Vikivaki

by Gunnar Gunnarsson, Karl-Ludwig Wetzig (Übersetzer)

Gennem en række dagbogsnotater fortæller islændingen Jake Sonarson sin utrolige og tragiske historie. Han beskriver sit liv på Fokgården, som da han købte den stadig fungerede som gård, men som ligesom så meget i hans liv og hans indre efterhånden gik i forfald. Bogen er en spændende skildring af en svunden tid på Island og en tragisk skikkelses storhed og fald.

255 pages, Perfect Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Gunnar Gunnarsson is one of Iceland's most esteemed writers. From a poor peasant background, Gunnar moved to Denmark in 1907 to get an education. He wrote mainly in Danish throughout his career, in order to reach a wider audience.
In 1955, he was considered for the Nobel Prize, the year in which it was awarded to his fellow countryman, Halldór Laxness.

For the Icelandic author born in 1947, see Gunnar Gunnarsson.

Reviews

[Harold Rhenisch · Rating 4 out of 5]

A stunning tour de force parable of the history of Iceland on the cusp of Independence, related through several clever layers of irony, and marred by a long, non-narrative poem that fails to carry any narrative information. A vikivaki is an Icelandic dance of the dead. Gunnarsson combines a stunning one with the Biblical story of Jacob's ladder, and a host of Christian themes, all embedded in the narrative of a man who is facing all of Icelandic history at once in the strange world of a farm on the edge of the Icelandic Highlands. At first glance, this 1932 book appears to be a work of surrealism. Like many of Gunnarsson's books, it's more of a saga given a modernist face. It's brilliant, odd, mysterious, strange and deeply moving, with echoes of Gunnar's earlier works, that makes this, in part, a work of highly-symbolized autobiography. The German is clean and clear, although it fails at the poetry. I held an Icelandic version in my hand in Akureyri, and scanned through the poems, as I did once before at Skriduklaustur, with a Danish version in my hand. The mistranslations were tantalizing both times. Fortunately, there's not a lot of that poetry here. You can just skip it and enter a rather eternal world. I was deeply sorry to see it close, on two readings now.