Gyrðir Elíasson

From Gyrðir Elíasson

I was born in Reykjavik on April 4th 1961. Moved with my parents to Saudárkrókur in Northern Iceland when I was two years old and lived there until I was past twenty. However both my mother’s and my father’s family come originally from Borgarfjördur in the east and there I spent a great many summers with my maternal grandparents. Perhaps it’s because of this that my connection with Skagafjördur did not become more decisive. In fact, everything in my childhood was linked with the eastern fjords. I suppose the childhood surroundings are very important to most writers, an in my case the two fjords have played a big role in my writings—this actually happens more or less unconsciously. Perhaps a writer can never really write about anything but what he knows. Another fact which most of those who write have discovered is that it is almost impossible to come up with anything completely fresh. There are always some parts of the writer’s life that pop up.

I graduated from Fjölbrautarskóli Nordurlands Vestra in Saudárkrókur (FNV) in 1982 and then moved south to go to the university comparative literature to be exact. It didn’t last long, only a few weeks in fact, and then I’d had enough of that subject as such. The following year I tried the Iceland University of Education (IUE) and lasted there just over a year. After that I lived for one year in Borgarfjörður Eystri where I pretended to be practising some kind of art education. What I was really doing was to try to write. I had first began, while in FNV, to write poetry for the school paper—which is best forgotten there. I think that I didn’t make a very good start, to be honest. But while I was studying there a man called Geirlaugur Magnússon started working there and he engaged in writing poetry. He had a huge collection of foreign books he allowed me to examine as much as I wanted and I showed him what I was trying to write. He didn’t like it all that much, understandably enough, but I continued. The first collection of poetry came out in the fall of 1983, the year I began my studies at the Iceland University of Education. After the winter I spent there it was pretty clear that teaching was not for me (even though I tried after that to teach at Borgarfjördur) and the idea that I might write for a living started to grow. I don’t know now what caused me to believe it except my stubbornness. Ever since I learned to read I had read a lot but not done much writing until in FNV, with the exception that when I was five I put together a book about a squirrel and used the name of it 22 years later as the title of my first published story. Since then I have spent my time almost equally writing stories and poetry as well as translating. Translation is a very good school, I think, you approach language differently and learn a lot, both from mistakes and from success. It’s also good to take a break from oneself; to go deeper into another writer’s work in a way that reading, to give an example, does not give full room for. Besides, I feel it to be almost the duty of Icelandic writers to give a hand in translations because, as everybody knows, they are very important in as small a language area as this.

I am married and have three daughters, one from the “first war” as we say! Pétur Gunnarsson once said that he didn’t find himself in his writing until after the children were born and I think I can agree with that. But what about H. C. Andersen? someone may ask. Yes, but he was his own child. Children regenerate and keep your vision awake though it may be difficult at times to make this strange job and ordinary family life work together on a day to day basis. The role of the author in contemporary society is possibly quite a bit different, though perhaps his position has not changed as much as people’s position to him. But poets who are also the prophets of society are probably ancient history. And yet its hard to say. But even the most low-spoken poets can have a clear position. The Icelandic poet Thorsteinn Valdimarsson is a good example. All his life’s work was marked by a position to life that was, at its core, religious—and for that reason a little poem of his about a flower became highly political in the sense that it condemned almost without words the destruction of nature: the flower was a symbol against war and the intrusion on nature. This is perhaps not given enough attention when contemporary poets are criticized for introversion and apathy for the burning issues of their time. Yet I am not saying that the criticism is without its basis. Poets should not of course get locked up, chew the cud in a stall of specialization, where dealing in words is their only acknowledged area of expertise. In earlier times art and religion followed the same path. It was not until the last century that ways parted on the surface and art grew towards science, through naturalism and realism. At its core art has still always been closer to faith, the occult, than to science. I think that now, at the end of the 20th century, the so called artists are gradually realizing this and that in the end these two ideologies will come together again. I am not a prophet, however, so this may be just my feeling.

Gyrðir Elíasson, 2000.

Translated by Jóhann Thorarensen.

On the Works of Gyrðir Elíasson

Early Poems

Gyrðir Elíasson’s first collection of poetry, Svarthvít Axlabönd (Black and White Suspenders), which appeared in 1983, has remarkably little of the rhetorical and political poetic style that had been so dominant in the poetry of the younger poets in Iceland around 1980. The only references to the political poem of the seventies are ironical, such as the title of the poem “Dagur verkalýðsins” (“May Day”), which is a description of hangovers and loneliness, set with witty references to other works of literature such as “the poet never receives any letters” or “an exchange student in Wonderland”. Most of the poems are compact and disciplined, constructed by simple images or carefully thought out word games. The longer ones are colored by the style that would later characterize Elíasson’s poems in the coming years: Ideas and things of the most varied kind are pooled together in harsh, almost aggressive figurative language. Most often the poetic awareness is alone in its world and many of the poems are about isolation and loneliness. This isolation rarely breeds self-pity or hopelessness, it rather underlines the special tone that is sometimes amusing and sometimes aggressive: Elíasson’s lone person often views his isolation angrily, without being able to find ways out of it. He flirts with suicide, talks of his head as a “white-chalked vault” and contemplates limitation, but he does it in a tone bordering between mischievousness and destitution. It is descriptive of this vision of the lone person’s lot that the reader is not wholly convinced whether the final words of the book, “I don’t feel good,” (which are from the poem “From a Lone Person’s Evening Book”) are meant as a lonely speaker’s sincere expression or are some sort of a comical misrepresentation. At least the snapshots of this poetic awareness of his life a lone person are varied and it is not always to be fully trusted that this is an “honest” expression of loneliness or being lonesome. Ever since, this mixture of unexpected and at times even contradictory associations, humour and sensitivity, has been the main characteristic of Elíasson’s poetry.

Poems of the Eighties

A. A New Language

One of the main characteristic of poems by Gyrðir Elíasson and other poets who appeared in the eighties, such as Ísak Harðarson, is a combination of a renewed emphasis on the aesthetic premise of modernism and a discussion of contemporary media, other means of communication than poetry, like radio, newspapers or television. Concerning Elíasson’s poetry this is particularly noticeable in the two books that follow Svarthvít axlabönd: Tvíbreitt (svig)rúm, (Double (bed)space) (1984) and Einskonar höfuð lausn (A Kind of Head/Ransom) (1985), but an interesting progress of these themes can be seen in his fourth collection of poetry, Bak við maríuglerið (Behind the Mica glass) (1985).

If we look at the two former books first we have there a similar poetic awareness as in Svarthvít axlabönd, the lonely, but unpredictable and often comic voice and it is for example prominent in the beginning poems of Tvíbreitt (svig)rúm, “Insomnia” and “Weight.” Both of the books are not, however, characterized by descriptions of “alienation,” the distance between two men, but by an emphasis on the things the poetic awareness sees outside its own lonely circle and on the words it reads and hears. The one who speaks though has just as hard a time finding connections to the things as he has a hard time making connections with other people. It is as if he does not see the things for the words that are used to symbolize them. The poems become a collection of diverse fragments of communication, fragments of other poems, titles of books, old songs, names of characters in books, television shows and movies, graphic printed symbols and phrases from advertisements and the media. The self-expression of the lonely awareness becomes an expression of the things that reach it. It perceives itself as isolated, but at the same time completely full of other people’s words, phrases that pile up and link with other phrases. The poetic awareness has very few words it can call “personal,” but instead of skipping speaking (or writing about silence, about the problem of communication, which is a common theme in modernist poetry) it seizes the clichés in the air and twists them around, distorts them and moulds them into a text that is either scary or comical, but most often both.

This is especially true of the book Einskonar höfud lausn, where things are taken further than in Tvíbreitt (svig)rúm in using various tricks of format and printed symbols to show the closeness of the text to other media than the poem where different semantic fields are constantly hurled together. An example of this is the poem “Q":

glasslike eyes stagnation focal point
sun of autumn going down(radiosised
ozone layer)two girls haveacokeandsmile
billboard mountain range azure blue short of breath
cars hurrying home(the hurricane
diana expected on its way southeast
to buckingham)
mist that grows thicker (22)

These tricks have obvious parallels in the concrete poetry of the sixties and seventies and the perception of language is not unlike the one to be seen in many European poets of that time. To begin with the main emphasis is on the medium, the language, but at the same time the prevailing feeling is that it is creased and worn out, the ideology of the awareness industry and the media have distorted it and made it into useless machinery. The only possible move is to twist things around, make a parody, rearrange the known so that it becomes new, or at least seems new, and dig for strange and comical connection between otherwise unconnected words that show other associations than those that are most often pointed out to the users of the language. Nevertheless it cannot be said that Elíasson has especially focused on the language in these books. Instead he gave significance to the clichés outside the language games, got them to express a threat and an impending fright that was a dominant undertone in the poems. Added to this is also the thought that the connections between language and a threat are very complex because to a certain extent the threat is beyond the language, it is too inordinate to be put in plain words. The cliché thus became a sort of a vehicle that pushed the reader in the direction of the feeling of fright. The familiar words became even more horrifying when they expressed tragedies and death.

B. Eyes and Glass

Elíasson’s attempts to use format, word plays and phrases from the media (or references to the media) in order to capture the feeling of threat can clearly be seen in a well known poem in Einskonar höfuð lausn, “f.” It is set up as an atom mushroom and the atomic death is linked with the homely contemporary fire in the fireplace of television because the end arrives when “they have just/turned off the television (a program/about the celebration of Easter in Israel)” (43). And when “they” have thrown themselves face down on the close-cropped carpet and shut their eyes tightly these lines appear (which are set up as the stalk of the mushroom): “remember/the oven/in his/&crie/d she/screams you/mean the witch/mumbles/he drinks in burning hot air cannot breathe-”

These metaphorical connections between an atom bomb and an oven are descriptive of Elíasson’s poetry in the eighties. They pop up again in Bak við maríuglerið and even later in Elíasson’s first novel, Gangandi íkorni (A Walking Squirrel) (1987) and they are constantly present in the poetry collection Blindfugl/Svartflug (Blind Bird/Black Flight) (1986). Elíasson turned the media fragments and the glossary that faced him into an expression of the historical reality of the eighties, the final stage of the Cold War, but at the same time created symbols and images to describe this reality which rise above time and describe the threat as a situation and not just as something tied to a place and moment in time. Bak við maríuglerið is thus clearly marked by the fact that the battle with the linguistic purifying was in fact only an attempt to approach the threat and it has now made way for a new vision of the connection between awareness and the outside world, the connection between awareness and mediating. The fragments from the media lingo are transformed into nightmarish descriptions and aggressive figurative language and there is a very heavy undertone in the poems, inexplicable “terror.”

A good example of this shift in direction is the fact that the media have now changed from textual fragments into a “presence.” They are thus sometimes personified, become a “being,” and view as such the speaker or assail him in the form of a ghost. Sometimes they are simply an “eye” that is behind glass of any kind, a mirror or a windowpane. And sometimes the presence of the glass alone is adequate to awaken the feeling of threat. The “presence” arrives uninvited in the speaker’s everyday life and alters his vision of the environment, makes it strange and difficult or is an omen of disappearance and destruction.

We can see here the same connections between television and oven we did in the poem “f” and the feeling of horror we get from them. The oven is not shown as the spring of well being and heat, it is not described from the viewpoint of him who sits by it and looks at it, but from the viewpoint of him who is in it and burns there. The speaker to some extent looks out of the Mariaglass, but not in. “Mariaglass” is after all glass in an oven to make it possible to see whether there is fire in it and the analogy to the television screen is obvious. It is no longer an innocent piece of furniture in a room, but a burning box and in some sense the poetic being is positioned in this box, inside the television and its flames.

