vilde og forrevne Landskab, at
den ligesom hørte dér og ingen andre Steder hjemme.” [He had a peculiarly close relationship
with the ghastly and desolate land of the wilderness.
It was as if he belonged there and nowhere else] (1913b 4; 1944 261).
The explicit ties made between Ormar and Gestur’s perceived Icelandicness and
their harsh natural surroundings were already evident in Hadda Padda and
Eyvindur/Kári. However, the implicit opposition between modernized and civil
Denmark and the archaic and primitive Iceland of the plays is first explicitly
asserted in the novel. Ormar’s dreams of going abroad are equally dreams of
encountering modernity, which are contrasted with Iceland’s pre-modern working
methods and traditional culture:
Den store Verden raabte paa ham, og alt hans Blod higede mod den. Han vidste at der
ude, hvor han nu kom til, fandtes forunderlige Maskiner, der udrettede Menneskearbejde.
… Han længtes efter at komme til at tænde et Lys blot ved at dreje paa en Knap. Og
tale med at Menneske langt borte gennem en Traad, som han forestillede sig hul indvendig.
... Han skulde bo i en By, hvor Gaderne var som dybe Spalter mellem kæmpemæssige Klipper—rigtige
befolkede Klipper, ikke med Jætter og Elverfolk, men med Mennesker af Kød og Blod.
(1912 64)
The great world called to him, and every fibre in him answered to the
call. He knew that there, where he was going, were wonderful machines
contrived to do the work of men. … Think—to fill a room with light by
the mere turning of a switch! And talk with people through a wire—which
he imagined as hollow … He would live in a city with streets like deep
chasms between unscalable cliffs—cave-hollowed cliffs peopled with human
beings, instead of giants and goblins. (1922 44)
In fact, Ormar’s economic success is a modern shipping empire that also
literally imports modernity to Iceland from Europe. However, the concluding
image of the Icelander is not Ormar the cosmopolitan businessman, who has in
fact given up his business to become a farmer at Borg, but Gestur the one-eyed
who roams the Icelandic wilderness having reached the heights of asceticism (the
ultimate opposition to modern life) in order to pay for his uncivilized and
unrestrained crimes.
Many Icelanders were concerned about the image of the country presented in
foreign films, and its real or perceived backwardness was particularly resented.
As Helga Kress points out, some Icelanders found the Neoromantic image of
Iceland presented in Denmark questionable as well (166). It was an
image after all intended to appeal to a Danish audience and readership rather
than an Icelandic one. If such was the general drift of the work generated by
Icelandic authors writing in Denmark in the early twentieth century, the second
volume of Gunnarsson’s novel
Den danske frue på Hof [
The Danish Lady at Hof] went to unparalleled lengths in this regard. Although narrated in the
third-person it often presents Alma’s subjective perspective of Iceland:
Alt dette var so fremmed, at nu, da hun betragtede det med Ro og Eftertanke, virkede
det overvældende, virkelighedsfjernt og utroligt paa én Gang. Hun sad og kom til at
fryse indvendig . Hun mindedes et flygtigt Indtryk fra Borg, før om Dagen. Hun havde
staaet et Øjeblik og set udover Bygden, Fjeldene og Havet; og det havde slaaet hende,
at kun Havet havde en grøn Farve. Alle Enge, og Tunene omkring Gaardene, saa’ gule
og falmede ud. Det Efteraarsgrønne, hun var vant til fra Markerne hjemme i Danmark,
saa’s ingen Steder. (1913a 10)
[It was all so strange to her that now, looking at it calmly, it seemed
unreal, incredible. Alma turned cold at heart as she looked. She
remembered her first survey of the landscape earlier in the day, from
Borg; she had found nothing green in it all save the sea. All the
meadows and pastures round the house seemed withered and grey; the
autumn green of the field in Denmark was nowhere to be seen.] (1922 112)
Similar introductory descriptions of the country also take place through
dialogue:
-:
Det glæder mig, at du ikke føler dig frastødt af Landet.
