Material #9 - Independent People
“Bjartur made use of the opportunity and bought some timber and some iron…
Building, said the Summerhouses children in an ecstasy of anticipation…The building material lent wings to their imagination…”
That excerpt comes from Halldór Laxness’ “Independent People”, which I just finished reading this weekend (having been recommended it by an Icelander in Warsaw last year, in the serendipitous way in which we sometimes encounter books).
As with stunningly written books – the kind in which the language surprises on every page – I feel I’ve gained and lost something on finishing it. I regaled the kids at intervals (they would say too frequently) with anecdotes about Bjartur, the croft farmer in early-20th-Century rural Iceland who is the book’s central character, his daughter Asta Sollilja, sheep, and the occasional cow.
The fragments quoted above come about halfway through the novel. Bjartur begins to imagine building a house on his land, which would be a step up from the small croft the family has been living in, which I picture almost blending into the land with its turf roof.
The promise of buildings – and infrastructure, like breakwaters down in the nearest town – crops up throughout the book and starts becoming real when the First World War breaks out in mainland Europe, increasing the cost of goods (like sheep) from Iceland, creating an economic boon on the backs of millions of lost lives, opening the door to loans and debt and rapid building projects, and the disappointment and disaster that follow in their wake.
Bjartur’s house is realized at some point, but without giving too much away I’ll just share that he considers it a “gaping cement monster”.
Along with the building materials themselves is the material with which Laxness builds the novel.
There is the land itself, the high heath which “had a value for [Bjartur] other than the practical and the economic. It was his spiritual mother, his church, his better world, as the ocean must inevitably be to the seafarer.” There is capitalism, nationalism, and an independent soul (even though Bjartur says he doesn’t believe in souls), striving to be free from both.
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Through 2024, It’s Material is sharing one use of the word “material” each week, on Tuesdays.