Under the Glacier

by Halldór Laxness, Magnus Magnusson (Translator)

Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness’s Under the Glacier is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece, a wryly provocative novel at once earthy and otherworldly. At its outset, the Bishop of Iceland dispatches a young emissary to investigate certain charges against the pastor at Snæfells Glacier, who, among other things, appears to have given up burying the dead.

But once he arrives, the emissary discovers that this dereliction counts only as a mild eccentricity in a community that regards itself as the center of the world and where Creation itself is a work in progress.


What is the emissary to make, for example, of the boarded-up church? What about the mysterious building that has sprung up alongside it? Or the fact that Pastor Primus spends most of his time shoeing horses? Or that his wife, Ua (pronounced “ooh-a,” which is what men invariably sputter upon seeing her), is rumored never to have bathed, eaten, or slept?

Piling improbability on top of improbability, Under the Glacier overflows with comedy both wild and deadpan as it conjures a phantasmagoria as beguiling as it is profound.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Literary Fiction, Scandinavian Literature, Nobel Prize, Novels, Religion

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Born Halldór Guðjónsson, he adopted the surname Laxness in honour of Laxnes in Mosfellssveit where he grew up, his family having moved from Reyjavík in 1905. He published his first novel at the age of only 17, the beginning of a long literary career of more than 60 books, including novels, short stories, poetry, and plays. Confirmed a Catholic in 1923, he later moved away from religion and for a long time was sympathetic to Communist politics, which is evident in his novels World Light and Independent People. In 1955 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Reviews

[Ilse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whoever doesn't live in poetry cannot survive here on earth.

I was elated by this line the moment I first came across it some years ago – and now encountering it at its home, embedded in in this brilliant novel was like a finally visiting a place I have been dreaming of going to for a long time.

Poetry, coffee, irreverent and at times absurd philosophical conversations touching on religion and history, a playful tribute to the Ewig Weibliche – this turned out an excellent and fun holiday reading choice.

The excellent afterword of Susan Sontag singing the praise of it is a lovely bonus - unlike her, I just wouldn't postulate that Under the Glacier is unlike every other book Laxness wrote; the light and witty tone and his toying with the import of poetry and history in Iceland reminded me a lot of Wayward Heroes – besides, both novels made me laugh out loud quite a few times.

Not (yet? or not anymore?) up to forge a review for the time being, I recommend reading this review - it encapsulates this delectable novel better than I ever could, even in my wildest dreams.

[BlackOxford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yessing on the In-breath

I knew Laxness could be wonderfully ironic, even creatively sarcastic. But I never imagined he could be a comic writer, and a first class one at that. The Icelandic Stanley Elkin perhaps.

The comparison is not all that far-fetched. Icelanders are like a lost tribe of Danes. Nominally Lutheran, only God knows what strange practices they get up to cut off in the hinterland of moors, lava fields and mountains. There are rumours that a sort of Nordic Voodoo reigns among the sparse population. The bishop is concerned. A one-man Inquisition (Emissary of the Bishop, EmBi for short, also known as ‘the undersigned’) is sent out to investigate and report on the state of religious health.

Like Voodoo, the local cults are syncretistic and somewhat ill-defined dogmatically. Their talismans and rituals are purely pragmatic though. If you can repair a Primus stove, or shoe a horse, or fix a carburettor, or rig up a 240 volt circuit you’re a saver of souls and a high priest.

This doesn’t mean that the spiritual is unregarded amongst the natives. These are not crass materialists (although they recently have received the luxury of alternating current). The place, sitting at the base of the great Snæfellsjökull, the omphalos and fiery source of Icelandic existence, is so overwhelming that it’s impossible not to perceive some sort of higher power, or at least one’s own powerlessness . So thoughts of the supernatural tend to run toward the great volcano and its glacier with a few old (fractured) Nordic sagas thrown in to explain things coherently (or at least poetically).

To call the devotees of this non-faith in the wilderness tight-lipped would be an understatement. They may speak the same language as the bishop in Reykjavík but they don’t speak it freely. A snatch of a typical conversation with the emissary:

“Embi: Are you Tumi Jónsen, clerk of the congregation?
Farmer: So they say. I’m only passing on what I’ve been told.”
“Embi: So you are the parish clerk?
Tumi Jónsen: You can put a name to anything, my boy.”

Such a population is naturally un-dogmatic in religious matters. But their religious views would hardly be noticeable even if they were fundamentalists. As one of the local myth-bearers,the parish clerk, puts it: “My ancestors, the Jónsens, believed everything in the Icelandic sagas and I go along with them sort of more or less, though I am not the man my father and my forefathers were.”

Pastor Jón has nailed the church shut and allowed the locals to take the pews for emergency firewood (and the pulpit, but not all of that was needed). His congregation loves him. When confronted with the accusation that he doesn’t conduct services even for Christmas, his reply is entirely matter-of-fact:

“Pastor Jón: That which is beyond words remains silent at Christmas too, my friend. But the glacier is there, all right.
Embi: No revelation?
Pastor Jón: The lilies of the field.
Embi: Yes, the lilies of the field! Exactly! Isn’t it ideal to preach about them—at Christmas, for instance?
Pastor Jón: Oh no, better to be silent. That is what the glacier does. That is what the lilies of the field do.”

The natives are correct when they say that “There’s nothing much happens around here. Nothing ever happens to anyone. No one has ever seen anything.” Nothing, in any case, that could possibly interest those who think that they can capture in words what is really important to these people.

[Jan-Maat]

Last night I dreamt of making contact with a spiral nebula. Well, I never did. I just dreamt of the phrase - one that crops up a lot in the mid section of this novel.

In Sarah Moss's Names for the Sea:strangers in Iceland, she notices in Iceland that at Christmas the focus is not on the Bible nativity story but on the Yule lads - a gaggle of Troll children who come down from the hills and play tricks on people, they are followed by their mother who likes to seize small children and drop them into her sack to take home for dinner. Beowulf! Thinks Moss (you can tell she knows her Literature), my thought was more along the lines of - well that's plainly the Christian era over in Iceland. A reflection which can mean only one thing, that it is time to reread Under the Glacier (original title Christianity under the Glacier).

It is a late Laxness book dating from 1968 or so. Perhaps I am particularly crazy at the moment, but it seems to me as though the novel with it 60s interest in pre-christian and non-Christian and alternative Christian traditions, connections to spiral Nebulae, it's trio of bearded 'shepherds' ( who are possibly lab assistants or research scientists or something) from California, who are self described followers of Lord Maitreya (the future Buddha) currently manifest in the form of Godman Syngmann of Australia, remind me of the bearded researchers in Complexity has managed to become more contemporary as time has passed and I read it again. It may well be a sign of the times that a rich person having their head removed after death to be preserved in some way and possibly revitalised at some stage no longer seems a particularly crazy fantasy in the general scheme of things.

I have read only four Laxness novels so far in my ridiculous and foolish life, his style and approach has been different in each one so far. This is to be expected. At various points in his life Laxness was a Catholic priest, a Communist, the boy from the backwoods or rather the Icelandic equivalent thereof since I don't think they have enough woods to have either back or front ones. A lot of his spiritual life seems to be concentrated down into this book.

It has a couple of connections with the Eyrbyggja Saga, which helpfully I have never read except in a dream, in a spiral nebula, it is set in the same area of Iceland: below the Snaefells Glacier, and the character Thorgunna, who, despite her name, was Irish (maybe) and who after her death invited various drowned and dry dead people to join her at her own funeral feast the drowned ones spent all their time round the fire, wringing out their clothes.

Snaefells volcano is also the starting point of the adventure in Journey to the centre of the earth a book that is explicitly referenced, once, twice, a few times during this story, which is a kind of parallel to the Jules Verne but journeying into the intellect, or Psyche or some such place rather than to Italy.

The setting is laid out for us so that we see it both as the navel of the world, the place where things happen, where the dead can be given new life and contact made with spiral nebulae, and at the same time it is the end of the world (although parts of the area turn out to be even more end of the earthish than other parts).

In Independent People we have the ironic homage to the nineteenth century realist novel or fulfilment of it in the light of Marxism, in The Atom Station a comedy of morality as Iceland steals itself, Paradise Reclaimed - something of a combination of folk tale with nineteenth century family disaster story with added Mormonism. And what of Under the Glacier?