-:
Frastødt? — Jeg føler mig bjergtagen. Min Vilje har pludselig forladt mig og er bleven
til en Skæbne udenfor mig — og udenfor min Sjæls og min Forstands Rækkevidde. Og jeg
føler en vis grublandet Lykke ved, at det er store og fjerne Magter, som styrer mit
Liv.
-:
Bare du ikke bliver overtroisk. Det er nu Folks Fejl her i Landet, at de tror paa
Gengangere, Fylgjer, Varsler, Skæbne og al Slags Djævelskab.
(1913a 27)
[Ketill:]:
Well, I’m glad you do not find the country altogether
forbidding, Many people do, you know.
[Alma:]: Forbidding! I feel as if
I were under a spell. No will of my own, just a thing in the hands of
Fate. And I love the feeling that there are great and distant powers
that have taken my life into their hands.
[Ketill:]: You had better be
careful, or you will be growing superstitious—it is a common failing
among the people here. They believe in all kinds of spirits, portents,
omens, fate, and all that sort of thing.
(1922 121)
Thus a Danish readership is invited to experience and get to know Iceland
through the character of Alma and share her bewilderment, fear and fascination.
In this
Den danske frue på Hof remarkably foreshadows
the central transnational strategy of contemporary Icelandic cinema—the
bewildered foreigner visiting the country (again
Stuttur
Frakki and
Á köldum klaka could be taken as examples). This is
quite an exceptional strategy for Icelandic literature as, even though many
novels will make use of foreign characters, the novels themselves are not
available to foreign readers given that they are written in Icelandic. On the other
hand many recent Icelandic films have followed the example of the novel
Af
Borgslægtens historie by reverting to a foreign language in inviting a foreign
readership/audience to visit Iceland.
Along with its commercial success this narrative technique made Af Borgslægtens historie feasible for adaptation. Filmed in the
summer of 1919, it was a Nordisk Film production with primarily Danish cast and
crew, including director Gunnar Sommerfeldt who also played Ketill/Gestur.
However, authenticity was secured by shooting both interior and exterior scenes
in Iceland, having Gunnarsson join the crew in an advisory capacity, and casting
the Icelander Guðmundur Thorsteinsson as the spirited Ormar. The filmmakers went
to great lengths in faithfully following the extensive and episodic scope of the
novel, resulting in the epic length of three and a half hours (at least as it
was screened in two parts in Iceland). Nature
settings take centre place as before in both Berg-Ejvind och
hans hustru and Hadda Padda, and the film
cinematically intertwines these and Ormar’s character along the lines of the
novel. Most effective in this regard are shots of Ormar playing the violin in a
medium close-up superimposed over various shots of mountains, rivers and
waterfalls. As if not fully trusting the visuals, intertitles assert: “I sit Spil
fremtryllede han sit skønne Lands paa een Gang frodige og barske Vælde…” [With
the violin’s tones he called forth the beauty and the awesomeness of his
land.] Ormar might very well be the first of Icelandic cinema’s many
children of nature.
This period of Icelandic literature came to an end almost as quickly as it had
begun, and although Gunnarsson and Kamban continued to work and write in Danish
they soon parted with their Neoromantic roots. There seem to be at least two
reasons for this turnaround. Jón Yngvi Jóhannsson has argued that
Danish-Icelandic literature, as he refers to the works of the Varangians,
functioned as a counter-identity for the Danish audience/readership
(40-41). Although
there is no question that the Icelandic writers had themselves enforced the
notion of Icelandic primitivism, they resented being relegated in the long run
to the status of regional artists or even cultural ethnographers. The
establishing of a sovereign Icelandic state in 1918, although under the Danish
king, caused various political complications and made their works somewhat
nationally and even politically suspect (ibid.). Following a strict
nation-state demarcation, Danish-Icelandic literature was nothing but Danish,
but after 1918 a broader horizon introduced other destinations than Copenhagen.
If you wanted to make it in the big world why not go to Hollywood?—that is what
Halldór Laxness did.