This is better seen when we look at the title poem of the book, “Behind the Mariaglass.” There the speaker is tied to the bed (in Tvíbreitt (svig)rúm he was taped to the television screen) and announces that it does not matter to him at all what words mean, words and things can become disorganised for all he cares. Yet he cares “for some things/am sometimes afraid that the bulging glass/of the black box explodes in/my face or my head explodes in/all directions.” The fear that came with Elíasson’s poetic awareness right in his very first book has now become pure terror, a nightmare. This fear has its origin in the voices of the media. Thus the images of Armageddon the speaker describes are copied from a distorted serial story he reads in a newspaper, they are distributed by others to him but show, nevertheless, his fear. The mysterious “messenger from the beyond” who suddenly “materialises” in the room, is no divine emissary, but from this mysterious “near world” which is in television, in the world of the media. It should come as no surprise that the messenger brings the bed-tied speaker a ticket to a gruesome destination, a one way ticket, and the poem ends with an image of Armageddon; soon it is supposed to start “raining burning oil,” “the first drops have begun to/fall.”

The long poem Blindfugl/svartflug (1986) which followed is considerably different from Bak við maríuglerið in structure, the book is one unbroken poem which counts 400 lines. It can, however, without a doubt be seen as the conclusion of Elíasson’s earlier collections of poetry, the climax and the final stop of the poetic vision he had developed in the years 1982-1986. The isolation of the poetic awareness now transforms into a universal image, expands into a special world that can hold everything which before opposed the awareness or moved within it. Narrations, dreams, visions, texts and messages of the media are moved into this world, into “the vault,” which is now a metaphor for the whole book. Nothing really exists any longer except this vault, everything occurs inside it and everything is measured against it. In it is the same impatience as in the books that appeared before it. The poem literally begins with a statement from the poetic awareness in that tone: “I can’t deal out tranquility,/of it I have nothing, the cruising range/of irregular ideas seems without/limits” (1-4). These lines can be called the epigraph of Elíasson’s first five books of poetry.

First Works in Prose

In 1987 Gyrdir Elíasson published his first work in prose, the novel Gangandi íkorni, and a year later the short story collection Bréfbrátarigningin (Paper-Boat Rain) appeared and since then he has written both poetry and prose.

The story is about the “eccentric” boy Sigmar and his double, the walking squirrel. It starts with fragmentary narratives about him where he is living in the country with the couple Ágúst and Björg who themselves had a boy who is now dead. In the middle of the book Sigmar changes into an animal and walks into a world he himself has drawn on machine paper. He is killed there, or seems to get killed, when the drawing is thrown into an oven. As in Bak við maríuglerið an ordinary domestic oven has become a machine of terror, this time some sort of a nuclear reactor and the burning of the world of fantasy has become a substitute for the burning of the world.

What role the child plays in this book as well as in the first three stories of Bréfbátarigningin has been well dealt with (Ástráður Eysteinsson, 1990). Here, and in fact also in Elíasson’s story collection from the nineties, the characters’ childhood is far from being the typical journey to maturity it has been the custom to portray it as in works of literature where the child’s growth and its path to adulthood is placed in the fore. The child is non-existing, it is on its way somewhere and this somewhere is not necessarily our idea of a mature grown-up being, the child is an open system. This is clear in Gangandi íkorni where the narrative constantly “jerks,” and a real progress or an evolution towards a conclusion in Sigmar’s life is not described. For example, the reader gets no information about where he is from or why he is on this farm where very little happens and where ordinary work on the farm is rarely described. Life is, despite realistic atmosphere, rather mysterious.

When the works Elíasson wrote in 1987-1990 are looked at as a whole: Gangandi íkorni (1987), Bréfbátarigningin (1988), Tvö tungl (Two Moons) (1989) and Svefnhjólið (The Wheel of Sleep) (1990), it is obvious that there is a constant overlap between fantasy and realism in all of them. In terms of form these works are very different. Gangandi íkorni, as has already been stated, is a short novel, almost a novella. Bréfbátarigningin is a collection of four short stories which together form a tight whole and is bordering between being a loosely connected novel and a short story collection. Tvö tungl is a collection of poetry, but there is a wholly different atmosphere in it than in the earlier collections of poetry, the poems are more comic, often like little narratives, and the horror that used to take up so much space is greatly lessened. Svefnhjólið is a novel and is Elíasson’s longest unbroken narrative so far.

The basic idea in these works is to show the reverse side of the realistic surface, a world behind the world of things. The two worlds are connected on many levels and a great deal of the enjoyment in reading the texts is in looking for their places of contact, to see connections and parallels, analogies and opposites. One thing that also characterises the double vision is the play the overlapping of what is real and what is fantasy create, the dissimulation and the strange humour that is visible everywhere, though never as clearly as in Tvö tungl. The symbol of this is the clown or the artist of all things. The performance described here sounds like circus humour where serious manner and ridiculous performances are mixed together and where people possess a strange skill to do their tricks which have no other purpose than to be tricks, be jokes. These tricks are often mean ones, caused by bad temper and boredom. Sigmar, the boy from Gangandi íkorni, obviously sees his pranks as a certain kind of humour, but they are also cruel, if not beastly, even though the meanness is not always what is most important. In a description of Sigmar’s and his nanny Ágústa’s trip to town these elements of the clown are obvious and at the same time we see how “strange” this world of clowns is. In the world of the clown there are no reasons for why he falls on his butt, destroys the bike he is about to use or hurts others. He does what he does because it is comic, but because he never laughs himself the whole of his scheme seems to be based on a complete misunderstanding. Perhaps the clown simply does it because he is uncertain about what to do next? Maybe he does it simply because of how frightened he is.

The clown’s humour is also littered with dark tones of the blues, fear and depression. In all of the stories in Bréfbátarigningin danger hovers over, impending death and a conclusion. The stories are relatively realistic, but in all of them one of the main characteristic of the clowning style is to be seen, to invoke laughter without laughing or being “funny” in the traditional meaning of the word. The humour springs more from the ridiculous circumstances, the strange happenings and last but not least the roles the characters take on. The story “Vængmaður” (“Winged Man”) describes how, for example, an ordinary man who works at a printer’s workshop in a town in the country has put on “the costume of a winged man,” which he then gives to a little boy and thus initiates him into the world of wonder. This role is in a sense the role of the clown, an instrument of fun, but it also has a deep-rooted existential reality to it. The man’s presence is caused by the role and is unfathomable without it, as soon as he departs from it has changed.

In the novel Svefnhjólið yet another version of the dramatic vision of the world can be seen because here Elíasson creates a unified world, which is really another world, the world of the deceased. The main character is a young man who travels between scenes when he falls asleep in the bathtub and the story invites a reading of it as fantasy, but when it is discovered that the hero is deceased it becomes obvious that it is describing a world that is not only imagined, but has existed, but does not anymore. Here a disappearance is being described, but meanwhile it is done after the clown’s methods, this vanished world is no less the world of Buster Keaton than memento mori-reprimands.

But in the book there is also present an agreement between the material and the supernatural that takes for granted that there is another world beyond, or at least parallel to this one. If Elíasson was before the typical modern man who has great difficulties in visualising the metaphysical existence of the world beyond, not to mention believing in it, he has here become a creator who presents the existence of the supernatural as a reality. He takes a completely fundamental step across the chasm between flirting with some sort of magic realism “where anything can happen” and take metaphysics on its words. The dead are not zombies—living dead—they live in their own world.

Poems of the nineties

A. Sympathy

The collection of poetry Tvö tungl (1989) is closely connected with the prose works from the same period as has already been stated. As in the stories the clown and the humour of the unexpected open up for a new perspective of Elíasson’s subject from the earlier years by making the horror milder but at the same time a new tone is added which is most certainly more humane and warmer than the reigning one in the earlier poems. The clownish behaviour opened up for more freedom in presentation and subject matter than before and the result of that was, among other things, more elbow room to write, and thus Tvö tungl is a very large collection of poetry where we can find poems which span a great range, from pure humour to rather serious and sad texts about the old fundamental themes threat and disappearance.

But the main tone of this book was however the feeling for the connection between the poetic awareness and the surroundings, the claim that is presented in the poem “Samkennd” (“Sympathy”) and can be termed as some sort of a motto of the book: “I am never completely alone.” With the book a fundamental change occurs in Elíasson’s writings, not in style and subject matter however, but rather in terms of a position towards the world and towards what fiction is to be about. Sympathy forms the main tone in all of Elíasson’s collections of poetry after this. Behind the veil that the poetic awareness was unable to pass through before, a whole new world is revealed which is not always pleasant to look upon, but which still meets the reader as a reality that to some extent at least is worth the trust and that bids him welcome, wants to strengthen the bonds.

A similar attempt can be seen here as in Svefnhjólið to rebuild in fiction the vanished unity of man and nature, man and the world beyond, even though this experiment is not very advanced in Tvö tungl. However, it takes the form of much more mature images in the books that followed, Vetraráform um sumarferðalag (Winter Plans for a Summer Trip) (1991) and Mold í skuggadal (Dust in Shadow-Valley) (1992) and is the main theme in his latest collections of poetry Indíánasumar (Indian Summer) (1996) and Hugarfjallid (Mt. Mind) (1999).

B. Simplicity

Radical change occurs in Gyrðir Elíasson’s career with the publication of his next collection of poetry Vetraráform um sumarferðalag (1991) which appeared parallel to the collection of narratives Heykvísl og gúmmískór (Hay Fork and Rubber Shoes) (1991). Here is in the fore a style of poetry where nature and man’s connection to it is most prominent, his feelings for it. In order to capture this thinking Elíasson uses what can be called a “Japanese” method. He records snapshots of spiritual illumination against nature and its wonders, sudden changes of weather, vegetation and rocks as well as mountains and the sea and the sun. This documentation is in basic terms mystical. He works towards the fusion of man and what is not within his grasp: the forces of nature, the spirits of the living world, the creator of everything that is. These are miniature pictures of the pleasure of picking herbs for teas, of walking tours, of seeing simple phenomenon such as rocks or peculiar mountains and it all correlates, most certainly, with Oriental poetry, but here are also reawakened popular attitudes towards nature and the environment, such as a belief in the power of rocks, and the sanctity of places.

It goes hand in hand with this new style that the language of the poems becomes very simple and quiet. The use of language is close to speech, metaphors are refrained from quite a bit and sometimes the poems become so straightforward that they reach the furthest limit for any real “poetic” form to be seen in them. Much rather they seem to be short glimpses of a longer text which is never published, which seems to be the way the books were thought of. They are all quite extensive for collections of poetry but it is very different how well the form fits the subject in the poems, the number is obviously important, not individual poems. Thus we can clearly see poems that are close to the traditional lines of poetry where the demand is to make “memorable” lines and powerful images that “stick in the readers’ minds,” but in between there are others that seem “weak” and find it harder to stand by their own, but accept the support of the book’s unity, if not of the whole of the author’s work. And once the books are read together this whole stares you in the face, a deliberate thinking behind the poems based on them being fragments of a larger picture. Meanwhile the reader is encouraged to participate in the poet’s thinking about man’s connection to bigger things.

Elíasson’s next collection of poetry, Mold í skuggadal (1992), is most likely the one which most resembles his poems from the period 1983-1986. The tone is darker and sadder here than in others of his work during the last years and carries many of the “strong” poems of the book, such as “Blindness” and “The Children’s Shadow-Valley.” The majority is however poems which develop further the tone of consideration and mysticism and describe the primary symbols which govern this poetic world: light and darkness.