Anyhow the Bishop of Iceland has heard that in the parish below the glacier, that the Church has been nailed shut, no child has been baptised, the dead have not been buried, a coffin - possibly containing a corpse, has been taken up on to the glacier, and the parish priest Sira Jon has never consummated his marriage. This state of affairs is so outrageous that the bishop does not go himself to check it out, he sends a student to ask questions and write a report. This student's unique qualifications are that he is a stenographer, and that he has his own tape recorder. He is the novel's narrator, so self effacing that he is never named (though he does admit to teaching some Danish, and a bit of Maths).

Sent as the representative of a faith-based organisation, yet he records his conversations with witnesses on a tape-recorder - much of the dialogue is presented as a transcription of these tapes - so something not faith-based, but precise, technical and mechanical. The local priest who is under investigation is much respected for his technical and mechanical skills - he's the best man to go to if you want your primus stove repaired - however the church is boarded up.

Here we have something of late twentieth century life. Organised, technical and mechanical. There are primus stoves, tape recorders and buses that arrive and depart according to time-table. At the same time there is a hunger for myth and mystery, personified in the figure of Ua. Faith without organisation. The dialogues reveal a Journey to the Centre of the Earth.
Or perhaps the book is a duel between Sira Jon and Godman Syngmann of Australia. Or perhaps it is a spiritual quest, the Bishop's emissary seems to follow eventually in the footsteps of Sira Jon, who might be a Christ figure.

There is also a calf which is only ever given coffee to drink. I don't know enough about Iceland to guess if this is the comedy of the absurd or the absurdity of social realism, or indeed if the line between the two is worth distinguishing. Laxness' daughter made a film version of this novel, it is slightly more cinematic than some of his other books in that it consists of a lot of dialogue (as you would expect from a narrator with a tape recorder).

It is a little bit crazy but, and maybe I could be disturbed about this, the more I read it the more sensible this book seems to become - even the spiral nebula. Then again, I thought reading this isn't the creative destruction praised by Joseph Schumpeter and described by Karl Marx what another culture said was simply the action of Shiva in the world?



This book finds its perfect ending with its hint of the Venusburg.

[Meike · Rating 4 out of 5]

25-year-old theologist and teacher Umbi is sent as the Icelandic bishop's envoy (in Icelandic, umboðsmaður biskups) to investigate a small parish in the west, near the Snæfellsjökull volcano (which, btw, is where the Journey to the Center of the Earth starts): The local priest, Sira Jon, doesn't claim his earnings and doesn't hold church service. Instead, the popular man supports his parishioners with his skills as a craftsman and a farmer while living with a woman who is decidedly not his wife. Umbi gets involved in increasingly strange and bizarre scenarios...

Umbi is the protagonist and narrator, and his young age and naivety show in his changing tone and hesitant wonder when confronted with the surrealist realities in the remote, godforsaken village. His voice oscillates between first and third person, between report and impressionistic descriptions aiming to capture his experiences. The characters Umbi meets are eccentric, imaginative, and, above all: Free and wise, separated from dogma. Sira Jon lives practical charity and solidarity, caring for the souls of the people he lives with in his very own, not church mandated way.

The small community is alive with sagas, fables, and philosophical as well as multi-religious musings, incorporated in figures like Prof. Godman (ha!) Syngmann and Sira Jon's wife who is an expert for prostitution and Catholicism. It takes a reader who indulges Laxness' overflowing impulse to let his imagination run free and to add more and more humorous and unexpected turns, just because he can. Still, this is a joyful ode to storytelling and often overlooked communities that have no interest to fit into the molds the big city folk have carved out for them.

Laxness still does not get enough attention for the role he played in turning Iceland's modernization during the 20th century into poetry - as Sjón likes to explain, Iceland joined modern civilization in the 1930's after a period of intense poverty, and Laxness (who was born in 1902 in Danish Iceland before independence and died in 1998) has witnessed and captured it all.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's not that I hated "Under the Glacier" or didn't get a chuckle from it occasionally (OK, more like a wan smile). But to call it, as Susan Sontag did, “a marvelous novel about the most ambitious questions" and "one of the funniest books ever written," is a stretch. (And btw, I'm glad I was never invited to comedy night at the Sontags).

Written by Icelandic Nobel Prize winner Halldor Laxness, "Under the Glacier" is the story (using the term loosely) of a bishop's emissary who hunts for the truth (using the term loosely) about what has gone on with the parish pastor (ditto on the loosely) of a remote district next to a glacier. There are rumors that Pastor Jon has not held church services in years (true), is long separated from his wife but has refused to seek a divorce (maybe) and may have hauled a dead body onto the glacier without a proper burial (very maybe).

The entire mercifully short novel is written in a style I would call Scandinavian magic surrealism, where hardly any character is what he or she seems, no one is "normal," and where a mysterious woman may be dead, or alive, or a bit of both.

The narrator, in keeping with his instructions to merely be the eyes and ears of the bishop and render no opinions, designates himself either "the undersigned" or "embi" (for emissary of the bishop, get it, wink wink?).

Mixed in is a housekeeper who makes only baked goods, a self-defensive truck driver, a man who perpetually loses horses, a wealthy expatriate who returns with three latter day hippies to oversee a resurrection, and a casket which it takes several chapters to open and then reveals its contents to be .... well, you'll have to enter the maze to find out.

The theology in this novel is profound in a way that would impress Shirley MacLaine; the humor has not a side split nor a knee slap in sight, and the bottom line is, well, let's see ... maybe not to tramp around through a bog at night without shoes on? -- that's as good a guess as any.

It does have its moments, but not enough to get me up the side of the glacier to three stars.

[Algernon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do help yourself to more dried halibut, young man, before it resurrects.

We already know, courtesy of P G Wodehouse and his remarkable gentleman’s gentleman Jeeves, that a diet of fish is conducive of higher thought processes. But can it eventually lead to miracles of a biblical nature? This is what the Bishop of Reykjavik wants to determine.

The undersigned, known henceforth as [the] BoRe, as in book reviewer, is here to tell you the story of EmBi, as in emissary of the bishop, a young student who is dispatched summarily by his superior in the Church to investigate strange goings on in a remote parish situated next to a famous landmark, Snaeffelsjokull, that vast tureen-lid of the world as it is described at one point by the same Embi. So grab yourself pen and paper, a tape-recorder, some dry fish or some fish oil pellets and head to the Glacier.

The first thing is to have the will; the rest is technique.

EmBi is tasked to deliver a report on the status of Christianity at Glacier, after the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs in the capital receives numerous alarming reports about the hi-jinks of the local pastor. The Bishop insists that the young student needs no qualifications as a spy or gospel credentials for his investigations, his task being simply to report back what he sees or hears, without commentary. Apparently, Embi was chosen because he knows how to operate a tape recorder.

>>><<<>>><<<

This is my first novel from Laxness, and I didn’t really know what to expect. For sure, it wasn’t laugh out loud funny scenes, biting satire and absurdist dialogues from a Scandinavian, although previous experiences with Nordic black humour from Frans Bengtsson and even from the crime novels of Sjowall and Wahloo should have given fair warning.
The author’s choice of setting here is explained by the same Bishop, as an aspirational goal to match the greatest writers of literature with a local offering. In the context of the Nobel Prize won by Laxness, even if it was for a different batch of writing, all I can deliver is applause for a task well done, a story that deserves to be included among Icelandic national treasures.

Don’t you find it odd that the greatest French writers should have written books about Iceland that made them immortal? Victor Hugo wrote ‘Han d’Islande’, Pierre Loti wrote ‘Pecheurs d’Islande’, and Jules Verne crowned it with that tremendous masterpiece about Snaeffelsjokull - ‘Voyage au Centre de la Terre’?

So, Embi retraces the journey of Jules Verne's adventurers to Snaeffelsjokull, not in search of the center of the Earth, but in a spiritual quest to define Christianity in a modern context. The guy who wrote the introduction to my edition of the novel is spot on when he remarks that this book is a mashup of several genres, but with science fiction coming at the top of the list:

as a species of storytelling, science fiction is a modern variant of the literature of allegorical quest. It often takes the form of a perilous or mysterious journey, recounted by a venturesome but ignorant traveler who braves obstacles to confront another reality that is charged with revelations. He – for it is always a he – stands for humanity as apprenticeship, since women are not thought to be representative of human beings in general but only of women.

