Colours, Colour Symbolism, and Social Critique in Halldór Laxness’s Salka Valka

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Halldór Kiljan Laxness is one of the most successful and renowned authors in all of Iceland. The Nobel Laureate has written many well-known works, one of which is his early novel Salka Valka (1931-1932), a political romance that follows the life of a young girl in a remote Icelandic fishing village from age ten to age twenty-five. An interesting feature of Salka Valka is Laxness’s use of colours and colour symbolism. While Laxness employs a wide variety of basic and non-basic colour terms throughout the novel to describe various people, objects, and natural phenomena, most interesting is his use of grey as opposed to other colours. Laxness uses grey to portray the dreary life and destitute people in the desolate and remote Icelandic fishing village of Óseyri, which he juxtaposes against colourful descriptions of the vibrant and flourishing lives of wealthy individuals both within and outside the village. This article examines these and Laxness’s other uses of grey as opposed to other colours in Salka Valka, particularly as they relate to the social and economic critique that, as scholars have noted time and time again, define this novel.