The interplay of these parts is enormously varied and their symbols last through all of the collections of poetry during the nineties, symbols like the lamp and the glimmer of light. The light is though always characterised by the fact that it cannot burn except in darkness which thus gains importance as the “companion” of the light. It may be said that this complex interplay between light and darkness reaches a certain climax in Elíasson’s latest collection of poetry, Hugarfjallid (1999). Here these reflections become most complete and to some extent Hugarfjallid opens up the other three, Vetraráform um sumarferðalag, Mold í skuggadal and Indíánasumar (1996) and shows their direction and their world. It can be said that we have here a Gnostic theory on man, a theory that he is only a material body in a very limited way, and much rather a weaving of light and darkness. His time, the time he lives in, is the time of darkness and his path the path into an ever growing darkness, away from simplicity, away from the light which surrounds everything that is good, original and whole. Man’s misery resides in the darkness and all service to it increases this misery. The poems are thus not dealing with every day matters. They are meant to create a metaphysical field where man and the universe are connected in a clear way in language every child can understand and is as close to common language as possible. In this field the great adversaries light and darkness are led forth in various roles, such as the recollection of will o’the wisp, that brings forth the contradictory nature of what seems at first to be all kindness. The idea of will o’the wisp bears with it an obvious religious flair since it comes from man, it is light made of darkness, when the real light is not his, but the creator’s. The light of caring, the light of love that shines forth from the pillars of metaphysics, has not on the other hand appeared due to dualism, is not based on having an adversary, because it is a light without shadows that is not thrown on things, but is in them. Wherever it is everything shines and not because of the darkness, but because of the light alone. The light exists because of the light. When this “theory” is kept in mind we can see how Elíasson’s poetry has gone completely in the reverse direction from where it was heading in the eighties and one of the poems in the book, “Tilskipun að ofan” (“An Order from Above”) is a clear indication of this. Here Gyrdir Elíasson settles his career as a poet:

Poems should be written
with solar power
with mind power
made of light

Not darkness

The Prose Works of the Nineties

After the publication of Svefnhjólið in 1990 Elíasson has not written anything else than short stories. They are usually very compact, sometimes no more than two pages, but with this small form he has fallen in love and it has followed him in four books. The first book of this kind was the other half of the twin books of 1991, Heykvísl og gúmmískór, two years later, in 1993, the book Tregahornið (The Blues Horn) appeared, then Kvöld í ljósturninum (Evenings in the Light Tower) (1995) (1994 was the first year since Elíasson began his writing career in which no book by him appeared) and finally Vatnsfólkið (The Water People) (1997) where attempts towards lengthening the stories again can be seen as well as moving a little aside the enormously sophisticated and disciplined texture of the texts in the other three books. These four books are very much related to each other in terms of subject matter and texture and in them we can see, as in the collections of poetry, a certain development towards consideration and metaphysical attitudes.

What they have in common is that in them an attempt is made at expanding the field of man and the awareness of man, at capturing in symbols and texts complex subjects such as the contradictory attitudes of modern times of the world beyond, the sadness over the disappearance of the values of nature and culture and the difficulties in handling fickleness, in connecting the fickleness nature controls and the fickleness man’s history brings on himself. But in these books emotional matters are also very prominent, stories about relatives and loved ones that can no longer stay together, stories about emotional shipwrecks and sadness over losing what you love the most and also stories about the strength of friendship, gladness over being together — connections between people.

Aesthetically speaking the stories are a part of the movement within modernist and later postmodernist literature of the Western world where a valid exposition of “core” or centre is rejected. The stories are “exalted” in the hermeneutic understanding the French philosopher Lyotard had of the word in his explanations of Immanuel Kant’s aesthetics. They do not have “a clear message” to deliver because they are about what is universal and thus have no clear symbols. This is obvious because of two things which take up a lot of space in the narrative collections: On the one hand because of the mysteries that are distributed widely in the texts because various traditional motivators for people’s behaviour is not present, there are “blanks” which hinder the reader from inferring psychological meaning to everything he reads. On the other hand the stories are almost without exception far from the “centre” of modern life and do not deal with people who are in the middle of finance, culture and the media. Their setting is most often rural areas, in imaginary worlds or parallel to traditional settings of the “modern story.” The image of society which ordinary people can read about in the media is far from Elíasson’s stories, and without a doubt it strikes many as strange. It only appears as an imminent force that disrupts the world of accretion of man and nature Elíasson so often tries to describe. Between his vision and the reality of the market economy of late capitalism there is constant tension which often breaks out in the symbols of threat, or a gnawing suspicion. Thus ideas such as competition and capacity never come up. Their foundation is always a dearly bought respect for the environment, the history and the way of life outside the main road. They are moralistic and are meant to increase sincerity and honesty at the cost of irony and weariness of life. They aim for the real pluralism of tolerance and communication, not for the fight of competition which never regrets the disappearance of the loser. Elíasson’s stories are on the other hand written against forgetfulness. They are not intended to make us accept the world as it is, but to remind us of the disappearance of values, the environment and history. We should not forget or accept that others forget.

But at the same time the age in which we live and its scepticism is imminent and rips asunder the whole image wilfulness intends to show. It is not the least this excitement that breeds the “exaltation” in the stories, the mysteries, which are as I have said one of their most important characteristic. In stories like “Ferðasaga” (“A Travel Story”) from Kvöld í ljósturninum it is obvious how a simple description of an ordinary phenomenon becomes a narrative about fickleness itself, the disappearance of all things in nature, the destruction and the loss. As so often in Elíasson’s texts the meeting of man and nature is described, the atmosphere of a place and details of the weather and surroundings that create a closeness, accurate and material picture of circumstances. These are real places, real people and real situations: Three men go to the fjord called Lodmundarfjördur in the eastern part of the country and stay in a house there. They are “the only men in the fjord” and do very little that is newsworthy, in the morning of the fourth day they leave the house and “placed the key under a yellowish brown flagstone in front of the house, where they had found it, and two took up a stand in the morning sun in front of the gable, while the third shot a picture of them and the house.” Nothing more happens on this journey, but when the pictures from the journey are developed and the men look at them closely something out of the ordinary is discovered in the photo that was shot that day. In the window behind them something can be seen: “And they see it is a hand that draws the curtains carefully aside, small as the hand of a child, and out from deep shadows behind the curtains it is as if someone is watching them, the travellers in front of the house—from the empty house.” But there is also something else in the picture. In the windowsill there is a fossil, “a many millions-year-old stonetree from the hill above the town, and the hand in the black and white picture almost touches this rough part of prehistoric age.” Strangely enough it is this fossil that is scarier than the unknown hand. Even though the hand is clearly that of death, because it reminds one of the men of the hand “that closed my father and mother’s eyes in the dream, the night before the accident,” the stonetree is worse. “Of what does it remind you?” one of the men asks and the other answers, and they are the concluding words of this very short story that takes up no more than two and a half pages: “’Ancient sunny days,’ he says quietly, but contrary to the brightness in the words is the voice which before was full of joy but is now like the whisper of a wind in withered grass.”

The fossilised natural history has visited the men and it does it through a photograph, through the works of men. They themselves are blind to nature’s fickleness, understandably since they are just travellers who spend only a few days in the fjord, but by accidentally shooting a picture of this fickleness they have moved it into their own world and thus discovered it. Technology is here not means to seize control over nature and break it. On the contrary, it is a way of understanding that man is fickle and with him everything he has created. The story is not the man’s, it is the subject of nature. This discovery does not however bring relief that man is set free from considering time his task. On the contrary, the men are terrified, paralysed against a force that is greater than they and which they know will sooner or later end their work and their lives. This terror strikes as a fear of the forces that are considered in a more reflective manner in the poems, here no hope is in sight, no reassurance that all will be well and this roughness is in various places throughout the stories, it worms through them like a cold gust of wind.

It would be unfair to leave Elíasson’s writings in the nineties without mentioning that the stories are in fact most often about hope. This hope is however based on the reality of fickleness. It is constructed around the idea that man’s hope is that without him the world is at work, without his interference and without his narrow-mindedness. The point of view turns from world history to natural history and thus the subject here is, to a certain extent, “the end of man,” a world where man in his present state no longer exists. When it is observed that Elíasson’s first work in prose, Gangandi íkorni, described precisely this kind of a world we can see how important the idea that there exists something “other” than the human world we now know is for him. In Gangandi íkorni mankind was almost extinct and nothing was left of it except skulls, those who survived were animals. The last story in Tregahornið also ends with the end of the world which even for all its terror and fear seems also like a way into a new world. The sun and the moon have disappeared from the sky. The whole earth is bathed in darkness but in the middle of this darkness a new hope is born and it does not reside in man, but precisely in that which is “inhuman": “The animals were supposed to know more about darkness than we humans, they could teach us now, and this time we would try to learn from them” (102).

Kristján B. Jónasson, 2000.

Translated by Jóhann Thorarensen.

 

That which survives time is humanity (2000-2022)

Gyrðir Elíasson’s presence in the world of Icelandic literature is as palpable as it is quiet. Though the author himself cares little for attention or the grinding gears of market forces, the nature of his work is such that it automatically rises to the top – outside of time and space. The fact of the matter is that in the landscape of literature, Gyrðir Elíasson is part of the firmament; steadfast yet ever changing, an element all his own. For nearly four decades, he has given and given – the quantity and quality of his work quite astonishing – working in all forms of fiction as well as producing invaluable poetry translations. His style is unique; the reader can identify him by a single sentence, and his grasp of the language is such that it is safe to say there are few better writers working in Icelandic today. This article will examine Gyrðir’s body of work since the turn of the century, guided by literary form rather than chronology.

Painting with words: Flash fiction

Gyrðir was well into his career before he began working with flash fiction as a distinct form – though he had been writing plenty of very short stories for some time. His debut effort with the form, Lungnafiskarnir (The Lungfish), came out in 2014. The collection is an ironic, playful take on flash fiction, a form that is difficult to define and straddles the murky borders between prose poetry, fable, joke, fairy tale, fantasy, and wordplay. All these elements can be observed throughout Gyrðir’s writing, regardless of form, so perhaps it was only a matter of time before flash fiction made its way into his body of work.

To the reader, the tales in Lungnafiskarnir are like vivid images, as if the author were sitting there with a brush instead of a pen, painting little pictures. In fact, painting is present in much of Gyrðir’s work, which is fitting, given that he himself has experimented with visual art. The small paintings in Lungnafiskarnir feature a limited palette of yellow, red, blue, and green – topped with a coat of grey, of course, when the monotony of everyday life becomes overwhelming. This color palette both ties the stories together and creates a sense of familiarity within a narrative world that is often particularly unfamiliar, filled with nightmarish wonders and blurred boundaries between dream, reality, and fiction. One theme that regularly crops up in Gyrðir’s books, namely the climate crisis and its impact on the biosphere, can also be identified here.

Langbylgja (2016; Longwave) came out just two years after Lungnafiskarnir, and the two books could easily be called sister collections. The tales in Langbylgja, however, are perhaps closer to short stories than flash fiction – most are longer and extend beyond the snapshots that characterize the earlier collection. The stories are about things that could happen rather than being pure fantasy – while there is no shortage of the bizarre here, it usually manifests in the characters’ behavior. Gyrðir’s characters are often passive observers; we have here a collection of people who barely express themselves in word or deed, if at all. On the other hand, when these fine folks make up their minds to do something, their actions go far beyond what can be considered normal and approach the realm of obsession.