Both the allegorical angle and the position of women in society are useful keys for the reader to unlock the most obscure aspects of the conversations Embi will have with the oddball people living under the sign of the Glacier. Another useful trivia, that I only discovered only after finishing the lecture, is that a young Halldor Laxness spent some years in his youth with Catholic Monks, thinking of joining their ranks. In later years, in post - Depression America, the author was very engaged with social issues and the struggle of common people. Which might explain some of the themes the current novel tackles, but not the satirical tone of the narrative – the main attraction for me. Like, for example, the way Embi is emulating a tragic Hamlet, considering whether to squash or not to squash the bluebottle flies that found their way into his dismal parsonage lodging?

Were they there as substitutes for art in the house? Or decoration? Were they there instead of goldfish or canaries? Perhaps both. Pictorial art is a delusion of the eye, whereas flies are living ornaments and much more lively than flowers, what’s more, because flowers are languid in their movements and keep silent. Even goldfish are silent, but the bluebottle is the poor man’s canary, endowed with a singing voice that awakens memories in the minds of visitors.

Fish and flowers, bluebottles and birds in the sky will continue to weave their music between the existential problems Embi is facing now, side by side with a near constant hunger induced by a strict diet of ‘tidal waves of coffee along with the obligatory flotsam of sweetcakes’:
What are primus stoves, exactly? What’s a primus stove?
Small wonder the young Embi is starting to see walrus ghosts and despair of ever making sense of either the people at Glacier or the position of Pastor Jon Primus regarding Church dogma. Pastor Jon has locked the doors of the local church, spends his days shoeing horses or fixing broken machinery in remote places, and avoids sermons, burials and other official ceremonies like the plague. But is he a heretic?
Now, that is the question ...

Pastor Jon Primus: I was hoping the bishop would be coming himself. He’s a terribly agreeable chap. I always find it so enjoyable to blether with the old fellow. We don’t agree about anything. But everything depends on agreeing to disagree.

Pastor Jon is a very familiar figure for me. It took me several of his conversations with Embi before the reason for this became apparent: Jon is a typical Kurt Vonnegut hero, the simple man who speaks common sense to indoctrinated people and who, because of this, is considered unhinged. The similarity was so strong that the very next novel I picked up was “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater”, which of course confirmed my first impression. Probably the science-fiction remark from the introduction played a part in this, next to the obvious satirical nature of the inquiries of Embi.

Many people criticize me for giving hay-sweepings to alien free-range horses and shoeing out-parish herds. I ask – what is an out-parish herd and what is an in-parish herd?

Even more oddball characters cut form the Vonnegut cloth will appear, like the horse farrier who keeps misplacing one red horse and one grey horse, the housekeeper who only serves sweet cakes, the widow with the scrubbing bush, the poet who drives a twelve ton truck, the international magnate who wants to communicate directly with distant galaxies or the three ragged shepherds/magi/gurus who come to Glacier to witness a new Miracle.
Poor Embi is assaulted from all corners either by coffee canisters, conspiracy theories or radical revelations. It’s no wonder he begins to see walrus ghosts or to contemplate reality as the head-bone of a fish.

poet Jodinus Alfberg: Don’t you realise, man, that before he invented the secret, submarines couldn’t come up to the surface? And parachutes couldn’t come down to earth?
- - - -
Helgi of Torfhvalastadir in Langavatnsdalur : As it says in the booklet, in Iceland protomory and heteromory and dysexelixis prevail. No one understands bioradiophony or astrotelekinesis.
- - - -
Dr. Mundi Syngmann : The main point is that here at Glacier the divine oxen of immortality will be harnessed to the plough of the soul: we are in Supercommunion, and the origins of life are in our power.
- - - -
Prince Polo biscuits were all that the nation indulged in as a sweetener after the centuries of black pudding and whale meat.
- - - -
Palisander wood’s just right
To make a kitchen look a sight;
‘Cause I can turn the dark to light
By painting all the black zinc-white.
- - - -
Saknussem II: Why do people pick flowers? Have people a quarrel with them? In our innermost selves there is something that is analogous to them. They are too good to live. We pick them and make garlands of them for ourselves because we love them.
Embi: It is certainly instructive to hear you preach, sir.
Saknussemm II: Why do people shoot animals? Because people love them, love them as themselves, love them so deeply they could eat them. The flower dwells defenceless in your innermost self.

With such conversational gambits, including an extremely long and hard to avoid poem about wood, pastor Jon Primus will eventually emerge as the only sane person around, excepting of course Embi, whose job description demands he maintains a strictly neutral position of observer. The lessons pastor Jon Primus wants to convey do not come from the gospel books, but from the lilies of the field, the kittiwakes that return each spring, the snow buntings who survive the harshest blizzards as well as the horses that need shoeing, the broken primuses and the wasteful quick-freezing plants.

Poo-tee-weet? :

Pastor Jon: It’s a pity we don’t whistle at one another, like birds. Words are misleading. I am always trying to forget words. That is why I contemplate the lilies of the field, but in particular the glacier. If one looks at the glacier for long enough, words cease to have any meaning on God’s earth.

It would be an unpardonable offence against his equanimity to call pastor Jon a simpleton, out of touch with the larger world or with the history of the church. On the contrary, he shows repeatedly in offhand remarks that he is fluent in both ecclesiastical and economic theory.

They lied so fast in the Middle Ages they hadn’t even time to hiccup. is Pastor Jon commentary on the saintliness of church leaders. Although, he is equally inspired by nature and by the mystical poetry of San Juan de la Cruz.

Pastor Jon: Whoever doesn’t live in poetry cannot survive here on earth.

Living in poetry is linked to his yearning for a long absent wife Ua, a magical mystery woman that I have saved for the end of my review. Until then, I have more examples of Pastor Jon’s poetry and heretical wisdom that I want to save here for easy reference.

Now pastor Jon Primus laughed. Philosophy and theology have no effect on him, much less plain common sense. Impossible to convince this man by arguments. But humour he always listens to, even though it be ill humour. A typical Icelander, perhaps. Sometimes your emissary would have given a lot, however, to be able to see the world from the standpoint of pastor Jon Primus.
- - - -
Pastor Jon: I begin to look forward to the spring during the last months of winter as soon as the first kittiwake comes flying in over the land. In summer there grows this little flower that dies. In the autumn I begin to look forward to winter, when everything falls silent except the surf, and rusted locks, useless pots, and broken knives pile up around this jack-of-all-trades. Perhaps one will be allowed to die by candlelight at Christmas while the earth sails into the darkness of the universe where God lives and all the Christmas elves.
- - - -
Pastor Jon: Agreement is what matters. Otherwise everyone will be killed.
Embi: Agreement about what?
Pastor Jon: It doesn’t matter. For instance, quick-freezing plants, no matter how bad they are. When I repair a broken lock, do you then think it’s an object of value or a lock for some treasure chest? Behind the last lock I mended there was kept one dried skate and three pounds of rye-meat.
This is probably the most important lesson to hear in our increasingly polarized and intransigent society. Laxness himself considered it important enough to repeat and underline it in the novel:
But everything depends on agreeing to disagree.
- - - -
The one thing that remains is what lives deepest within yourself, even though you glide from one galaxy to another. Nothing can change that. And now let’s munch our shark meat.

Thank you for your attention, and don’t forget folks: eat fish with all your meals for your spiritual sanity!
Thank you Mr. Laxness for this crazy merry-go-round the Glacier!

>>><<<>>><<<

The men at Glacier, Embi and Jon Primus and Mundi and the three gurus, spend a lot of time discussing philosophy or religion or economics, but it is the women who are the keepers of the secrets of the Universe, the alpha and omega of Life. Embi is warned about this on the first day of his visit:

On the whole, there are various things at Glacier that people would find difficult to understand if understanding of the womenfolk is lacking.

‘L‘eternel feminin’ as the guiding principle of philosophy is offered here as an alternative to the testosterone fuelled norms of classic science-fiction from my earlier quotation. Womanhood gains a mystical, powerful and secret identity meant to replace so many religions written by men and for men.

Pastor Jon: Such women are a miracle.
Embi: The alpha and omega of power-lust!
Pastor Jon: In the same way as the mother’s womb.
Embi: I really cannot set that down. The bishop would think I had gone mad.
Pastor Jon: I wish you could get to know this woman some time, young man.
Embi: What for?
Pastor Jon: You would understand life.

