sordidness and suffering that fills the lives of his countrymen in rural Iceland. In exposing the cruelties of rural conditions with all the merciless determination of the naturalist school, the author enraged many Icelanders—who resented having such a brutal picture of their emerging nation published abroad—and impressed liberals all over Europe and America. For all Laxness’s revolutionary vigor, hatred of power of and authority, scorn for bourgeois morality, and anger and grim satire, he still is able to express his artist’s love of beauty. Alongside scenes of coarseness and themes marked by their bitterness, Laxness displays throughoutIndependent People a great compassion and sensitivity, a capacity for tenderness and concern, and a burning devotion to the spirit of individualism and idealism.

The center of interest, however, is always the character Bjartur. At times, his seeming indifference is nothing more than an attempt to cope with life’s harshness. In the spring following Helgi’s disappearance, for example, Bjartur, looking for a lost ewe, finds the decayed body of a young boy, which no longer looks like a human being. Bjartur touches it once or twice with his stick, takes a good pinch of snuff, and leaves. Bjartur reveals, at times, that affection is possible in his life. Although he knows Asta is not his child, she is his favorite. He calls her his “little flower” and is horrified when he finds his fingers undoing the fastenings of her undergarment in the bed they share. He also has a poetic side, for he continually composes complicated verses and teaches the ancient poems of Iceland to Asta. However, poetry is the only fancy he allows himself; all else is harsh reality. To Bjartur, the sheep and the land are the most important things in the world, for after years of debt his only desire is to be considered an independent man. When he brings his bride, Rosa, to Summerhouses, he says that independence is the most important thing in life. He intends to maintain his independence. This is the great irony of the book, for his independence is false; he is completely at the mercy of his environment. His stubbornness and pride lead him to disaster when he refuses to take the advice of wiser men and falls into bankruptcy when he borrows money to build a “real” house, which he hopes will rival the bailiff’s mansion. Bjartur defies everything and everyone. He refuses to believe in either the Christian religion or in the ancient superstitions of the country. In a show of bravado, he defies the spirit of Gunnvor, the witch buried upon his land, who is supposed to have killed most of her children and to have drunk the blood of those who survived. Everyone else in the district adds a rock to her grave when they pass, but this Bjartur refuses to do. Instead, he purchases a headstone for her grave marked “To Gunnvor from Bjartur.” It is after this act of defiance that his financial troubles begin.

Laxness was reared in the country and is able to give an intimate picture of the starkness of Icelandic life on the frontier. This great attention to detail makes the book approach epic proportions. There are, however, some flaws in the author’s style. He often makes authorial intrusions, commenting upon politics, economics, or human nature. The style is also uneven. At times, it is smooth and poetic, but at others it is extremely awkward. On the whole, however, the book is valuable as a social document and as the story of Bjartur, the independent man who, struggling against impossible odds, is never defeated psychologically, even when he loses all he has worked so hard for. Without remorse, he plans to begin again at the wretched, abandoned croft of his mother-in-law.