Longwave is thoroughly steeped in humor, not least in the many stories in which wordplay is at the forefront. In “Tveir gráir skuggar” (“Two Grey Shadows”) and “Gestahúsið” (“The Guesthouse”), the narrator’s eyes fall upon book titles like The Importance of Being Ernest, a biography of Ernest Hemingway, titles that sound familiar enough but are actually a bit strange.

Both books are packed with allusions, so packed it could be said that they are works of art created from other works of art. Familiar names and works from art and human history lend color to the texts and remind the reader of the greater context. Opposites also play a large role, as imagination, dreams, fantasy, and euphoria are pitted against drab, concrete reality. The natural world, teeming with life, pulses in opposition to stagnation, and the characters’ repressed temperament skulks about hand in hand with humor and dread.

In 2022, Gyrðir released a new collection of flash fiction in two volumes, Þöglu myndirnar (The Silent Pictures) and Pensilskrift (Brushwork). The texts are in something of a different place compared to previous books – literally, in fact, as the setting of the stories is unusually transparent, identifiable by the Icelandic place names mentioned. Whether the surge in domestic travel during Covid plays a role here is a fair question, but the pandemic is in the background of several stories in any case. The story “Ásjónur” (“Visages”) in Þöglu myndirnar, for example, is an acerbically witty tale of the frightful Emperor Covid’s reign. Protective face masks hang from trees as a monument to environmental goals gone to hell, and the story takes aim at westerners’ sudden desire to hide their faces – though they had previously regarded with suspicion cultural practices involving face or head coverings.

Another dominant theme is unreliable memory, a phenomenon that has frequently popped up in the discourse in connection with literature and trauma in recent years. Trauma can be said to be a theme in and of itself in Gyrðir’s fiction, in light of the fact that connection and disconnection are continually repeated topics in his books, as will be further explored later.

Gyrðir’s narrative wit is on full display in many of the small sketches of curious characters in Pensilskrift. The debt collector who cleans up the seedy underbelly of a tiny seaside village, the artist who paints invisible canvases in absolute seriousness, and Ingmar Bergman at the video store are evidence of how the author’s unexpected perspective infuses the simplest things with humor. At the other end of the spectrum are short prose pieces that border on poetry. “Strandganga” (“Beach Walk”) is a snapshot that shows rather than tells a much larger story, examining close up the problem of plastic waste and polluted oceans. Mankind’s helplessness in the face of that crisis is reflected in the idea of counting the grains of sand in one’s palm – but what’s the point of counting the uncountable? Here, as so often in Gyrðir’s work, nature is the backdrop of existence, a place of constant danger with its push and pull between motion and stillness, but it is also a wellspring of imagination and magic.

In such a compact narrative form, what is left unsaid matters no less than what is plainly stated, which is why short prose, contrary to what one might think, demands the reader’s full attention. Keeping what matters most just out of frame is a tricky technique that must be employed in such a way that readers don’t feel the author is withholding information. Gyrðir has a firm grasp of this technique; with him at the helm, the blanks in the text are just as much a source of information and meaning as what is on the surface. Gyrðir has honed this stylistic skill as he has contended with the short story, flash fiction’s big sister, and his mastery of it is part of the reason he is considered one of Iceland’s most unique and accomplished short story writers.

The vanishing point of the everyday: Short stories

The first thing readers think of when they hear the name Gyrðir Elíasson is quite possibly the short story – not only because of the prominent place this form occupies in his body of work, but also because he leaves such distinct fingerprints on it. Over the course of his career, he has published eleven short story collections, including five since the year 2000, and his skilled grasp of the form has earned him both the Icelandic Literary Prize, for Gula húsið (The Yellow House), and the Nordic Council Literature Prize, for Milli trjánna (Between the Trees).

Gula húsið (2000) was Gyrðir’s first book of the new millennium. It is largely set in the countryside, the atmosphere laden with the sense of a bygone era and the rhythm gently flowing – everything here floats just beneath the surface, like Hemingway’s metaphor of the short story as an iceberg. Children are often at the center of the narrative, and children’s powerlessness over their own lives speaks directly to the motif of the underdog, a common characteristic of the short story that manifests as a focus on disadvantaged individuals lacking power or means. Most of the characters in Gula húsið fall into this category, and the book is filled with glimpses of a life that never was. The supernatural frequently slips into the exceptionally mundane world of these stories, many of which feature clear Christian symbolism or motifs from Icelandic folklore, with ghosts and elves making appearances. With this in mind, the story “Grásteinninn” (“The Grey Stone”) bears mentioning. In this story, the world of men and the world of elves meet in a mystical, thought-provoking tale about mankind’s encroachment on the natural world and the sense of ownership that we as a species feel over it.

The focus on mysticism continues, running like a path of pebbles all the way through Steintré (2005; Stone Tree) and encapsulated by the book’s title, which undeniably refers to some sort of collision of life and death and can easily be read as a reference to the book’s characters, very few of whom are flourishing. Though contemporary life is more present in Steintré than in Gula húsið, all the tools and technologies that mankind has created have done little for our ability to express ourselves – despite the laptops, words are put to the page slowly if at all, and phone calls go unanswered. Distance and disconnectedness are likewise underscored by trips or time spent far from home. The problem with traveling is that you yourself are along for the ride, like the narrator in “Homo Pastoralis” proves when he encounters a black dog (a symbol of depression) – in the paradise where he’s planning to settle.

Black dogs are loyal creatures, ready to follow both characters and readers into the pages of Milli trjánna (2009), Gyrðir’s most lauded book. Death is nearer than ever before, which is unavoidable when the topic at hand is human existence, and the tension below the surface is even greater than in Gula húsið and Steintré. The title itself invokes a blend of serenity and unease. Walking through a forest fills most people with a sense of peace, but trees also obstruct the view and create cover for the unexpected to hide. Perhaps you glimpse something or other between the branches and shrubs – and your imagination fills in the gaps. There’s a notable sense of dread in this lush collection, and it takes many forms, some much more tangible than in previous books. Not only are there spirits and mysterious sounds raising terror in the middle of the night, there are also monsters and fantastical beasts cropping up in the natural world. In “Glerhús” (“Glass House”), the narrator encounters a terrifying creature among the plants that seems to have “come from another planet.” Standing before the winged creature, which is like some sort of chimera, covered in scales with icy claws, the man is filled with a sense of powerlessness and backs away.

Whether such a creature should be interpreted in the context of references to climate change made in other stories is perhaps a matter of opinion. What is clear, however, is that nature plays a key role in the book and is sometimes characterized as mysterious and overwhelming. But the mysterious power of nature doesn’t just exist in majestic natural wonders; something as homey as a house plant seems poised to turn people into “twilight-thirsty and lonely potted plants.” But nature is first and foremost a healing power in these stories. Respect for living things is also obvious in ruminations on what a short time humans have dwelled on this earth compared to the trees – though in that time we’ve managed to change the climate to the extent that the narrator in “Hússkiptin” (“House Swap”) happens upon a beetle that is “entirely too large for this part of the world.” It is also probably no coincidence that when the boy in “Grasasöfnun” (“Grass Collecting”) plucks a rare sunflower and presses it between the pages of a dictionary, the blossom lands among such contradictory words as “greed and godliness.”

While nature is a theme that grows throughout Milli trjánna, there is so much more to examine here. There’s soulless modern life with its oversized warehouse stores where everything is always sold out; an even more lifeless future where not a day goes by without something becoming outdated; a society that has to lock everything up and doesn’t care about immigrants – whether trees or humans – and the chasm between people seems to do little more than widen and deepen.

Koparakur (2014; Copper Field) strikes a somewhat different tone than that which reverberates throughout Milli trjánna. The narrative is in the foreground, and people and events are often presented from a comical point of view – though the subject matter is in no way trivial. The action film, a facet of American culture that desensitizes us to violence by making it seem commonplace, is a true home wrecker in “Tveggja hæða þögn” (“Two-Story Silence”). The man of the house has so thoroughly cut himself off from everything but the television that his black shirt is now reminiscent of a bulletproof vest – his wife’s love can barely penetrate it. Similar references to violence and disconnection can be found widely in this book, particularly where the spotlight is trained on human-animal interactions. Fishing in a manmade lake where no fish “can be fully free” takes on a strange cast, and the freezer is not a larder but a coffin. The story “Aftakan” (“The Execution”) is also a clear commentary on the slaughter of animals. Young boys follow along as sheep are herded into the slaughterhouse. On the sheep’s heels are two people who are clearly meant to meet the same fate as the animals, and behind them is a man armed with a rifle. The parallel drawn between the slaughter of animals and the treatment of people in war-torn countries is disturbing enough in and of itself. But on top of that, there’s an uncomfortable correlation implied between the rifle and the bolt gun that the boys have with them – and that they hint at using on more than just sheep. Although the story depicts children at play, equating a gun with a toy is precisely what spurs us to consider how we approach the game of life. It's a game we learn to play early, as can be seen in “Hendurnar” (“The Hands”) when a young boy buys himself some toy soldiers from Vietnam.

Though the final story in Skuggaskip (2019; Shadow Ships) underscores Koparakur’s commentary on killing animals, Gyrðir’s eleventh short story collection goes in a whole different direction. Like so often, there’s a balance of humor and sorrow, but the humor has probably never before been so pronounced. At times, it feels as though the narrator is talking to a friend, and the author’s voice is closer to the reader; in fact, the reader is sometimes addressed directly, and the narrator even uses phrases like “our guy” in reference to a character.

As previously mentioned, relationships play a large part in Gyrðir’s narrative world, including in Skuggaskip. As in earlier stories, marriage is portrayed as a fragile compound, though there is also an identifiable sense of hope here. “Vöxtur” (”Growth”), yet another testament to the brilliant richness of Gyrðir’s imagination, tells of a couple who go to great lengths to obtain “living” wood for the flooring in their new home. But the life in the floor exceeds their expectations quite a bit when a sizeable grove of trees grows in their living room. As they stroll through the little wood, after “the television simply vanished,” the couple seem to grow closer to one another – it’s easy to get lost, in which case they must “call out each other’s names.” The title of the story, then, has a possible double meaning and does not just describe the mysterious growth coming out of the living room floor but also the couple’s growing intimacy.

Since the advent of the short story, such turning points have been identified as one of the form’s primary characteristics, these little occurrences that change everything and reveal the transience of life and the smallness of mankind in the grand scheme of things. Gyrðir has an unbelievable knack for selecting material, and he employs narrative techniques with a precision that allows him to communicate something great through something small. His stories gather strength and impact from each other as well as from the entirety of his created world, and Gyrðir is, without a doubt, an author who has managed to create a world all his own through his work, a world that bears unmistakable marks of being his. It’s a world that is meaningful in and of itself and operates according to its own rules. As soon as readers open one of Gyrðir’s books, they know exactly where they are – what they should expect, on the other hand, is far from certain.

The art of being alone: Novels

Of the five novels Gyrðir has released over the past two decades, the first, Næturluktin (2001; The Night Lantern), sets itself apart for a number of reasons. Just the fact that it is an independent sequel to Gangandi íkorni (1987; A Wandering Squirrel) makes it unique among his body of work. Although there are a multitude of connections to be found between many of his books, these two novels are the only ones that essentially function as a single work. Reading these two stories together is interesting as there is a noticeable difference in style between them. With Næturluktin, the reader encounters the simplicity and clarity associated with Gyrðir’s work today, traits that had not yet come to be seen as clear hallmarks of the author’s work when the earlier book came out. These two books don’t just share a setting and characters, they also have a common structure. The first part of each takes place in the real world, in the Icelandic countryside, and tells the story of Sigmar, a boy who has been sent to stay with the couple Björg and Ágúst for reasons unknown. The second part takes place in the fairy-tale world of the squirrel, the product of Sigmar’s imagination, a world that belongs to the animals and is almost Kafkaesque in its defiance of logic and reality.