Embi is granted an audience with this elusive yet generous avatar of the Goddess, a woman of many names beside Ua, names that are supposed to reveal Her universality.

Embi: I am wondering for whom you are knitting sea-mittens.
Woman: I have introduced sea-mittens to Peru.

This Ua is a worthy companion to pastor Jon, sharing some of his views on religion and spirituality, going even a step further in pointing out the limitations of the current issues [... and I would love to unleash her on some of those politicians and church leaders who believe they can control the bodies of women]:

Woman: In our society the rules about love are made either by castrated men or impotent grey-beards who lived in caves and ate moss-campion roots. Sometimes also by perverted celibates who walk around in skirts, some say wearing women’s knickers underneath. Decent women would hardly have cared to have a Church Father as a table companion.

Yet, Embi’s tape recorder witnesses as many baffling and contradictory statements from Woman as he got from Jon Primus and the other men. The other women at Glacier beside Ua are equally disturbing for the young man and equally obscure in their revelations:

Mrs. Fina Jonsen: they never wash, are never seen to eat or sleep, never read a book but never stumped by anyone, however learned, never age, and they have exceedingly beautiful navels.

Ua has the power to make EmBi wish to remain by her side instead of returning to the Bishop with his findings. Will he or won’t he? That’s already another story! The BoRe will tell you about it if and when he will come across it.

[William2 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Abstruse but for the elect (those who would enjoy it) worth reading. I found it a slog. Stopped page 171. Read his Independent People. I’m on to his Salka Valka.

[path · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such a peculiar book, and I gather that it is quite unlike other books by Laxness. I also gather that he wrote in different styles, so perhaps there is no usual or customary one. Overall, I enjoyed what I read, but there are passages, whole chapters even, that needed a couple of passes through to pull something from them.

The basic premise of the book is that the narrator(variously identified as “the undersigned,” “the emissary of the bishop,” “Umbi,” “EmBi” and “Embi”) is visiting Snæfells Glacier at the behest of the bishop of Iceland. Embi’s mission is to report the facts about reported dereliction of Christian duty, such as neglecting to bury the dead, to baptize children, or to hold services in the church, which has been boarded up. And when Embi arrives, he finds things stranger still than they appeared from afar but, just as strangely, also in their own kind of order.

From the outset, Laxness seems to invite an examination of a Christian worldview as an overlay on a world view that is shaped by sagas, mythologies, and local beliefs. On one side there are the expectations of a life explained through Christian theology and its official creation myths, symbology, iconography, hierarchies, and all the norms beliefs and practices it engenders. Contrasted with this is the mythology and the fables of the people at Snæfells Glacier that, to the outsider looking in, are inscrutable and wild. These beliefs and practices seem to represent something more primordial, formless, subject to change, and open to possibility. Whereas Christian theology may describe Creation as something that happened at a point in the past, when all variables were decided and set in motion, moving inexorably toward fulfillment and completion, the mythology found at Snæfells offers a view of creation as something cyclical and going: creation and destruction … renewal.

This is a story about Icelandic people but also about Iceland, which seems presented as a world that is always at the edge of becoming, and that seems to fit the landscape that is shaped by forces of destruction and renewal — by the fire of volcanos and the ice of glaciers. Iceland is, I think, present as symbolic of complexity and renewal through people who live there and their mythologies that speak of death and resurrection, beginnings and ends, alphas and omegas, creation and destruction, religion and non-religion, science and non-science.

I’m reminded of the William James that I read recently and his insight that engaging with primordial is a way of engaging with the divine. And, of course, that experience has to be disorienting in the way that this novel surely was.

[Erika · Rating 4 out of 5]

My experience with this book:
This is supposed to be funny?
What's going on here?
Am I getting it?
This is supposed to be funny.
What's going on here?
Am I getting it?
This is sort of funny.
What's understanding?
On some level, I am getting it.
This book is funny, absurd funny.
What's up with the effing fish and the yogis from Los Angeles?
Ok.

My reaction upon finishing the book:
It was amazing. I think I got it. It was hilarious. It's unlike anything I've ever read. Check back with me in 5 years when I read it again.

[Chrissie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Phew, I am glad this is over! I will explain what is in store for those choosing to read Under the Glacier by Halldór Laxness.

Opening in the spring of 1968 in Reykjavik, the Bishop of Iceland sends out an emissary of twenty-five to investigate charges raised against Pastor Jón Primus residing at the settlement of Snaefellsjökull, by a glacier, the glacier of the title. This particular young man is chosen because he knows how to run a tape recorder. He is to go there and observe, write what he sees, pose innocuous questions and record that which people say. The Bishop has no interest in hearing either his opinions or views—just record the facts. The charges against the pastor range from allowing the church to fall into decay, to neither baptize, perform church services nor bury the dead. A coffin is said to have been left out on the glacier. He is said to be married but to have another woman living by him in his home. And yet, the parishioners, respect, love and adore him. He is handy at fixing appliances and machines and no one can shoe a horse better than him. What is going on?! Are the claims true or false? Make the tapes and report back to us! Off he goes.

What I have said to you so far is simple. Once he arrives, nothing is simple.

What is served up is a mix of fables, allegories and science fiction. Philosophizing and theologizing with a splash of sarcastic humor. One might call this a spoof of religious beliefs. Add to this the presence of ghosts and demons and reincarnation and interstellar bioinduction, cosmobiology, intergalactic communication, astrotelekinesis….. Are you lost? So was I. Is this pushing the phantasmagorical too far? For me, the answer is yes.

Many characters have several names. The young emissary switches back and forth from first to third person narrative. The flow of words jerks. A character’s name is stated and then his words, another name and then his words—it is by this means conversations are relayed.

Some of the humor is funny. The pastor’s wife is called Ua, pronounced “ooh-a”. This is what men exclaim when she passes by. The emissary goes by the name of Embi, which is an abbreviation of “emissary of the bishop”. Do you get the joke? Others call him simply Bishop. What does this say about how they see him? On the other hand, most of the humor didn’t have me laughing or I failed to understand it.

This book is weird, confusing, not worth the effort demanded to understand what is going on. Or maybe there is nothing to understand. Maybe it is meant just to be the spoof that it is. It’s bizarre and not that funny. Although it has some good lines expressing ideas on which I do agree, reading it is a pain in the butt. I do not recommend it.

The audiobook is narrated by Ken Maxon, I have no idea if he pronounces the Icelandic names correctly. They swish by in a blur. Other than the names, the words are not hard to decipher, but I cannot say I like the narration. His tone of voice is squeaky, feminine, too treble. I can give the narration performance no more than two stars—it’s OK.

Halldór Laxness (1902-1998) received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1955. His most widely acclaimed novel cycles are Salka Valka, Independent People and a third beginning with World Light. Choose one of these instead.

[Ema · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here's an Icelandic writer of which I've heard nothing about, despite the fact that he won the Nobel prize for literature. I found the book by chance, the synopsis sounded interesting enough, so I began reading and... helplessly fell in love with the novel.
This is Halldór Laxness' only book translated into Romanian, but I'm anxious to read some of his other works, especially Independent People.

Under the Glacier is truly an amazing book, which made me laugh (or at least giggle), think and wonder. It is a delightful blend of fantasy and reality which immerses the reader in a mysterious, yet earthly dimension. Even now, when I think of it, the magical world of the parish by the glacier is still vivid in my mind and prolongs its fascination upon me.

The way the dialogues are presented is a little bit strange: instead of the usual lines, there are the names of the interlocutors. It was a bit distressing at first, but this annoying fact was gradually forgotten since the dialogue became absurd anyway, yet so savory and funny that I could no longer find it the least fault.

The writing is full of humor (I found myself laughing many times) and the absurd situations that emerge are extremely delicious. The blending of reality with fantasy is in the perfect dose for me - at the end I was left in a state of reverie, wondering how much of what had happened was real. Some facts are confirmed, others are left unexplained, but this doesn't diminish the magic atmosphere of this forgotten place at the end of the world, governed by the glacier and the sea birds and populated by a bunch of more or less bizarre people.