If contemporary Icelandic literature must linger in the shadow of Halldór Laxness
and the sagas, cinema must do so twice over as in Iceland the medium itself is
perceived to be secondary to literature in terms of cultural prestige. It is
fitting that it was during the sovereign year of 1918 that Laxness, only sixteen
years old, wrote his first novel, Barn náttúrunnar [Child of Nature]. As suggested by its title it was influenced by Neoromanticism, and
although generally considered a minor work in the Laxness oeuvre, it would seem
to have been influential enough to lend its name to possibly the best-known film
of Icelandic cinema outside Iceland—Barn náttúrunnar [Children of Nature]
(1992, Friðrik Þór Friðriksson). But if Laxness also followed in the
footsteps of the Varangians by trying his luck in Copenhagen, where he wrote a
few Neoromantic short stories (including Den Tusindaarige
Islænding [The Thousand Year Old Icelander]) for newspapers, he seems to have had little interest in establishing
himself as a writer in Danish. He soon traveled to other
European countries and towards the end of 1927 he arrived in Los Angeles ready
to make his way in the movies.
During his short stay Laxness wrote two film treatments, Kári
Káran or [Judged by a Dog] and Salka Valka or [A Woman in Pants]. Despite hiring an agent,
changing his name to Hall d’Or, and getting in touch with talent connected to
Iceland, including western star Bill Cody and director Sjöström (now Seastrom),
Laxness’s hopes of getting the treatments filmed came to naught. In a letter
written in June 1928 Laxness asserts that MGM had agreed to film Salka Valka that same summer in Iceland (Halldór
Guðmundsson 2008 144). However, nothing came of MGM’s tentative plans
and Laxness soon left Hollywood disillusioned. His encounter with the American
social-realist novel was to have a more lasting impact upon him than Hollywood,
and when Laxness finally returned to California in 1959 he was there to visit
Upton Sinclair among other old acquaintances (Halldór Guðmundsson 2008 391).
If Neoromanticism had run its course in literature and theatre, its melodramatic
extremes were ideally suited to Hollywood, and the film treatment of Salkabears witness to this. Laxness’s “topography”
could well be used as a definition of Icelandic Neoromanticism: “An atmosphere of
hard struggle for life, and misery. Uncultivated
passions. The characters are rude, naïve and primitive. Nature is
phenomenally barren and wild; the sea is usually restless and the
psychology of the characters is closely tied together with this wild
nature” (2004 11). The orphan girl Salka Valka grows up among boys and must make a
living
like a man in adulthood, while refusing the advances made by the upper-class
Angantyr and the vulgar brute Arnaldur. The latter saves her from an organized
gang-rape attempt by fighting the culprits, but ends up having an erotically
charged fight with Salka Valka himself. Nonetheless, she refuses Angantyr’s
marriage proposal and is seen “kissing [Arnaldur’s whip!] with all the voluptuousness
and pathos of the
primitive” (2004 18). In general, the treatment follows the Neoromantic portrayal
of
Icelanders as primitives (and “primitive” is truly the key
word of the treatment repeated over and over again) resulting from the harsh
natural conditions. Laxness, in fact, partly earned a living in Hollywood by
giving atmospheric lectures on Iceland, in which among other things he praised
the literary merit of Jóhann Sigurjónsson, Guðmundur Kamban and Gunnar
Gunnarsson (Halldór Guðmundsson 2008 141). The character of
Salka Valka as a strong independent woman inherently tied to nature—not to
mention her name—owed a lot to both Halla and Hadda Padda. Such “girls of
nature” have also become a cornerstone of Icelandic cinema and were for
example recently reincarnated in the characters played by Margrét
Vilhjálmsdóttir in both Mávahlátur [The Seagull’s Laughter] (2001, Ágúst Guðmundsson) and Fálkar [Falcons]
(2002, Friðrik Þór Friðriksson).
Despite working on an English translation of Vefarinn mikli frá
Kasmír [The Great Weaver of Kashmir], his breakthrough novel in Iceland, while in Hollywood, and harbouring
hopes of success in the US as elsewhere, Laxness does not seem to have been
interested in becoming a writer in English any more than in Danish. It is
illuminating to compare the film treatment of Salka
Valka and the novel eventually written in 1931-1932; the difference
between the two is suggestive of the different relations of the two media to
nation. Although the film was to be set in Iceland, it offered only a
superficial glimpse of the country, relying on an excessively stereotypical
vision of Iceland (which could be replaced by any forlorn place in the world).