Although various peculiarities and the supernatural are always woven into Gyrðir’s work, they probably show up more here than anywhere else. The reader is charged with quite a task, interpreting the story and deciphering the squirrel’s surreal adventure, which can be assumed to hold the key to the boy’s inner life, though nothing is obvious in that regard. Sigmar is a secretive boy, but at the same time, he is imaginative and creative, as is evidenced by his penchant for mischief. Though he seems more content to be staying with the couple than he was in Gangandi íkorni, his presence there clearly didn’t come of anything good. At the very least, his mother cannot keep him with her; it is revealed in the story that mother and son have lost their home to a fire. At the beginning of Næturluktin, Sigmar receives the news that his father is dead, and he takes it hard even though he didn’t know his father. He seems to know very little about the man except that he was a heavy drinker, and he has no memories of his parents being together. It’s a lot for the child’s soul to wrestle with, which perhaps explains the boy’s escape into fiction.

In the four novels that followed Næturluktin, Gyrðir moved his focus away from the world of childhood and into adulthood – where life is no less complicated. The narrators of all four books are artists, middle aged or older, who have settled down far from city life and from the people closest to them. Struggles with relationships, society, and art are at the center of their existential crises, and somehow it seems that these three elements are irreconcilable.

But childhood is not far away in Hótelsumar (2003; Hotel Summer), as the book opens with the narrator, an author, returning to his childhood stomping grounds, where he stays at a hotel. He is quite recently divorced, struggling to write, and seems not to know how to move forward with his life in general. His visit to his childhood home, therefore, is a clear manifestation of his conviction that he does not have the strength needed to move on.

As the story progresses, it is hard not to feel as though something is amiss. Just how reliable a narrator is this guy who claims to so easily return to being “this little boy who doesn’t dare do anything,” but soon thereafter describes how that same boy made a game of wandering around near the fire station with a box of matches? And curiously enough, just after he stands before his childhood home to bid it a final farewell, the fire engine races through town. In light of what was said earlier, that Gyrðir’s characters would sooner do nothing than go too far, there is perhaps good reason to be concerned. But the reader’s mind can’t help but go to Næturluktin, to Sigmar and the inferno in that farmhouse – could it be that that imaginative boy also played with matches? Considering the created universe of Gyrðir’s work as a whole, readers frequently find themselves pondering such possibilities.

Creativity in and of itself is a theme in this universe, as well as in Gyrðir’s three latest novels, Sandárbókin (2007; The Sand River Book), Suðurglugginn (2012; The South Window), and Sorgarmarsinn (2018; The Sorrow March). The narrators work with different mediums – visual art, creative writing, and music – but all the books wrestle with questions about the life and work of an artist, and each is set somewhere the main character only plans to be temporarily but ends up staying indefinitely. These interim stops reflect the stagnation in their lives and distance from others, while at the same time describing the position that artists hold in society and the inevitable loneliness of artistic creation.

The painter in Sandárbókin has sought shelter in a trailer near a wooded area, where he attempts to renew his connection to art through nature. He describes himself as having “trees on the brain” and says the forest has the effect of “causing a certain disengagement from oneself.” In the book, the forest is the realm of the imagination and the wild, filled with unseen mythical creatures and humming with life. There, the painter discovers some connection he had lost, but he also runs up against the limits of his chosen medium when it comes time to capture the original creation. In clear contrast to the still, self-sufficient realm of the forest, the modern society of the boom years churns right along with all its materialism and status symbols. The painter does nothing to hide his disdain for that society and the money worship that rules it.

In the mind of the main character in Suðurglugginn (2012), a writer, loneliness is a no less unavoidable fate, something he couldn’t escape even if he tried. The writer is staying at his friend’s summer house and completely avoiding all human interaction. Despite the isolation, he is having the hardest time finishing his novel. The letter b refuses to stay in line with the rest of the alphabet, and words start to go missing from his memory; the typewriter ribbon has almost run out and the letters are growing fainter and fainter on the page – as if the text wants to destroy itself. This raises the question of whether being an active participant in life might not be a prerequisite for creating. On the other hand, a writer cannot make much progress except when alone with pen and paper, so once again we see the inherent contradiction of the artist’s life.

The main character in Sorgarmarsinn (2018) is much more spirited in his endeavors with sound and melody, though he repeatedly states that he is not a composer. While the title does not exactly exude a sense of lightness, there is humor in these pages. The narrative style is reminiscent of Skuggaskip, where the reader is addressed directly as if engaged in a personal conversation with the narrator. His endless self-deprecating comments about the artistic value of his creations, on the other hand, are simultaneously comical and tragic, but they also represent the story’s central question – what does it mean to be an artist? At the beginning of the book, the composer has borrowed a house in a small village so he can focus on this all-consuming interest of his. Literally everything becomes a source of inspiration, whether it be gutters, a tea kettle, or the buzzing of flies.

The claim is sometimes made that all proper writers are always writing the same story. Each book is a new study of the material, a step towards a cohesive understanding of the question propelling the writing forward. Gyrðir Elíasson can be categorized as this type of writer – it is perhaps fitting to liken him to a landscape painter who paints the same mountain again and again, because the subject will never be perfectly captured in any single attempt. Although the artist trilogy is often talked about as a single, cohesive work – and it’s not a stretch to imagine the three books eventually being published in a single volume – Hótelsumar can easily be seen as a sort of prelude to the trilogy. Indeed, there’s some sort of cosmic connection between all five novels that have been discussed here. Creation and destruction seem to be two sides of the same coin. Creation, the desire for beauty, is a path out of the reality in which the narrators struggle to find themselves, but the path is neither straight nor wide and is far from painless. For all of these characters, the journey leads to some sort of dissolution, a shift from one reality to another, but each such reality is uncertain. Reality is itself a fuzzy concept in Gyrðir’s books, where the spotlight is trained on the individual’s inner life. And perhaps that is precisely the strongest message in his fiction: what is imagined is just as true as what is real; dreams are just as important as the life we live when we’re awake; death is just as close as life. For if one intends to understand what it means to be human, then reality simply does not suffice.

“Everything is endless / except life”: Poetry

In the world Gyrðir Elíasson has created through his work, poetry can be said to be the foundation. The sheer volume – nearly two dozen books of poetry over the course of his career – speaks for itself, but the idea of poetry as foundation also refers to the fact that Gyrðir employs the techniques of poetry in all of his writing. The atmosphere, figurative language, and clarity of the language that so strongly characterize all his writing are all tools of the poetic trade, used by those working with a form that seeks to capture the world in a single sentence.

Tvífundnaland (2003; Twicefoundland) came out alongside Hótelsumar, and in fact, over the past couple of decades, it has almost been more the rule than the exception that Gyrðir releases two books simultaneously. Like Hótelsumar, Tvífundnaland focuses on childhood, conjuring up chiseled images of a land filled with beauty and magic but also darkness and danger.

Many of the poems are composed of two images – the first a bright landscape, full of color, stillness, and beauty; but in the second, something sneaks into frame, casting a shadow. The threat is sometimes mysterious – a rapidly rising river, ravens in flight – but sometimes concrete, like the nuclear power plant, “whiter than a duvet cover,” that appears in “Dagbókarbrot að utan” (“Diary Excerpt from Outside”). The poem is a picture of nature in high definition, an exaggerated symphony of color in a fiery red, true green, and neon yellow allusion to radiation and impending danger. A similar commentary on the harmful effects of industry can be found in several other poems, and the reader is left with the sense – and truth – that nature is a power with all the time in the world. It's only mankind that is running out of time.

Time, that nimble beast, is everywhere in Upplitað myrkur (2005; Discolored Darkness), taking various forms. In many of the book’s more humorous poems, the past shows up in the present, seemingly on some sort of business. Haunting, as mentioned before, is a common theme in Gyrðir’s work, and in Upplitað myrkur, it’s the past doing the haunting, as if it has not really passed at all. Another, much more existential theme is geologic time and nature, the eternal machine that will survive us all.

Although the title evokes a sense of grey and numbness, faith in life creeps in at the most unlikely opportunities, and the humility found amidst the heavy weight of an existence that every law of nature has marked for death is one of the things that make Gyrðir’s writing not just thought provoking but also healing. With every step we take, unexpected beauty and great wonder may reveal themselves: a child making snow angels in a graveyard, a worm-nibbled leaf that looks like fine filigree, even a new earth rising from the sea.

The title of Gyrðir’s next book of poetry, Nokkur almenn orð um kulnun sólar (2009; A Few General Remarks on the Cooling of the Sun), does not exactly exude brightness. Besides that, there’s something striking about the contradiction in the idea of intending to make a few general remarks about the inevitable end of all life, almost as if it’s a simple, mundane topic. Perhaps this proves the first principle of Gyrðir Elíasson’s poetics – simplicity and the rejection of any sort of drama. Although Gyrðir, without exception, uses sparingly the natural resource from which his art is made – language – the minimalism has rarely been more pronounced. Much of the book is reminiscent of Eastern philosophy; and in fact, Gyrðir has translated a good amount of Eastern poetry.

In these pages, Gyrðir employs to the fullest his ability to reflect on the outside what is happening on the inside. There is no attempt made to hide the fact that Nokkur almenn orð um kulnun sólar takes a dark and unrestrained stance on life, conveying the message that life can bear an ominous resemblance to death. But it would not be a Gyrðir Elíasson book if beauty did not manage to slip through, even if only in limited places. Look, there’s a canary in flight – and there are the pine trees: “They hold up the sky.”

Three years later saw the release of Hér vex enginn sítrónuviður (2012; No Lemonwood Grows Here), the same year as Suðurglugginn. In terms of subject matter, however, the book is more reminiscent of Koparakur, which came out two years later, because it does not hold back when it comes to criticizing man’s treatment of animals. At the end of the second part, the reader encounters the hopeful gaze of the space dog Laika, just before she is shot out into space – to certain death – “all in the name of science.”

In any case, it should be clear to readers that the portrayal of mankind in Gyrðir’s books grows darker as the 21st century progresses. In the same way, despair is magnified because with their thoughtless treatment of animals and nature, humans are slowly wiping themselves out, threatening their own existence. The darkness in the mind of man is rapidly increasing – and all the while, the lemon grove burns.

In 2016, Gyrðir released his fifteenth book of poetry, Síðasta vegabréfið (The Final Passport), alongside the flash fiction collection Langbylgja. The promise contained within the title, that this is a book about the final journey, is a playful attempt at misdirection, because in the eponymous poem, it turns out the word “vegabréf,” literally “road letter,” is used to refer to a letter written on the side of the road. The so-called thinking man hardly receives higher marks here than in Gyrðir’s earlier poems and is, in fact, clearly held in much lower regard than animals, which are said to have a great many good qualities in “Fáein atriði um yfirburði dýra” (“A Few Notes on the Superiority of Animals”) – including the fact that “They can look at a tree / without thinking about a chainsaw.”

Judging by the inky black cover of Draumstol (2020; Dream Deprivation), it would be easy to assume the poet had filled his pen with darkness and set depression loose on the page. But despite the blackness of night that rules the cover, melancholy is only one of the threads woven into this poetic tapestry, and it is simply part of life. In between, the book strikes much lighter notes, and there is no rule against making jokes – not even at the expense of the poet’s work. Many of the book’s strongest poems, on the other hand, discuss in one way or another how poorly equipped people are to understand themselves and others.