Iceland through the lens of photographer Ragnar Axelsson


The old man may well be the priest from the parish near the glacier (photographer: Ragnar Axelsson)

[Anna Carina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sehr sonderbares Buch. Verschrobene, einmalige Charaktere.
Ein Icherzähler der immer wieder von sich in der 3. Person spricht.
Eine wahnsinnig intensive Atmosphäre.
Hier erlebe ich das erste Mal, dass mir Stil vor Plot geht- wahrscheinlich weil ich fast nix verstanden hab 😬🤪
Lauter Anspielungen auf Literatur, Religionen, was einen Isländer ausmacht…. und Ua, die dafür steht mehrere Leben leben zu können, Persönlichkeiten abzulegen und sich immer wieder neu zu erfinden?
Dass Erinnerungen wahrhaftiger sein können, als die Person der man gerade gegenübersteht?!
Was will das Buch sagen?
Dass Poesie Rettung des Lebens bedeutet?
Irgendwie scheint das Getöne der Tiere eine Rolle zu spielen und dass der Mensch nicht viel zu sagen hat?!
Und vielleicht was es bedeutet Gut zu sein? Wie man der Gesellschaft am ehesten nützt und die Antwort nicht in der Religion zu finden ist?!
Wenn mir jemand von Euch in 1-2 Sätzen zusammenfassen möchte um was es dem Autor ging… Ansonsten bin ich dann mal auf Recherche Tour 🤓
Aber völlig egal ob man rafft was Halldor hier sagen will: das ist sowas von gut geschrieben!!!

[Gretchen Rubin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanted to read at least one novel by Laxness before coming to Iceland. This is an extremely odd and interesting novel.

[Tony]

I read this author's more famous Independent People eight years ago. I liked it very much despite it being a bit bleak, a saga of hard cases doing hard-edged things.

This one wasn't like that one, not stylistically anyhow. This one was funny. In fact at times it was laugh out loud funny. The set-up is that the Bishop of Iceland sends his young emissary to the Glacier to find out just what is up with the Pastor there. Has he, for instance, given up burying the dead. So what we read is the emissary's report: observations and dialogue with the locals. The young man refers to himself either as "the undersigned" or as "Embi", short for Emissary of the Bishop.

I've always enjoyed subtle literary jabbings at religious pretensions and there was much jabbing here. But then, who would deny that the church is the horse-fair of the soul? Not me, certainly.

Hard to rate this novel though because the shenanigans continue into magic realism which I've never much taken to.

All that said, the author was never merely funny or obscure; there were lessons. Here's a bit of dialogue:

Embi: . . . first of all I want to ask: does such a woman not have responsibilities and duties?
Woman: Such as?
Embi: Well, for instance, why did the pastor's wife not remain with the pastor?
Woman: I think bishops would probably find most things easier to understand than that.
Embi: May I call your attention to the fact that we are Lutheran here.
Woman: I am a Catholic.
Embi: Orthodox?
Woman: Yes, orthodox.
Embi: Have you not been excommunicated?
Woman: I entered into Christian marriage and have never been divorced. I have always had my husband whom I have loved and respected and no other man.
Embi: What about the American who had children with you?
Woman: Americans are children. Children believe in guns and gunmen. One hundred forty-seven gunshots in children's television a week. In children's films there have to be child murders. Have you noticed that if you cut the Cross diagonally in two at the middle, you have two guns, one for each hand? They are adorable children.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pastor Jón: “It’s a pity, we don’t whistle at one another, like birds. Words are misleading. I am always trying to forget words. That is why I contemplate the lilies of the field, but in particular, the glacier. If one looks at the glacier for long enough, words cease to have any meaning on gods earth.” p77

I was fortunate enough to visit and spend time on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula back in 2017 on a visit to Iceland. The whole peninsula was mesmerising and almost its own little world, within a country that is worlds away from my daily normal. I didn’t do any trekking into the Snæfellsjökull Glacier but even the drive around that end of the peninsula had an almost mystical presence about it. Perhaps Jules Verne has influenced that somehow although I hardly think that was needed having been there. Having now read Halldór Laxness’, ‘Under the Glacier’, I am further convinced of the incredibly unique and special place that this is and it’s mesmerising power over nature, people, the elements and the mind and body.

Clearly this area is of special significance.. as easily found on a number of websites about it…
“Around the Snæfellsjökull, there are a lot of stories and legends. It is believed that the volcano has special spiritual energy; also people believe that is a source of mysticism and mystery. The Snæfellsjökull is also the subject of many folkloric stories and it is mentioned in the Snæfellsáss saga by Bárðar who wrote this saga in the late 14th Century.”

https://marinatravel.is/snaefellsjoku...

Under the Glacier is a bit difficult to ‘categorise’ as a novel. For me it actually had echoes of Vonnegut which surprised me. The novel has elements of everything and tends to be more of a constant stream of thought and events that take place in a community that exists in the foothills/shadow of the glacier.

The book centres around the Emissary of the Bishop of Iceland who is charged to investigating Christianity at the Glacier, in particular, happenings regarding the pastor at the glacier. These happenings include a rumor that the dead are not being buried, children not being baptised, the church being boarded up and not used, the pastors marital situation etc etc.

As the book progresses, for me, it became a really intriguing comment and reflection on the what’s and why’s of some of the things that we hold sacred and why certain rituals have embedded that in some ways become obsolete or even irrelevant and what that really means.

Pastor Jón Primus comes across as a very down to earth man who has somehow been mesmerised by the Glacier and the natural elements that surround him to the point that the ritual of Christianity as dictated by the Church of Iceland is not his focus. He is busy shoeing horses, and kind of being salt of the earth in the Glacier community. He is open to the spiritual, yet also, perhaps, not in touch with how the spiritual can really relate to the people. Not sure about that but it resonated somehow with me.

The book is actually quite a challenging read for a number of reasons. It’s actually a bit confronting in some ways as it questions belief systems and somehow brings together the world, science, history, philosophy, art, religion and throws them all into a big mixer. Pastor Jón is noncommittal in his attitude and seems to have completely metamorphosed into a Pastor of a different kind. It’s quite intriguing to reflect on.

The emissary is probably the character who is subject to the greatest confrontation as he is in a formative stage of belief in many ways and by the end of the book has set out on a journey that I don’t think he intended. The last lines of the book are quite sobering.. “I ran as hard as I could back the way I had come. I was hoping that I would find the main road again”. I don’t know if the main road is ever found again to be honest. Not to be confused with the wide road.. but the road that was the main road that I walked on. That is actually a confronting thought.

This is an amazing book. A short book but not an easy read by any stretch of the imagination. But a very worthwhile one. 4.5 stars rounded to 5.

[Emma Angeline · Rating 3 out of 5]

What an odd little book. Can’t say I’ve read anything like it before. Funnier than it has business being.

[Marissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn't find Independent People in my library (which I had only read half of and really wanted to finish) so I picked of this book of Laxness's instead and I am glad I did. I was expecting something slightly more magical realist so I was maybe a bit disappointed that it was not but was glad the "crazy" beliefs, stories, people, etc. became what they did.
The first 3/4ths of the book seem to be filled with silliness. The pastor isn't doing his job and the women don't sleep or eat. The church is boarded up and a bungalow is built right next to it, someone might have been buried in the glacier, there is nothing to consume but cakes and coffee, the people speak of bizzare happenings and have strange explanations for the things that have happened. You ALMOST believe that you're supposed to believe in these things, you're not sure, but by the last quarter of the book it doesn't matter.
As the book winds down and the plot starts turning faster you can finally see the deep and beautiful love and humanity that supports all of these previously viewed craziness and silliness. You can finally understand the characters as real, weak and fragile along with being deeply beautiful (this is mainly about the priest.)
So yes, if you read this book, enjoy the beautifully written incomprehensible and comprehensible craziness of the beginning and keep reading. It will all become meaningful in the end.

[Stacia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amusing & thought-provoking with an ending that's just right for the story.

Mark's review mentions "echoes of Vonnegut" & I totally agree. I had that same feeling more than once when reading, maybe because of the sardonic wit & observations regarding the human condition, maybe because of the supernatural woven into a seemingly "normal" narrative. I love Vonnegut & am happy to find another author whose keen observations of humans are so finely tuned.