But then it was a script written for Hollywood with Greta Garbo in mind. The
novel on the other hand is written in Icelandic and gives an extensive and
detailed commentary on the nation. Devoid of its Neoromantic roots in the film
treatment, the fishing village of the novel has become something of a microcosm
of Icelandic society in the political turmoil of the early twentieth century—and
the “primitive” whip has been put aside. The US publication of the novel hit the
nail on the head by extending the title to Salka Valka: A Novel
of Iceland (1936).
Considering the novel’s origin in a film treatment, it is perhaps appropriate
that Salka Valka was the first of Laxness’s works to be
adapted to film (1954). It was also the first project instigated by the company
Edda-film, which had been established with the specific purpose of bringing the
national literary heritage to the screen, but the production was ultimately a
Swedish one—directed by Arne Mattson, shot by Sven Nykvist, with the adult Salka
Valka played by Gunnel Broström. The film contrasts grotesque interior
scenes shot in a studio in Sweden and characterized by menacing lighting with
breathtaking panoramas of Icelandic nature perfectly captured on location by
Nykvist. This is no mere visual contrast as Icelandic nature is presented as
having notably redeeming qualities as compared to the misery of life in the
village. The reunion and climax of the film depicts Salka Valka and Arnaldur (no
longer the brute of the film treatment) alone in spectacular natural
surroundings with an elevated music score. In this Salka
Valka perfectly foreshadowed the role of nature in much of Icelandic
cinema to come.
However, the first domestically produced film adaptation of a Laxness novel did
not materialize until 1984 when Þorsteinn Jónsson’s Atómstöðin [Atomic Station] premiered. In the quarter of a century that has since passed only two
more adaptations of Laxness’s work have seen the light of day, Kristnihald undir jökli [Under the Glacier] (1989) and Ungfrúin góða og húsið [Honour of the House] (1999)—both directed by Laxness’s daughter Guðný Halldórsdóttir. Thus
even today Laxness’s most celebrated novels, Sjálfstætt
fólk [Independent People], Heimsljós [World Light], and Islandsklukkan have still not been filmed and Arne Mattson’s
version of Salka Valka remains its only adaptation. The
reasons are no doubt varied. Due to their extensive scope the novels are not
easily adapted to film without substantial changes. Also, as
period pieces they would call for high budgets, making them an economical
challenge for a small national cinema. In many ways the novels are better suited
to television serials similar to those produced by the British Broadcasting
Corporation presenting the works of Charles Dickens or Jane Austen. However, the
financial resources of Icelandic television are even more meagre than those of
its film industry. Thus the only two elaborate Laxness adaptations made for
television were extensive European co-productions directed by Rolf Hädrich—Brekkukotsannáll [The Fish Can Sing] (1972) and Paradísarheimt [Paradise Reclaimed] (1980). Perhaps due to his geographical distance Hädrich approached his
source rather more freely than his Icelandic colleagues—adding a self-reflexive
frame story to Brekkukotsannáll while still remaining
faithful to the original text.
Unlike the novella Ungfrúin góða og húsið, the novels
Atómstöðin and Kristnihald undir
jökli are important works of Laxness’s oeuvre, but they are hardly
at the centre of the canon. They are also more manageable for film adaptation
since their scope is more restrained temporally and spatially than the epic span
of Sjálfstætt fólk, Heimsljós
and Íslandsklukkan. However, the extreme reverence in
which Laxness’s key works are held has had an equally inhibiting effect. This
reverence would seem to have discouraged filmmakers from taking creative
liberties with the original novels that could have helped overcome financial
obstacles. Perhaps the novels’ explicit and apparently unseverable ties to
Icelandic history and society also make them difficult material for the
transnational production practices typical of today’s European cinema. On the
other hand, the considerable international renown of Laxness would surely be of
help in foreign marketing and Laxness would certainly be likely to attract the
local audience to theatres.