Despite the perceptive view of the world that Gyrðir’s speakers and narrators usually have, they are generally the sort of people who watch the world go by but are incapable of changing it. It’s as if they have accepted the fact that life is too much for them. Whether this attitude is in jest or is meant to be taken seriously, it is always clear, devoid of sentimentality, and not without empathy. In Gyrðir’s world, loneliness is simply an unavoidable part of existing – the essence of being human.

Gyrðir’s elixir of life

The magic of Gyrðir Elíasson’s work is a complex brew. On the one hand, he’s an author who draws upon cultural heritage, art history, and world literature in a remarkably personal manner, yet he tackles intimate topics effortlessly, as if they are utterly commonplace. His stories and characters reflect the disconnectedness and loneliness of man in a grim, shallow world that is hell bent on destroying itself. But Gyrðir’s concoction is a magic potion, not a poison draught, and his writing is resplendent with love for the wonders and beauty of that same world, reverence for creation and the whole spectrum of life. After reading his work, the reader feels like something has happened, like they have witnessed something remarkable, been touched by magic. Gyrðir’s body of work is singular in every respect; the vast world he has created extends into territory all his own, and his perspective and view of life are surprising and diverse – as though using a kaleidoscope to peer into the innermost nooks and crannies of the human soul. His literary voice testifies to the fact that in a world filled with noise, wisdom can also be found in the words of one who whispers. Through his work, Gyrðir is saying something about us as people, something about what it means to exist – today or at any time. For a country at the edge of the inhabitable world with a language spoken by so few to have such an author is a great gift, an inoculation, and a source of sustenance – a timeless balm for a universal human wound.

Hrafnhildur Þórhallsdóttir, November 2022

Translation by Julie Summers, February 2023

That which survives time is humanity (2000-2022)

Gyrðir Elíasson’s presence in the world of Icelandic literature is as palpable as it is quiet. Though the author himself cares little for attention or the grinding gears of market forces, the nature of his work is such that it automatically rises to the top – outside of time and space. The fact of the matter is that in the landscape of literature, Gyrðir Elíasson is part of the firmament; steadfast yet ever changing, an element all his own. For nearly four decades, he has given and given – the quantity and quality of his work quite astonishing – working in all forms of fiction as well as producing invaluable poetry translations. His style is unique; the reader can identify him by a single sentence, and his grasp of the language is such that it is safe to say there are few better writers working in Icelandic today. This article will examine Gyrðir’s body of work since the turn of the century, guided by literary form rather than chronology.

Painting with words: Flash fiction

Gyrðir was well into his career before he began working with flash fiction as a distinct form – though he had been writing plenty of very short stories for some time. His debut effort with the form, Lungnafiskarnir (The Lungfish), came out in 2014. The collection is an ironic, playful take on flash fiction, a form that is difficult to define and straddles the murky borders between prose poetry, fable, joke, fairy tale, fantasy, and wordplay. All these elements can be observed throughout Gyrðir’s writing, regardless of form, so perhaps it was only a matter of time before flash fiction made its way into his body of work.

To the reader, the tales in Lungnafiskarnir are like vivid images, as if the author were sitting there with a brush instead of a pen, painting little pictures. In fact, painting is present in much of Gyrðir’s work, which is fitting, given that he himself has experimented with visual art. The small paintings in Lungnafiskarnir feature a limited palette of yellow, red, blue, and green – topped with a coat of grey, of course, when the monotony of everyday life becomes overwhelming. This color palette both ties the stories together and creates a sense of familiarity within a narrative world that is often particularly unfamiliar, filled with nightmarish wonders and blurred boundaries between dream, reality, and fiction. One theme that regularly crops up in Gyrðir’s books, namely the climate crisis and its impact on the biosphere, can also be identified here.

Langbylgja (2016; Longwave) came out just two years after Lungnafiskarnir, and the two books could easily be called sister collections. The tales in Langbylgja, however, are perhaps closer to short stories than flash fiction – most are longer and extend beyond the snapshots that characterize the earlier collection. The stories are about things that could happen rather than being pure fantasy – while there is no shortage of the bizarre here, it usually manifests in the characters’ behavior. Gyrðir’s characters are often passive observers; we have here a collection of people who barely express themselves in word or deed, if at all. On the other hand, when these fine folks make up their minds to do something, their actions go far beyond what can be considered normal and approach the realm of obsession.

Longwave is thoroughly steeped in humor, not least in the many stories in which wordplay is at the forefront. In “Tveir gráir skuggar” (“Two Grey Shadows”) and “Gestahúsið” (“The Guesthouse”), the narrator’s eyes fall upon book titles like The Importance of Being Ernest, a biography of Ernest Hemingway, titles that sound familiar enough but are actually a bit strange.

Both books are packed with allusions, so packed it could be said that they are works of art created from other works of art. Familiar names and works from art and human history lend color to the texts and remind the reader of the greater context. Opposites also play a large role, as imagination, dreams, fantasy, and euphoria are pitted against drab, concrete reality. The natural world, teeming with life, pulses in opposition to stagnation, and the characters’ repressed temperament skulks about hand in hand with humor and dread.

In 2022, Gyrðir released a new collection of flash fiction in two volumes, Þöglu myndirnar (The Silent Pictures) and Pensilskrift (Brushwork). The texts are in something of a different place compared to previous books – literally, in fact, as the setting of the stories is unusually transparent, identifiable by the Icelandic place names mentioned. Whether the surge in domestic travel during Covid plays a role here is a fair question, but the pandemic is in the background of several stories in any case. The story “Ásjónur” (“Visages”) in Þöglu myndirnar, for example, is an acerbically witty tale of the frightful Emperor Covid’s reign. Protective face masks hang from trees as a monument to environmental goals gone to hell, and the story takes aim at westerners’ sudden desire to hide their faces – though they had previously regarded with suspicion cultural practices involving face or head coverings.

Another dominant theme is unreliable memory, a phenomenon that has frequently popped up in the discourse in connection with literature and trauma in recent years. Trauma can be said to be a theme in and of itself in Gyrðir’s fiction, in light of the fact that connection and disconnection are continually repeated topics in his books, as will be further explored later.

Gyrðir’s narrative wit is on full display in many of the small sketches of curious characters in Pensilskrift. The debt collector who cleans up the seedy underbelly of a tiny seaside village, the artist who paints invisible canvases in absolute seriousness, and Ingmar Bergman at the video store are evidence of how the author’s unexpected perspective infuses the simplest things with humor. At the other end of the spectrum are short prose pieces that border on poetry. “Strandganga” (“Beach Walk”) is a snapshot that shows rather than tells a much larger story, examining close up the problem of plastic waste and polluted oceans. Mankind’s helplessness in the face of that crisis is reflected in the idea of counting the grains of sand in one’s palm – but what’s the point of counting the uncountable? Here, as so often in Gyrðir’s work, nature is the backdrop of existence, a place of constant danger with its push and pull between motion and stillness, but it is also a wellspring of imagination and magic.

In such a compact narrative form, what is left unsaid matters no less than what is plainly stated, which is why short prose, contrary to what one might think, demands the reader’s full attention. Keeping what matters most just out of frame is a tricky technique that must be employed in such a way that readers don’t feel the author is withholding information. Gyrðir has a firm grasp of this technique; with him at the helm, the blanks in the text are just as much a source of information and meaning as what is on the surface. Gyrðir has honed this stylistic skill as he has contended with the short story, flash fiction’s big sister, and his mastery of it is part of the reason he is considered one of Iceland’s most unique and accomplished short story writers.

The vanishing point of the everyday: Short stories

The first thing readers think of when they hear the name Gyrðir Elíasson is quite possibly the short story – not only because of the prominent place this form occupies in his body of work, but also because he leaves such distinct fingerprints on it. Over the course of his career, he has published eleven short story collections, including five since the year 2000, and his skilled grasp of the form has earned him both the Icelandic Literary Prize, for Gula húsið (The Yellow House), and the Nordic Council Literature Prize, for Milli trjánna (Between the Trees).

Gula húsið (2000) was Gyrðir’s first book of the new millennium. It is largely set in the countryside, the atmosphere laden with the sense of a bygone era and the rhythm gently flowing – everything here floats just beneath the surface, like Hemingway’s metaphor of the short story as an iceberg. Children are often at the center of the narrative, and children’s powerlessness over their own lives speaks directly to the motif of the underdog, a common characteristic of the short story that manifests as a focus on disadvantaged individuals lacking power or means. Most of the characters in Gula húsið fall into this category, and the book is filled with glimpses of a life that never was. The supernatural frequently slips into the exceptionally mundane world of these stories, many of which feature clear Christian symbolism or motifs from Icelandic folklore, with ghosts and elves making appearances. With this in mind, the story “Grásteinninn” (“The Grey Stone”) bears mentioning. In this story, the world of men and the world of elves meet in a mystical, thought-provoking tale about mankind’s encroachment on the natural world and the sense of ownership that we as a species feel over it.

The focus on mysticism continues, running like a path of pebbles all the way through Steintré (2005; Stone Tree) and encapsulated by the book’s title, which undeniably refers to some sort of collision of life and death and can easily be read as a reference to the book’s characters, very few of whom are flourishing. Though contemporary life is more present in Steintré than in Gula húsið, all the tools and technologies that mankind has created have done little for our ability to express ourselves – despite the laptops, words are put to the page slowly if at all, and phone calls go unanswered. Distance and disconnectedness are likewise underscored by trips or time spent far from home. The problem with traveling is that you yourself are along for the ride, like the narrator in “Homo Pastoralis” proves when he encounters a black dog (a symbol of depression) – in the paradise where he’s planning to settle.

Black dogs are loyal creatures, ready to follow both characters and readers into the pages of Milli trjánna (2009), Gyrðir’s most lauded book. Death is nearer than ever before, which is unavoidable when the topic at hand is human existence, and the tension below the surface is even greater than in Gula húsið and Steintré. The title itself invokes a blend of serenity and unease. Walking through a forest fills most people with a sense of peace, but trees also obstruct the view and create cover for the unexpected to hide. Perhaps you glimpse something or other between the branches and shrubs – and your imagination fills in the gaps. There’s a notable sense of dread in this lush collection, and it takes many forms, some much more tangible than in previous books. Not only are there spirits and mysterious sounds raising terror in the middle of the night, there are also monsters and fantastical beasts cropping up in the natural world. In “Glerhús” (“Glass House”), the narrator encounters a terrifying creature among the plants that seems to have “come from another planet.” Standing before the winged creature, which is like some sort of chimera, covered in scales with icy claws, the man is filled with a sense of powerlessness and backs away.

Whether such a creature should be interpreted in the context of references to climate change made in other stories is perhaps a matter of opinion. What is clear, however, is that nature plays a key role in the book and is sometimes characterized as mysterious and overwhelming. But the mysterious power of nature doesn’t just exist in majestic natural wonders; something as homey as a house plant seems poised to turn people into “twilight-thirsty and lonely potted plants.” But nature is first and foremost a healing power in these stories. Respect for living things is also obvious in ruminations on what a short time humans have dwelled on this earth compared to the trees – though in that time we’ve managed to change the climate to the extent that the narrator in “Hússkiptin” (“House Swap”) happens upon a beetle that is “entirely too large for this part of the world.” It is also probably no coincidence that when the boy in “Grasasöfnun” (“Grass Collecting”) plucks a rare sunflower and presses it between the pages of a dictionary, the blossom lands among such contradictory words as “greed and godliness.”

While nature is a theme that grows throughout Milli trjánna, there is so much more to examine here. There’s soulless modern life with its oversized warehouse stores where everything is always sold out; an even more lifeless future where not a day goes by without something becoming outdated; a society that has to lock everything up and doesn’t care about immigrants – whether trees or humans – and the chasm between people seems to do little more than widen and deepen.