This one made my heart happy & I'm so glad I read it.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

glaciers and absurdity

who doesn't judge books by their covers? i was in kramerbooks, soon to be headed to iceland, when this one called to me. i reached past the reds and blues and modern arts for a lovely green book with a title that pulled at my heartstrings. even though it was "ordinary people" that won halldór laxness the nobel prize, i went with "under the glacier" because of its title and because the subject matter seemed so fascinating.

how do i describe it? there's an intro by susan sontag that labels it as: science fiction, a philosophical novel, a dream novel, a comic novel, and a visionary one. that's a fairly good start. it involves a young emissary from the bishop of iceland who is sent from reykjavik to investigate odd rumors about the pastor - and town - of snaefells glacier. in short order, this becomes an investigation of all things considering "christianity at the glacier." and that investigation is hilarious. there were times, reading it, when i thought it very well might be the funniest book i have ever read.

christianity, taoism, hinduism, reincarnation, hatha yoga, nature poetry, biblical verse, mythical fish, intergalactic communication, horse abusers and imported french biscuits ... all come together in the narrative, yet there is cohesion in the absurdity. i think what i liked best about it were the ruminations on literature itself, such as the bishop's instructions to the emissary:

"no verifying! if people tell lies, that's as may be. if they've come up with some credo or other, so much the better! ... remember, any lie you are told, even if deliberately, is often a more significant fact than a truth told in all sincerity."

there are so many other gems that are underlined in my copy, but here is the first that truly hooked me, from a letter from the parish clerk to the bishop of iceland: "In conclusion, it's quite true that our church is a little worse for wear, although in fact there haven't been many complaints; but God is said to be great. No need to elaborate further on that. Your Grace's loving and obedient servant ..."

for me the high point of the book comes about halfway through, in a long discussion between old friends pastor jon primus and dr. syngmann (mundi), the angler and businessman and mystic who returns to perform biotelekinesis - life induction - in the energy field of the glacier. the chapters that outline their discussion, through the notes of the emissary, play two different but captivating philosophies against one another. the chapters also hint at regret and nostalgia, the way our lives change separately from those we were once close to. the climax, then, for me, is pastor jon's soliloquy at mundi's funeral.

i'll leave the final words to pastor jon:

"It's a pity we don't whistle at one another, like birds. Words are misleading. I am always trying to forget words. That is why I contemplate the lilies of the field, but in particular the glacier. If one looks at the glacier for long enough, words cease to have any meaning on God's earth."

[Calzean · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very strange book. I felt that for the first half of the book Laxness was just having a bit of fun and then needed to find some sort of ending that made a bit of sense.
When the Embi arrives in the Snaefells Glacier his conversations were like a Monty Python skit; nonsense statements, asides that reoccur and impossible analogies abound.
There is the magnificent Pastor who with his "parishioners" have decided living is about doing your own thing, helping others and minding your business. There are strange characters, a resurrection of a salmon and the return of a woman who may or may not have ever existed.
Not sure what the whole thing was about (maybe Laxness wanted to enter a creative writing competition).

[Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

A rollicking rambling mess of a book. A complete shambles, but somehow it works.

A bishops emissary is sent to a remote part of Iceland to investigate rumours of unorthodox religious practices. What he finds is bewildering and profound, absurd yet eminently sensible, earthy and obscure.

I enjoyed the book but felt that it was always just out of my grasp, that things were going over my head - just like the young emissary.

[Andy Weston · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m new to Laxness, despite having read lots of Icelandic literature. I really enjoyed this, so am looking forward to more from him.
This is an unusual story told in an unusual way. It is narrated by ‘the undersigned’, who refers to himself as the 'Emissary of the Bishop' or 'EmBi for short', and who, for the most part, writes this account in the third person (as recommended by the bishop who gives him his assignment). In the tiny glacier community the children aren't getting baptized, the dead aren't getting buried -- and the bishop can't get any answers. It’s a sort of religious comedy with a cast of odd characters that you think may struggle to work, but it most certainly does. His characters live by the Sagas, the weather, and some type of supernatural force that passed into remission with the coming of electricity but waits in the glacier to return.
Though much of the subject matter is serious, Laxness experiments with styles and presentation, and the result is something quite different to anything I’ve read before; zany, eccentric and refreshing fun.

Here’s one of his character descriptions..

Prof. Dr. Godman Syngmann..
He is a big, thickset, old man, not too fat but heavy in the shoulders and beginning to stoop; he would probably be a full six feet tall if stretched. He is splay-footed, and carries his head sunk into his neck like some seabirds, the guillemot for example, or more particularly, the penguin. There is no sign of his having knees when he walks. He has an enormous face. His eyes have the moist sheen of a snake’s. For an elderly man, his hair is waxy and vital, chestnut in colour and with a life of its own like Saint Olaf’s beard after his death; a grey toothbrush moustache. The lower lip sags in a loop to one side; in dogs this is called barring the teeth; perhaps the professor once had a protruding tusk there that was extracted, leaving a kind of sag in the lip; perhaps the professor has also clenched his teeth too hard at one time or another.

[Jim Elkins]

Covert Returns to Christianity

This novel comes with impeccable credentials: Laxness, a Nobel laureate, is one of Iceland's major twentieth-century novelists; the translator is Magnus Magnusson, "Mastermind" television presenter, and authority on the Icelandic sagas; and the book has a late introduction by Susan Sontag (2004). For me, it had the additional attraction that it's set at Snaeffelsjokull, an Icelandic volcano I had just visited, and one of the characters comes from Hafnarfjordur, where I was staying in Iceland.

It is a fantastical story of the parish priest "at the glacier" (under the volcano), and the mysterious things that happen in his parish; but it is also very much of its time and place, the late 1960s. I found it tremendously disappointing, and I barely got through it. Sontag's ecstatic introduction links the book to a whole list of sorts of novels:

Science fiction
Tale, fable, allegory
Philosophical novel
Dream novel
Visionary novel
Literature of fantasy
Wisdom lit
Spoof
Sexual turn-on (p. vi)

That's her list, and she links "Under the Glacier" to all but the last one. She also says it is "one of the funniest books ever written." She gives a good account of the elements of comedy in literature, including "defect of affectivity" (the protagonist doesn't feel much, or express it if he does), "repetition," "deficit of understanding," and others. That's a good characterization, but it doesn't mean the novel is funny. Here are two examples of what counts as humor to Laxness. At one point there is a possibility that a corpse will be stolen by a South American man who will take it up onto the glacier and shrink the corpse's head. Laxness mentions this wild possibility in the most offhanded possible way:

"I promise to do everything in my power to prevent the body being taken up onto the glacier, its head removed and shrunk, etc." (p. 155)

The "etc." is supposed to be humorous here: it's part of the deadpan strategy of comedy. On the next page, the narrator considers some damaged paintings:

"I would point out that I have prevented the old paintings... from being scrubbed with caustic soda with the kind of scrubbing brush that Hafnarfj�r�ur people use for scouring the scales off haddock." (p 156)

The strategies of repetition, affectlessness, naivete, and so on, are exactly as Sontag says: but the effect, for me, is not at all comic: it is tedious.

But the main difficulty I had with this book, and the revision I would like to have made in its reception, is that the book is clearly about a kind of post-Christian mystical communion with nature. It's a meditation on what spirituality might look like after Christianity. The parish priest who is the subject of the narrator's investigation has boarded up his church, and spends his time shoeing horses. (An echo, risky in its obviousness, of Jesus's washing of the disciples' feet.) He can barely bring himself to read anything from the Bible. (In one passage he is called on to read a prayer, and it takes him several minutes to find one he can agree with.) He has an elusive wisdom and happiness, and he is often called "he richest person in the world."

As Sontag says, in a footnote (!), the original Icelandic title can be translated as "Christianity at the Glacier," not "Under the Glacier." One of the models for this post-Christian spirituality is 12th century Franciscan natural revelation. There are, for example, many pages devoted to observations of birds. Birds follow the pastor around, almost in the fashion of St. Francis, and the narrator observes strange and also natural bird behavior. There are also paragraphs devoted to a calf, lambs, the fields, horses, and the weather. Laxness is careful not to include any actual miracles, but the implication throughout is that nature itself is continuously miraculous. It's a kind of low-energy visionary nature poetry, with the revelations omitted and the rhapsodies are refracted through twentieth-century natural history. As a post-theological position, or even a hint of one, it has a pervasive softness and indecision, and it is animated by an unremitting but low-energy hopefulness.

It is true, as Sontag says, that the "deep questions" of life are raised here with "impudent lightness," and it is almost true that it is "a satire on religion," and nearly a "spoof," and it's clearly the case that it carefully avoids the supernatural: but it isn't accurate to mention those things only in passing, on the last page of the introduction. The novel is about naturalistic religion from the very beginning. It hides indecision about the sacred under the lightness of its allegory, and it hides a hapless sincerity under the lightness of its satire. It's not necessary to wish this were either religious or anti-religious to be disappointed by its blurred sense of what is, actually, possible.