Some of the difficulties and limitations of a small national cinema are
crystallized in the long-delayed production of Sjálfstætt
fólk as this most treasured work of modern Icelandic literature
waits to be filmed—in English. According to the project’s producer Snorri
Þórisson, it is the desire to give the novel a respectful adaptation that calls
for an English language production as it allows for a much higher
budget (2004). Þórisson believes that a film adaptation of Sjálfstætt fólk would have a considerable global potential
as it has for long been the best-selling Icelandic novel in translation.
Furthermore, he points out that even though its central character may be
“specifically Icelandic, people around the world can relate to him.” In
fact, as scripted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (whose credits include A Room with a View[1985] and Howards
End [1992]), the proposed film is very much along the lines of the
English heritage school, famous for its many faithful adaptations. However,
Sjálfstætt fólk still awaits filming.
A common misconception regarding Icelandic film history is the supposedly great
role of the sagas in Icelandic cinema. But if the works of Laxness have been notably
underexplored by Icelandic filmmakers, the sagas have been spectacularly
ignored. The fact remains that only a single saga has been adapted to the
screen, Gísla saga Súrssonar [Gisli Sursson’s Saga] in Ágúst Guðmundsson’s Útlaginn [The Outlaw] (1981), and although important to the canon holds little of the extreme
reverence shown Njáls saga and Egils
saga. Útlaginn was a remarkably faithful adaptation
of the original source and also its historical setting. In fact, the film’s
narrative is almost unfathomable without a prior knowledge of the Saga, making
the film incomprehensible to most foreign viewers. However, at this early point
the foreign market was of little concern to Icelandic filmmakers, and Útlaginn’s domestic box-office success and subsequent
place alongside the original Gísla saga Súrssonar on
the national elementary school curriculum should have provided plenty of impetus
for further saga adaptations. However, subsequently it was only director Hrafn
Gunnlaugsson who was to approach the Viking heritage, but although originating
from an aborted adaptation of Gerpla, Laxness’s
satirical take on the saga heritage, his Hrafninn
flýgur [When the Raven Flies] (1984) was neither a literary adaptation nor a historical reenactment.
It simply handled some of the heritage’s themes and tropes, and quite cavalierly
at that. In fact, Gunnlaugsson opted for a generic approach that bore a greater
resemblance to the works of directors Akira Kurosawa and Sergio Leone than the
reverent approach of Útlaginn (Sørenssen). It is
difficult to determine whether these choices indicate an unusual fearlessness on
the part of the director or are simply strategies intended to sidestep the
weight of the saga literature—its anxiety of influence. Regardless, the
difference in approach no doubt also helps to account for the greater
international success of Hrafninn flýgur, and the
subsequent Scandinavian production partnership of its two follow-ups Í skugga hrafnsins [In the Shadow of the Raven] (1988) and Hvíti víkingurinn [The White Viking] (1991). Indeed, Gunnlaugsson’s Scandinavian (albeit primarily Swedish)
success and financial support in depicting Iceland’s
“primitive” past is more than a little reminiscent of the
Varangians of the early twentieth century.
Apart from Útlaginn and Gunnlaugsson’s Viking trilogy
the literary heritage has been all but evaded. The sagas do call for extensive
budgets in the manner of the longer novels by Laxness, but if Gísla saga Súrssonar could be filmed with the meagre financial
sources of the early 1980s (although with a more manageable scope than much of
the saga canon), budget restraints are hardly the primary obstacle. Furthermore,
from a narrative point of view, the sagas are in many ways splendid material for
adaptation. Their highly objective third-person narration, in which feelings and
emotions are revealed through action and dialogue, is quite comparable to
conventional film narration. Additionally, they are characterized by dramatic
situations, exciting plots, colourful characters, and set in spectacular natural
surroundings—the hallmark of Icelandic cinema. The only credible explanation for
the lack of interest in the saga heritage on the part of Icelandic filmmakers
is the extreme reverence in which the sagas are held and anxiety regarding the
reception of filmed adaptations. A notable exception is Friðrik Þór
Friðriksson’s experimental short Brennu-Njáls saga
(1981)—another common title for Njáls saga that could
be literally rendered in English as Burnt Njáls saga.
