Modernism in the Post-war Icelandic Novel up to 1990

Abstract

ABSTRACT: For centuries Iceland was a rural society. Urbanization accelerated quickly during and after WW II and by 1960 the population was mainly urban. Icelandic novels were predominantly realistic, concerned with social and national issues. In the period 1960 to 1990 several influential authors adopted a modernist mode of narrative, the most prominent being Thor Vilhjálmsson (b. 1925), Svava Jakobsdóttir (1930–2004), and Guðbergur Bergsson (b. 1932). All are first-class writers and masters of the Icelandic language, but otherwise they are quite different. Thor Vilhjálmsson and Svava Jakobsdóttir are mainstream modernists: Thor lyrical and exuberant, expressing reactions of a cultivated European to the post-war world; Svava terser in style and concerned with conventional sex roles, individual freedom and the threats it faces. Guðbergur Bergsson is the most radically modern, constantly deconstructing the words of predecessors and contemporaries, attempting to shock us into an awareness of our language, the constant death-threat hanging over it, its seductive and stupefying effects, and its creative possibilities.