The book may very well be unlike any other Laxness wrote (Sontag says that twice in her introduction, making me wonder how sure she was). I hope that's true.

[Alexander Carmele · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dem Wind und Wetter trotzen … eine Reise durch isländische Stille und Unaufgeregtheit.
Ausführlicher, vielleicht begründeter unter: https://kommunikativeslesen.com/2022/...

Der Stellvertreter des Bischofs, kurz Vebi, oder der Unterzeichnete genannt, reist an Stelle des Bischofs in eine kleine Gemeinde im Westen von Island zum Snæfellsgletscher, um dort seltsamen Geschehnissen auf den Grund zu gehen. Ausgelöst wurden die Sorgen des Bischofs durch einen Brief des dortigen Kirchenvorstehers Tumi Jonsen zu Brun, in welchem dieser berichtet, dass keine Gottesdienste veranstaltet werden, Begräbnisse ausfallen, insgesamt also dem Gemeindepfarrer Sira Jon Jonsson droht, seinen lutheranischen Amtspflichten nicht recht nachkommen zu können, ja, sogar Neubauten in direkter Nähe zur Kirche erlaubt worden sind, die den sakralen Charakter des Gebäudes unterminieren. Die Aufgabe des Stellvertreters werden vom Bischof klipp und klar formuliert:

„So wenig wie möglich sagen und tun. Die Augen offen halten. Über das Wetter sprechen. Fragen, wie der Sommer im vorigen und im vorvorigen Jahr war. Sagen, daß der Bischof Rheuma habe. Wenn Leute Rheuma haben, fragen, wo es sie quält. Nicht versuchen, etwas in Ordnung zu bringen – das ist unsere Angelegenheit im Kirchenministerium, sobald wir wissen, was los ist. Wir bitten um einen Bericht, das ist alles. Egal, was für irrige Ansichten und Märchen die Leute vorbringen, Sie sollen sie nicht bekehren. Nichts und niemand reformieren. Ihnen gestatten zu sprechen, nicht dagegen reden.“

Der Unterzeichnete hält sich strikt an diese Vorgaben und hieraus entspinnt sich ein komplexes Komplott aus vielen Meinungen, Aussagen, Handlungsfäden und Abschnitten, die kein klares, aber ein immer schärferes Bild von der Gemeinde zeichnen, in der im Grunde alle sehr zufrieden mit dem Pfarrer sind. Böses Blut gibt es gar nicht. Probleme auch nicht. Viel Verwirrung, viel Fragwürdiges, aber nichts Verächtliches. Nur von Worten, der Wahrheit, von Ordnung halten sie alle nicht viel. Geschichten bleiben immer Geschichten wie Jon Jonsson dem Unterzeichneten sagt:

„Sie dürfen nicht glauben, daß ich den Vertreter des Bischofs bitte zu schweigen. Ich meine bloß, daß Wörter, Wörter, Wörter und die Schöpfung zweierlei sind; zwei nicht zu vereinbarende Dinge. Ich sehe nicht, wie die Schöpfung in Wörter verwandelt werden kann, noch weniger in Buchstaben – nicht einmal in eine Lügengeschichte. Eine Geschichte ist stets etwas anderes als das, was wirklich geschehen ist. Die Tatsachen sind von dir abgerückt, ehe du die Geschichte zu erzählen beginnst. Eine Geschichte ist nur eine Tatsache für sich.“

Der Roman „Am Gletscher“ kann und will es seinem Publikum nicht leicht machen. In einer Form von Fugentechnik überlagern und synchronisieren und divergieren die verschiedenen Handlungs- und Stimmungselemente. Mittelpunkt jedoch bleibt das von Vögeln, Schafen und Pferden bevölkerte Stück Land an der Westküste Islands, dort, wo die Weite des Meeres auf den schroffen Fels prallt, Wind und Wetter über die Dächer und Menschen rollen, das Sonnenlicht sich im Schnee und Eis bricht, Regen, Morast, Holz und Gras, Fische und Kälte den Bewohnern das Leben erschweren und erleichtern zugleich. Über all dies thront der Gletscher:

„Wie Unterzeichneter weiter oben im Bericht erwähnt hat, steht der Gletscher zu gewissen Tageszeiten verklärt in einer besonderen Helligkeit da, in goldenem Licht von großer Strahlungskraft, und alles außer ihm wird armselig. Es ist, als gehöre der Berg nicht mehr zur Erdkunde, sondern sei in die Ionosphäre entrückt.“

Der Gletscher steht für das ewige Eis, das sein Geheimnis vor zudringlichen Blicken zu bewahren weiß. Vor diesem Naturspektakel treten zwischenmenschliche Probleme und Meinungsverschiedenheiten in den Hintergrund. Daher spricht der Stellvertreter des Bischofs von sich nur in der dritten Person, denn Personalien, Kausalitäten, Narrative gleich welcher Art lösen sich im gleißenden, vom Gletscher zurückgeworfenen Sonnenlichts gleichsam von alleine auf. Eine gewisse Ruhe umgibt alles, was rundum den Gletscher geschieht. Ähnlich wie „Im Namen der Rose“ von Umberto Eco bildet der Kriminalfall nur den äußeren Anlass eine besondere Atmosphäre zu beschreiben, in Ecos Roman die eines mittelalterlichen Klosters, in Laxness‘ Fall die des Gletschers. Der eigentliche Protagonist des Romans heißt Unaufgeregtheit. Der Pfarrer Sira Jon Jonsson strahlt sie aus und mit ihm der ganze Text. Kein Wort zu viel, kein Wort zu wenig, und mit sehr viel Humor und entriegelter Beobachtungsgabe handelt der Text im Grunde nur von der Haltung gegenüber dem Nichts.

[Abi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A novel ostensibly about an emissary of the Bishop of Iceland, who is sent to the remote town of 'Glacier' to investigate the rumour that Pastor Jon is not burying the dead, that the church is boarded up, and that in general Christianity is being 'tampered with'. The investigation leaves the emissary moiled in confusion and improbability as he discovers that the church being boarded up is one of the least strange things about Glacier. One of the characters is a woman named Ua who may or may not have been killed, turned into a fish, frozen under the glacier, and then later defrosted and resurrected by a group of travelling American hippies. If that doesn't sound like a fun and interesting read to you, then what does? Even if it doesn't, trust me, it is.
This is fast becoming one of my favourite Laxness books. Although the issues that concern Laxness are closer to the surface than in much of his other work, they remain intriguing and the upside is that Laxness appears to give his own philosophies a freer rein; it's more obviously a book about thought rather than things. Not in a crude, force-it-down-your-throat way though, and not to say the plot isn't charming, because it is. It is a commentary on history, art, literature, identity, mythology, science and religion. There's a lot to get out of this little volume, and the novel is highly rewarding for the reader who allows themselves to be swept up in the baffling but amusing eccentricities of the Glacier community. The novel as a whole is bewildering, but pleasantly so, leaving the reader feeling refreshed and enchanted, if more than a little uncertain about how to feel. The joy of the unfamiliar is uplifting, like walking the first footsteps into fresh fallen snow. Any preconceptions you bring to this novel are almost certain to be proven wrong, even if like me, you had already read a number of Laxness novels (this was my fifth). I know I wasn't expecting to enjoy it so much after the reviews I had read of it. It's also very different from his other novels, the one that shows the scantest disregard for the boundaries between Icelandic sagas & folklore and reality. The writing is classic Laxness, though: wry, laconic, beautiful. Embi is one of his most endearing characters, Pastor Jon his most philosophical, Jodinus Alfberg one of his most interesting, Ua definitely one of his most confusing. I hope I've done a better job of translating the wonder of Under the Glacier, but it is unlikely. Under the Glacier is a minor classic and deserves a lot more attention than, sadly, it will ever get; even less than the glorious Independent People.

Sidenote: Bringing a knowledge of the sagas and of Icelandic folklore will enable a reader to get a bit more out of this particular Laxness experience. It's by no means necessary, but they are a fairly important layer in the novel.

[Aloke · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this but it was incoherent. It reminded me a bit of The Sellout: dreamlike in parts, poking at convention, full of references. But I liked The Sellout much more because it held together and came together and this didn't for me.