Koparakur (2014; Copper Field) strikes a somewhat different tone than that which reverberates throughout Milli trjánna. The narrative is in the foreground, and people and events are often presented from a comical point of view – though the subject matter is in no way trivial. The action film, a facet of American culture that desensitizes us to violence by making it seem commonplace, is a true home wrecker in “Tveggja hæða þögn” (“Two-Story Silence”). The man of the house has so thoroughly cut himself off from everything but the television that his black shirt is now reminiscent of a bulletproof vest – his wife’s love can barely penetrate it. Similar references to violence and disconnection can be found widely in this book, particularly where the spotlight is trained on human-animal interactions. Fishing in a manmade lake where no fish “can be fully free” takes on a strange cast, and the freezer is not a larder but a coffin. The story “Aftakan” (“The Execution”) is also a clear commentary on the slaughter of animals. Young boys follow along as sheep are herded into the slaughterhouse. On the sheep’s heels are two people who are clearly meant to meet the same fate as the animals, and behind them is a man armed with a rifle. The parallel drawn between the slaughter of animals and the treatment of people in war-torn countries is disturbing enough in and of itself. But on top of that, there’s an uncomfortable correlation implied between the rifle and the bolt gun that the boys have with them – and that they hint at using on more than just sheep. Although the story depicts children at play, equating a gun with a toy is precisely what spurs us to consider how we approach the game of life. It's a game we learn to play early, as can be seen in “Hendurnar” (“The Hands”) when a young boy buys himself some toy soldiers from Vietnam.

Though the final story in Skuggaskip (2019; Shadow Ships) underscores Koparakur’s commentary on killing animals, Gyrðir’s eleventh short story collection goes in a whole different direction. Like so often, there’s a balance of humor and sorrow, but the humor has probably never before been so pronounced. At times, it feels as though the narrator is talking to a friend, and the author’s voice is closer to the reader; in fact, the reader is sometimes addressed directly, and the narrator even uses phrases like “our guy” in reference to a character.

As previously mentioned, relationships play a large part in Gyrðir’s narrative world, including in Skuggaskip. As in earlier stories, marriage is portrayed as a fragile compound, though there is also an identifiable sense of hope here. “Vöxtur” (”Growth”), yet another testament to the brilliant richness of Gyrðir’s imagination, tells of a couple who go to great lengths to obtain “living” wood for the flooring in their new home. But the life in the floor exceeds their expectations quite a bit when a sizeable grove of trees grows in their living room. As they stroll through the little wood, after “the television simply vanished,” the couple seem to grow closer to one another – it’s easy to get lost, in which case they must “call out each other’s names.” The title of the story, then, has a possible double meaning and does not just describe the mysterious growth coming out of the living room floor but also the couple’s growing intimacy.

Since the advent of the short story, such turning points have been identified as one of the form’s primary characteristics, these little occurrences that change everything and reveal the transience of life and the smallness of mankind in the grand scheme of things. Gyrðir has an unbelievable knack for selecting material, and he employs narrative techniques with a precision that allows him to communicate something great through something small. His stories gather strength and impact from each other as well as from the entirety of his created world, and Gyrðir is, without a doubt, an author who has managed to create a world all his own through his work, a world that bears unmistakable marks of being his. It’s a world that is meaningful in and of itself and operates according to its own rules. As soon as readers open one of Gyrðir’s books, they know exactly where they are – what they should expect, on the other hand, is far from certain.

The art of being alone: Novels

Of the five novels Gyrðir has released over the past two decades, the first, Næturluktin (2001; The Night Lantern), sets itself apart for a number of reasons. Just the fact that it is an independent sequel to Gangandi íkorni (1987; A Wandering Squirrel) makes it unique among his body of work. Although there are a multitude of connections to be found between many of his books, these two novels are the only ones that essentially function as a single work. Reading these two stories together is interesting as there is a noticeable difference in style between them. With Næturluktin, the reader encounters the simplicity and clarity associated with Gyrðir’s work today, traits that had not yet come to be seen as clear hallmarks of the author’s work when the earlier book came out. These two books don’t just share a setting and characters, they also have a common structure. The first part of each takes place in the real world, in the Icelandic countryside, and tells the story of Sigmar, a boy who has been sent to stay with the couple Björg and Ágúst for reasons unknown. The second part takes place in the fairy-tale world of the squirrel, the product of Sigmar’s imagination, a world that belongs to the animals and is almost Kafkaesque in its defiance of logic and reality.

Although various peculiarities and the supernatural are always woven into Gyrðir’s work, they probably show up more here than anywhere else. The reader is charged with quite a task, interpreting the story and deciphering the squirrel’s surreal adventure, which can be assumed to hold the key to the boy’s inner life, though nothing is obvious in that regard. Sigmar is a secretive boy, but at the same time, he is imaginative and creative, as is evidenced by his penchant for mischief. Though he seems more content to be staying with the couple than he was in Gangandi íkorni, his presence there clearly didn’t come of anything good. At the very least, his mother cannot keep him with her; it is revealed in the story that mother and son have lost their home to a fire. At the beginning of Næturluktin, Sigmar receives the news that his father is dead, and he takes it hard even though he didn’t know his father. He seems to know very little about the man except that he was a heavy drinker, and he has no memories of his parents being together. It’s a lot for the child’s soul to wrestle with, which perhaps explains the boy’s escape into fiction.

In the four novels that followed Næturluktin, Gyrðir moved his focus away from the world of childhood and into adulthood – where life is no less complicated. The narrators of all four books are artists, middle aged or older, who have settled down far from city life and from the people closest to them. Struggles with relationships, society, and art are at the center of their existential crises, and somehow it seems that these three elements are irreconcilable.

But childhood is not far away in Hótelsumar (2003; Hotel Summer), as the book opens with the narrator, an author, returning to his childhood stomping grounds, where he stays at a hotel. He is quite recently divorced, struggling to write, and seems not to know how to move forward with his life in general. His visit to his childhood home, therefore, is a clear manifestation of his conviction that he does not have the strength needed to move on.

As the story progresses, it is hard not to feel as though something is amiss. Just how reliable a narrator is this guy who claims to so easily return to being “this little boy who doesn’t dare do anything,” but soon thereafter describes how that same boy made a game of wandering around near the fire station with a box of matches? And curiously enough, just after he stands before his childhood home to bid it a final farewell, the fire engine races through town. In light of what was said earlier, that Gyrðir’s characters would sooner do nothing than go too far, there is perhaps good reason to be concerned. But the reader’s mind can’t help but go to Næturluktin, to Sigmar and the inferno in that farmhouse – could it be that that imaginative boy also played with matches? Considering the created universe of Gyrðir’s work as a whole, readers frequently find themselves pondering such possibilities.

Creativity in and of itself is a theme in this universe, as well as in Gyrðir’s three latest novels, Sandárbókin (2007; The Sand River Book), Suðurglugginn (2012; The South Window), and Sorgarmarsinn (2018; The Sorrow March). The narrators work with different mediums – visual art, creative writing, and music – but all the books wrestle with questions about the life and work of an artist, and each is set somewhere the main character only plans to be temporarily but ends up staying indefinitely. These interim stops reflect the stagnation in their lives and distance from others, while at the same time describing the position that artists hold in society and the inevitable loneliness of artistic creation.

The painter in Sandárbókin has sought shelter in a trailer near a wooded area, where he attempts to renew his connection to art through nature. He describes himself as having “trees on the brain” and says the forest has the effect of “causing a certain disengagement from oneself.” In the book, the forest is the realm of the imagination and the wild, filled with unseen mythical creatures and humming with life. There, the painter discovers some connection he had lost, but he also runs up against the limits of his chosen medium when it comes time to capture the original creation. In clear contrast to the still, self-sufficient realm of the forest, the modern society of the boom years churns right along with all its materialism and status symbols. The painter does nothing to hide his disdain for that society and the money worship that rules it.

In the mind of the main character in Suðurglugginn (2012), a writer, loneliness is a no less unavoidable fate, something he couldn’t escape even if he tried. The writer is staying at his friend’s summer house and completely avoiding all human interaction. Despite the isolation, he is having the hardest time finishing his novel. The letter b refuses to stay in line with the rest of the alphabet, and words start to go missing from his memory; the typewriter ribbon has almost run out and the letters are growing fainter and fainter on the page – as if the text wants to destroy itself. This raises the question of whether being an active participant in life might not be a prerequisite for creating. On the other hand, a writer cannot make much progress except when alone with pen and paper, so once again we see the inherent contradiction of the artist’s life.

The main character in Sorgarmarsinn (2018) is much more spirited in his endeavors with sound and melody, though he repeatedly states that he is not a composer. While the title does not exactly exude a sense of lightness, there is humor in these pages. The narrative style is reminiscent of Skuggaskip, where the reader is addressed directly as if engaged in a personal conversation with the narrator. His endless self-deprecating comments about the artistic value of his creations, on the other hand, are simultaneously comical and tragic, but they also represent the story’s central question – what does it mean to be an artist? At the beginning of the book, the composer has borrowed a house in a small village so he can focus on this all-consuming interest of his. Literally everything becomes a source of inspiration, whether it be gutters, a tea kettle, or the buzzing of flies.

The claim is sometimes made that all proper writers are always writing the same story. Each book is a new study of the material, a step towards a cohesive understanding of the question propelling the writing forward. Gyrðir Elíasson can be categorized as this type of writer – it is perhaps fitting to liken him to a landscape painter who paints the same mountain again and again, because the subject will never be perfectly captured in any single attempt. Although the artist trilogy is often talked about as a single, cohesive work – and it’s not a stretch to imagine the three books eventually being published in a single volume – Hótelsumar can easily be seen as a sort of prelude to the trilogy. Indeed, there’s some sort of cosmic connection between all five novels that have been discussed here. Creation and destruction seem to be two sides of the same coin. Creation, the desire for beauty, is a path out of the reality in which the narrators struggle to find themselves, but the path is neither straight nor wide and is far from painless. For all of these characters, the journey leads to some sort of dissolution, a shift from one reality to another, but each such reality is uncertain. Reality is itself a fuzzy concept in Gyrðir’s books, where the spotlight is trained on the individual’s inner life. And perhaps that is precisely the strongest message in his fiction: what is imagined is just as true as what is real; dreams are just as important as the life we live when we’re awake; death is just as close as life. For if one intends to understand what it means to be human, then reality simply does not suffice.

“Everything is endless / except life”: Poetry

In the world Gyrðir Elíasson has created through his work, poetry can be said to be the foundation. The sheer volume – nearly two dozen books of poetry over the course of his career – speaks for itself, but the idea of poetry as foundation also refers to the fact that Gyrðir employs the techniques of poetry in all of his writing. The atmosphere, figurative language, and clarity of the language that so strongly characterize all his writing are all tools of the poetic trade, used by those working with a form that seeks to capture the world in a single sentence.

Tvífundnaland (2003; Twicefoundland) came out alongside Hótelsumar, and in fact, over the past couple of decades, it has almost been more the rule than the exception that Gyrðir releases two books simultaneously. Like Hótelsumar, Tvífundnaland focuses on childhood, conjuring up chiseled images of a land filled with beauty and magic but also darkness and danger.

Many of the poems are composed of two images – the first a bright landscape, full of color, stillness, and beauty; but in the second, something sneaks into frame, casting a shadow. The threat is sometimes mysterious – a rapidly rising river, ravens in flight – but sometimes concrete, like the nuclear power plant, “whiter than a duvet cover,” that appears in “Dagbókarbrot að utan” (“Diary Excerpt from Outside”). The poem is a picture of nature in high definition, an exaggerated symphony of color in a fiery red, true green, and neon yellow allusion to radiation and impending danger. A similar commentary on the harmful effects of industry can be found in several other poems, and the reader is left with the sense – and truth – that nature is a power with all the time in the world. It's only mankind that is running out of time.