Friðriksson’s short consists literally of a copy of the book being burned.
Although thus a critique of the national celebration of the literary heritage,
the film also crystallizes the underlying anxiety toward it. Having apparently
overcome his anxiety, or at the very least his aversion to adapting the literary
heritage, Friðriksson had planned to direct the most expensive Icelandic film to
date. The film in question, the Viking epic Óvinafagnaður [A Gathering of Foes], was to be based on a contemporary novel in which author Einar Kárason
had rewritten the medieval Sturlunga Saga, but as in
the case of Þórisson’s Sjálfstætt fólk, the project
could not be financed and has been shelved.
In fact, the history of Icelandic saga adaptations is one of broken promises and
unrealized projects. In 1923 the plans of Danish director Carl Theodore Dreyer
to make two saga adaptations, with Guðmundur Kamban as an advisor, came to
naught. But it is the continued deferral of filming Njáls saga, the most treasured of all the sagas, that
could be said to constitute a running thread throughout the sporadic production
history of Icelandic cinema. Already in 1919, a group of entrepreneurs had plans
of filming the Saga that never materialized. It probably came closest to being
adapted to the screen during the mid 1960s when Guðlaugur Rósinkranz finished a
script of the Saga intended for an Edda-film production. In the event, the
company failed to secure both foreign co-producers and financial support from
the state. Burdened by fidelity, the surviving script displays few attempts at
confining the Saga’s epic scope, and would no doubt have resulted in a
heavy-handed film.
If Edda-film never succeeded in adapting Njáls saga
into a feature, it did produce a documentary short about the Saga and
participated in the making of a transnational Viking film. Fögur er hlíðin [Iceland: Island of Sagas] (1954, Rune Lindström) depicted some of Njáls
saga’s important locations in addition to staging certain
key events. In 2003 another such film was directed by Björn Br. Björnsson for
television, mixing educational material with similar staging. At the time of
writing, Baltasar Kormákur, director of adaptations 101
Reykjavík (2000) and Mýrin [Jar City] (2006), both of which achieved a degree of international exhibition and
festival success, has ambitious plans of his own for filming Njáls saga, and, as with Friðriksson’s Óvinafagnaður, this adaptation is supposed to become the most
expensive film to be made in Iceland. It remains to be seen whether Kormákur
will be more successful than his many predecessors in bringing his ambitious
saga project to the screen, but it would seem that Njáls
saga is already making way for some kind of Viking genre-bender
inspired by Saga events or themes (Jakob).
Something else altogether, Gabriel Axel’s Den røde
kappe [The Red Mantle] (1967) was a project that Edda-film agreed to participate in, since it
was being shot in Iceland, though Edda finally had little say in it. Abstract
and formalistic, the end result proved to be something close to the exact
opposite of what Edda-film had had in mind with the adaptation of Njáls saga. Den røde kappe was
also poorly received on its initial release in Iceland, and continues to be an
object of ridicule. Even Birgir Thor Møller describes it in his recent survey of
Icelandic film history as “pretentious [and] inadvertently comic” (310).
Quite the contrary, Den røde kappe is among the
most aesthetically innovative feature films shot in Iceland and its creative
handling of Icelandic landscape remains unparalleled. Considering local
expectations regarding the saga heritage and the Viking era, it is easy to
understand the resistance with which the film was received among Icelandic
spectators. Importantly, rather than an adaptation of the Icelandic literary
heritage, it was based on the seventh book of Saxo Grammaticus’ Gesta Danorum [The History of the Danes] , and displayed no interest in realistically depicting the Viking
world, which, like the Icelandic landscape, functioned primarily as a backdrop
to a remarkable exercise in form. The polished look, scant dialogue, beautiful
and clean-shaven Vikings, and vivid homoeroticism broke with all traditional
representations of the heritage. The local objections to the innovative and
otherworldly Viking world presented in Den røde kappe
is indicative of a narrow horizon of expectation and helps explain the creative
difficulty faced by filmmakers interested in tackling the heritage—or, perhaps
more to the point, the lack of such filmmakers.
