Independent People by Halldór Laxness

 

Finally bearing down and reading this. It's a slog but worth it so far. Like the incident where the farmer chases down a reindeer and jumps on top of him and they ride down the river together, farmer nearly freezing to death. 12/23/25

And the wife killing the ewe who's been left behind as her company, then eating it.

Brutal. Only entertainment is coffee and reciting ancient poetry. My kind of people.

1/20/26: Still laboring away at this. It's great but so dense: some of the most common, primitive people in world having extraordinary poetical thoughts about mortality and the natural world. Finally into the life of Bjartur's children, which is helping things. But much work still ahead of me.

2/3/26: Less than a hundred pages to go, and it's certainly an epic: who knew that primitive sheep farmers and their families could have such rich inner lives, in such a blasted, bleak, and unforgiving environment. Not I for sure.

2/3/2026: Finished. Showed literary fortitude but it almost killled me.

p.10 - On such a day the sun is stronger than the past.

p. 67 - [long rain description] ... And at the bottom of this unfathomed ocean of teeming rain sat the little house and its one neurotic woman.

p.267 - Surely they could no longer hide behind the skirts of existence if they wished to preserve a last shred of repute.

286 - ...the life of man is so short that ordinary people simply can't afford to be born.