Time, that nimble beast, is everywhere in Upplitað myrkur (2005; Discolored Darkness), taking various forms. In many of the book’s more humorous poems, the past shows up in the present, seemingly on some sort of business. Haunting, as mentioned before, is a common theme in Gyrðir’s work, and in Upplitað myrkur, it’s the past doing the haunting, as if it has not really passed at all. Another, much more existential theme is geologic time and nature, the eternal machine that will survive us all.

Although the title evokes a sense of grey and numbness, faith in life creeps in at the most unlikely opportunities, and the humility found amidst the heavy weight of an existence that every law of nature has marked for death is one of the things that make Gyrðir’s writing not just thought provoking but also healing. With every step we take, unexpected beauty and great wonder may reveal themselves: a child making snow angels in a graveyard, a worm-nibbled leaf that looks like fine filigree, even a new earth rising from the sea.

The title of Gyrðir’s next book of poetry, Nokkur almenn orð um kulnun sólar (2009; A Few General Remarks on the Cooling of the Sun), does not exactly exude brightness. Besides that, there’s something striking about the contradiction in the idea of intending to make a few general remarks about the inevitable end of all life, almost as if it’s a simple, mundane topic. Perhaps this proves the first principle of Gyrðir Elíasson’s poetics – simplicity and the rejection of any sort of drama. Although Gyrðir, without exception, uses sparingly the natural resource from which his art is made – language – the minimalism has rarely been more pronounced. Much of the book is reminiscent of Eastern philosophy; and in fact, Gyrðir has translated a good amount of Eastern poetry.

In these pages, Gyrðir employs to the fullest his ability to reflect on the outside what is happening on the inside. There is no attempt made to hide the fact that Nokkur almenn orð um kulnun sólar takes a dark and unrestrained stance on life, conveying the message that life can bear an ominous resemblance to death. But it would not be a Gyrðir Elíasson book if beauty did not manage to slip through, even if only in limited places. Look, there’s a canary in flight – and there are the pine trees: “They hold up the sky.”

Three years later saw the release of Hér vex enginn sítrónuviður (2012; No Lemonwood Grows Here), the same year as Suðurglugginn. In terms of subject matter, however, the book is more reminiscent of Koparakur, which came out two years later, because it does not hold back when it comes to criticizing man’s treatment of animals. At the end of the second part, the reader encounters the hopeful gaze of the space dog Laika, just before she is shot out into space – to certain death – “all in the name of science.”

In any case, it should be clear to readers that the portrayal of mankind in Gyrðir’s books grows darker as the 21st century progresses. In the same way, despair is magnified because with their thoughtless treatment of animals and nature, humans are slowly wiping themselves out, threatening their own existence. The darkness in the mind of man is rapidly increasing – and all the while, the lemon grove burns.

In 2016, Gyrðir released his fifteenth book of poetry, Síðasta vegabréfið (The Final Passport), alongside the flash fiction collection Langbylgja. The promise contained within the title, that this is a book about the final journey, is a playful attempt at misdirection, because in the eponymous poem, it turns out the word “vegabréf,” literally “road letter,” is used to refer to a letter written on the side of the road. The so-called thinking man hardly receives higher marks here than in Gyrðir’s earlier poems and is, in fact, clearly held in much lower regard than animals, which are said to have a great many good qualities in “Fáein atriði um yfirburði dýra” (“A Few Notes on the Superiority of Animals”) – including the fact that “They can look at a tree / without thinking about a chainsaw.”

Judging by the inky black cover of Draumstol (2020; Dream Deprivation), it would be easy to assume the poet had filled his pen with darkness and set depression loose on the page. But despite the blackness of night that rules the cover, melancholy is only one of the threads woven into this poetic tapestry, and it is simply part of life. In between, the book strikes much lighter notes, and there is no rule against making jokes – not even at the expense of the poet’s work. Many of the book’s strongest poems, on the other hand, discuss in one way or another how poorly equipped people are to understand themselves and others.

Despite the perceptive view of the world that Gyrðir’s speakers and narrators usually have, they are generally the sort of people who watch the world go by but are incapable of changing it. It’s as if they have accepted the fact that life is too much for them. Whether this attitude is in jest or is meant to be taken seriously, it is always clear, devoid of sentimentality, and not without empathy. In Gyrðir’s world, loneliness is simply an unavoidable part of existing – the essence of being human.

Gyrðir’s elixir of life

The magic of Gyrðir Elíasson’s work is a complex brew. On the one hand, he’s an author who draws upon cultural heritage, art history, and world literature in a remarkably personal manner, yet he tackles intimate topics effortlessly, as if they are utterly commonplace. His stories and characters reflect the disconnectedness and loneliness of man in a grim, shallow world that is hell bent on destroying itself. But Gyrðir’s concoction is a magic potion, not a poison draught, and his writing is resplendent with love for the wonders and beauty of that same world, reverence for creation and the whole spectrum of life. After reading his work, the reader feels like something has happened, like they have witnessed something remarkable, been touched by magic. Gyrðir’s body of work is singular in every respect; the vast world he has created extends into territory all his own, and his perspective and view of life are surprising and diverse – as though using a kaleidoscope to peer into the innermost nooks and crannies of the human soul. His literary voice testifies to the fact that in a world filled with noise, wisdom can also be found in the words of one who whispers. Through his work, Gyrðir is saying something about us as people, something about what it means to exist – today or at any time. For a country at the edge of the inhabitable world with a language spoken by so few to have such an author is a great gift, an inoculation, and a source of sustenance – a timeless balm for a universal human wound.

Hrafnhildur Þórhallsdóttir, November 2022

Translation by Julie Summers, February 2023

Criticism

Agnarsóttir, Áslaug. “Gyrðir Elíasson.”
Icelandic Writers (Dictionary of Literary Biography). Ed. Patrick J. Stevens. Detroit: Gale, 2004. 116-124.

On individual works

Gula húsið (The Yellow House)

Kirsten Wolf: “Gula húsið”
World Literature Today, 76, 2002, pp. 194-195

Terje Holtet Larsen: “Den rasende og den lavmælte / The Irate and the Calm”
Nordisk litteratur 2002, pp. 54-58

Svefnhjólið (The Wheel of Sleep)

Friedhelm Rathjen: “Ein bischen Roman”
In Tintenkurs Nordwest: mit der Lesefähre durch Golfstromeuropa: Holland, England, Wales, Irland, Schottland, Dänemark, Färöer, Island. Scheeßel, Edition ReJoyce, 2006, pp. 150-151

Verena Stössinger: “Das Isländische am Isländischen: über Steinunn Sigurðardóttirs Der Zeitdieb und Gyrðir Elíassons Das Schlafrad”
In Literarische Reise um die Welt: Island. Baden: Buchhandlung Librium, 1999, pp. 22-23

Robert Zola Christensen: “Sömnhojen”
Gardar 1993, årsbok 24. Lund: Walter Ekstrand, pp. 47-48

John Erik Riley: “Gjenopplivet: irritasjon og glede, liv og död í Sövnhjulet av Gyrðir Elíasson”
Vinduet, 54, 2000, pp. 34-37

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From reviews of Gyrðir´s work

Ástráður Eysteinsson: “Gyrðir Elíasson´s work in progress: a portrait” 
Nordic Literature Magazine, 1996

Childhood is a world that Gyrðir Elíasson has explored in greater depth than most other Icelandic writers. It turns out that the bridges connecting the child with the adult self are not always where we think they are; they travel elusively within us, unexpectedly inviting us to the eternal vaults of magic and anxiety, playfulness as well as isolation. As in the works by Franz Kafka, but differently, the child is intimately linked with the creative mind, or the artist, and the figure that completes the triangle is the animal. But in Elíasson´s case, the group of three should perhaps be supplemented with the ghost, a figure that guards the border between life and death, belonging to neither, and who also links the humorous with the horrible. Elíasson´s literary field abounds with eccentric characters, children, old people, animals, and ghosts, all of them belonging to cultural margins, but as such they illuminate the outlines and otherness of society. (15)

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Jón Yngvi Jóhannsson: Vatnsfólkið (The Water People)
DV November 27th 1997

In the short story collection, Vatnsfólkið, Gyrðir Elíasson takes a bigger step towards a traditional narrative than in any of his previous books. It should however be mentioned that in spite of this there is no lack of that which has up to this point drawn readers to his work. Here one can find the world his readers know well by now, a world that is familiar without ever becoming foreseeable, a strange mixture of the known and secure and the unexpected, even uncanny. Still, there seems to be more space in this world than before and it is inhabited by more people than one is accustomed to in Elíasson´s stories. [...]  

Various threads connect these stories, both to literature by other authors and to Elíasson´s previous work. The idea in fact becomes more convincing with every new book that Elíasson´s work forms one continuos web, where various connections, both obvious and less so, link individual texts. This volume of short stories is thus a kind of a text-maze from where the reader can wander through different channels in unexpected directions.

(Translated by Kristín Viðarsdóttir)

2024 - The Swedish Tranströmer Prize

2023 - The May Star: Meðan glerið sefur / Dulstirni

2023 - The Booksellers Prize: Meðan glerið sefur / Dulstirni

2015 – The Icelandic Association of Translators and Interpreter’s Prize: Listin að vera einn (The Art of Being Alone)

2012 – The Icelandic Association of Translators and Interpreter’s Prize: Tunglið braust inn í húsið (The Moon Broke and Entered)

2011 – The Nordic Council Literature Prize: Milli trjánna (Between the Trees)

2000 – The Icelandic Literature Prize: Gula húsið (The Yellow house)

2000 – The Halldór Laxnes Prize for Literature: Gula húsið (The Yellow house)

1998 – Bröste´s Optimism Award

1997 – DV Cultural Prize for Literature: Indíánasumar (Indian Summer)

1995 – The Icelandic Broadcasting Service Writer´s Prize

1989 – The Þórbergur Þórðarsson Prize for Literary Style

Nominations

2024 - The Icelandic Translators' Prize: Grafreiturinn í Barnes (The cemetery in Barnes) by Gabriel Josipovici

2022 - Prix Médicis: Sorgarmarsinn - saga (Requiem)

2021 - The May Star: Draumstol

2018 – The Icelandic Translators' Prize: Sorgin í fyrstu persónu 

2012 – The Icelandic Literature Prize: Suðurglugginn (The Southern Window)

2009 – The Icelandic Literature Prize: Milli trjánna (Between the Trees)

2003 – The Icelandic Literature Prize: Tvífundnaland (Twicefoundland)

2002 – The Nordic Council Literature Prize: Gula húsið (The Yellow House)

1997 – The Icelandic Literature Prize: Vatnsfólkið (The Water People)

1996 – The Icelandic Literature Prize: Indíánasumar (Indian Summer)

1992 – The Icelandic Literature Prize: Mold í Skuggadal (Dust in Shadow Valley)

1991 – The Nordic Council Literature Prize: Bréfbátarigningin (Paper Boat Rain)

1990 – The Icelandic Literature Prize: Svefnhjólið (The Bike of Sleep)

1989 – The European Short Story Award: Konan með grösin. Tregahornið, p. 24-27 (“The Woman With the Grasses": In The Blues Horn)

Nominations

2018 – The Icelandic Translator‘s Prize: Sorgin í fyrstu persónu (Sorrow in the First Person)