Icelandic cinema is however not a cinema without adaptations—far from it. In
fact, many of its most successful films at the local box office and some notable
international breakthroughs have been adaptations. Interestingly, two
adaptations of Indriði Sigurðsson’s novels, 79 af
stöðinni [The Girl Gogo] (1962, Erik Balling) and Land og synir [Land and Sons] (1980, Ágúst Guðmundsson), bridge the era of Nordic co-productions and
the establishing of an explicitly national cinema in the early 1980s. Its first
years were also distinguished by faithful and reverent adaptations, including
Þorsteinn Jónsson’s Punktur punktur komma strik [Dot Dot Comma Dash] (1981) and Atómstöðin. Although the most
canonical works of Icelandic literature were left untouched, these adaptations
shared much with what Andrew Higson has defined in the context of English cinema
as the heritage film: “a genre of films which reinvents and reproduces, and in
some case simply invents, a national heritage for the screen … One central
representational strategy of the heritage film is reproduction of literary
texts, artifacts, and landscapes which already have a privileged status within
the accepted definition of the national heritage” (26-27). The emphasis on
heritage is not surprising considering the emergence of Icelandic cinema as a
national institution intended to counter amongst other things the pervasive local
influence of Hollywood filmmaking. The overt reliance on literature may also
stem from the lack of indigenous film tradition and a vying for recognition and
acceptance by a strategic alignment with the national form par excellence.
Remarkably, adaptations suddenly all but evaporated from the scene. Out of the
thirty feature films made in Iceland during the ten years from 1985 to 1994 only
one play and one novel—Kristnihald undir jökli—were
adapted to the silver screen. This dramatic shift is not easily explained but
one suspects that having gained acceptance filmmakers (and a new generation of
these entered the field) felt the need to distance themselves from literature as
evinced amongst other things in the refusal of Friðriksson—the period’s most
important and successful director—to make “myndskreyta bókmenntaarfinn” [illustrations
complementing the
heritage] (Davíðsdóttir). When adaptations finally returned to the fore in the
late 1990s little would seem to have changed in the meantime as heritage
characterized such adaptations as Ungfrúin góða og
húsið, Dansinn [The Dance] (1998, Ágúst Guðmundsson) and Myrkrahöfðinginn [Witchcraft] (1999, Hrafn Gunnlaugsson). However, the pendulum soon swayed to
popular contemporary novels resulting in some box-office success, most notably
in Friðriksson’s Djöflaeyjan [Devils Island] (1996) and Englar alheimsins [Angels of the Universe] (2000). And while these adaptations failed to replicate the
international success of Friðriksson’s earlier work, director Kormákur showed
that success could be had abroad with adaptations of Icelandic literature,
particularly 101 Reykjavík and Mýrin. The latter also exemplifies another new turn in the history
of Icelandic film adaptations—the turn to crime fiction—and a further distancing
from the heritage (Norðfjörð forthcoming). Thus adaptation remains an important
component of Icelandic cinema—as most anywhere else—the pertinent questions is
what sort of adaptation.
The space I have devoted in this essay to films never produced certainly makes
for a somewhat unorthodox adaptation study. But in the case of Iceland—no matter
how paradoxical it may seem—these are arguably the most important adaptations.
The fact that the canonical sagas and novels by Laxness have still to be filmed
is more revealing of the interrelations between Icelandic cinema and literature
than the adaptations that were actually made. There is no one reason that
accounts for their failure to be adapted. Certainly, meagre financial resources
and a limited film tradition are relevant factors. However, during the last
thirty years of continuous film production in Iceland, there would seem to have
been notable anxiety about tackling the literary canon, or conversely, a
resistance, if an intermittent one, to “relegate” cinema to the role of making
literary adaptations. Both are symptomatic of a cinema belonging to a nation
whose identity is so explicitly interwoven with its language and literary
heritage.