[John David · Rating 3 out of 5]

The other day, I was looking for something out of the ordinary to read and, on opening Susan Sontag’s collection “Reborn,” saw an essay on Haldor Laxness’ “Under the Glacier.” Not wanting to give away too much to myself, I read only the first couple of paragraphs, was intrigued enough to pick it up, and set the rest of the essay aside for later.

The novel tells the story of a nameless bishop’s emissary (he is referred to only as “Embi,” short for “emissary of the bishop”). Embi is sent to a distant part of Iceland to investigate the odd behavior of the people there. Among other things, the local pastor has given up burying the dead, the local church has been boarded up, and the views of the community have become decided less orthodox in nature. Much of the novel is simply a detailed record of Embi’s continuous confused frustrations at the behavior of the people. When Embi asks Pastor Jon about the importance of delivering sermons, he says, “Oh, no, better to be silent. That is what the glacier does. That is what the lilies of the field do.” Instead, Pastor Jon spends most of his time travelling around the village, shoeing horses and repairing old electric stoves.

During his face-finding mission, Embi happens across the truck-driving poet Jodinus Alfberg and his boss, the New Agey and oddly con man-like Godman Syngmann (note his name). Syngmann is leading a group of Hatha Yoga practitioners and acolytes from Ojai, California through Iceland on some sort of a mission to “find themselves” (that grating exhortation of the New Age). Syngmann, in his attempts to harness the hieratic powers of the universe, wishes to reanimate the dead. At one point, Embi meets the resurrected Ua (“ooh-a,” the sound that men make upon seeing her), who was once married to Pastor Jon before she died, or was possibly turned into a fish.

Despite its subject, “Under the Glacier” has the occasional humorous moment – but I didn’t find it the hilarious, profound novel that Susan Sontag claims that it is in her essay, or that several other reviews found it to be. This may speak to the time when it was published - 1968 – a momentous year for Europe, politically and culturally. It was also a chaotic time that you probably needed to live through in order to understand the immediacy of its importance. But my parents were in still learning algebra in 1968. I’m a child of the nineties – a world of mix tape cassettes, Carmen Sandiego, and giant cellphones. Revolution was the furthest thing from our minds.

Is this novel a rollicking attempt to poke fun at the American, and largely clueless, embrace of the Eastern religious traditions? Or maybe it’s just discontent with institutionalized Christianity? Or maybe my problem is that I’m looking for something it should be “about.” I ought to give “Against Interpretation” another look, since I seem to be retrogressing in regards to the advice it gives.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This last novel by the Icelandic Nobel-prize-winning Halldór Laxness is more than a little difficult to classify. In a way, it is similar to the same author's Paradise Reclaimed. In both books, Icelanders are lured away from their beliefs by, in one case Mormon missionaries from Utah, and in the other, a group of New Agers and quasi-Buddhists from California and other points of the compass.

Under the Glacier was originally called Christianity at Glacier. It tells of the Bishop of Iceland sending a young emissary to investigate a strange parish in the area of Snaefellsness in the west of Iceland. Now even in the 1960s, Snaefellsness with its glaciated mountain was considered a center of New Age beliefs. Even in Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, which begins there, it was considered to be a magical place.

The unnamed emissary of the bishop, who simply refers to himself as EmBi and then Embi, is treated to a bewildering array of characters who pretend to be poets, sages, and even, in one case, the Buddha himself. The only one who seems unbothered by the phenomena is the parish priest, who calls himself Jon Primus, and who seems to muddle through by, instead of ministering to his parish, shoeing horses and repairing machinery.

Laxness was, for most of his life, on a spiritual quest of his own. From Icelandic Lutheranism, he became a convert to Catholicism and Communism, Escaping from the attentions of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in the United States. Eventually, most of his beliefs fell away from him. In Under the Glacier, we are treated to a charivari of mixed religious beliefs. The book ends with our Embi lost in a bog hearing what appears to be the laughter of Iceland's "hidden folk," or elves.

This is one Icelandic novel which could have been filmed by Federico Fellini.

[a.g.e. montagner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Halldór Laxness ha attraversato l’intero ventesimo secolo (1902-1998) ricevendo il Nobel circa a metà strada, nel 1955. Del 1968 è questo romanzo, un unicum non solo nella sua sterminata produzione (che finalmente sta avendo una diffusione anche in Italia) ma nel canone letterario tout court; tanto da meritare un saggio monografico di Susan Sontag, che Iperborea si concede il lusso di pubblicare come postfazione. La Sontag nota innanzitutto come Laxness mescoli e superi i generi letterari, in un’epoca in cui il postmoderno era ancora nella sua fase pioneristica.
Il ghiacciaio del titolo è quello stesso Snæfell reso celebre da Jules Verne nel 1864 come origine del suo Voyage au centre de la terre e quindi, in senso lato, della fantascienza moderna. In un periodo cruciale tanto per l’immaginario quanto per il progresso scientifico, Laxness gioca a smontare il genere fantascientifico riportandolo alle sue origini di conte philosophique, per poi divertirsi a smentirlo e a sovvertire le aspettative.

“Il Cristianesimo sotto il Ghiacciaio”, come recita il titolo originale, versa in condizioni disperate, stando alle voci che circolano: il parroco non adempie ai suoi doveri ecclesiastici, non fa manutenzione della chiesa che al contrario è stata sprangata; pare abbia perfino consentito il seppellimento di un cadavere nel ghiacciaio, in terra non consacrata. È sposato ma non ha mai consumato il matrimonio, e pare conviva con un’altra donna. Il vescovo d’Islanda incarica quindi un giovane e svogliato studente di verificare queste dicerie inaccettabili; non avendo autorità in materia, egli dovrà limitarsi a registrare quanto gli verrà raccontato dai parrocchiani con la massima fedeltà (come “quel fonografo, o come si chiama”, “lo chiamano magnetofono”) e senza interpolazioni di sorta:

“Non verifichi niente! Se si dicono bugie, bugie siano. Se se ne saltano fuori con qualche superstizione, superstizioni siano! Non dimentichi che normalmente sono poche le persone che dicono più di una piccola parte di verità; nessuno dice gran parte della verità, figuriamoci poi la verità intera. Le parole sono fatti di per sé, vere o false che siano. Quando uno parla, si rivela, sia che dica il falso che il vero”.

Il giovane accetta, mettendo le mani avanti: “Non mi chieda di compiere grandi imprese. Anche perché mi si dice che non si compiono grandi imprese alle tariffe dei funzionari civili”. Nel suo resoconto, che poi è il libro stesso, egli fa riferimento a se stesso in terza persona unicamente come “l’Emissario del Vescovo, EmVe per abbreviazione”. Il testo d’altro canto pullula di considerazioni personali e osservazioni metatestuali.
Perché il viaggio iniziatico di Emve sotto il ghiacciaio minerà alle fondamenta il suo ruolo paradigmatico di protagonista come giovane esploratore. Le sue domande saranno sistematicamente disattese o evase; il suo ruolo ignorato, con effetti anche comici. Il parroco, Jón Jónsson detto Primus, sembra avere sviluppato un’autentica avversione verso i propri doveri pastorali, tenendosi occupato come tuttofare per la comunità. Una comunità, come nota la Sontag, che è già oltre il cristianesimo, se non è rimasta al paganesimo: convinta che il Ghiacciaio sia il centro del mondo, trova naturale che un vecchio amico e rivale del parroco, Guðmundur Sigmundsson detto Godman Syngmann detto Mundi Mundasson, giunga dalla California per riportare in vita la sua amante e figlia adottiva nonché moglie di Jón Primus, che egli aveva precedentemente tramutato in salmone per poi conservarlo nel Ghiacciaio. Syngmann si servirà di tre bioinductors (“una parola che proprio non sono riuscito a trovare in diciassette vocabolari d’inglese, ma che dovrebbe far parte del gergo quotidiano dei santoni e dei superoccultisti della California”, osserva Emve): un californiano, in indiano e un nativo brasiliano forse cannibale, che si comportano come santoni buddhisti e usano una terminologia new age. Uno di loro suona il liuto con una tecnica addirittura preconizzatrice dei tintinnabuli di Arvo Pärt.
Laxness non teme di contaminare la fantascienza positivista con la propria contemporaneità, inanellando in un ironico anticlimax riferimenti più o meno espliciti all’Età dell’Acquario, alla corsa allo spazio, alla fascinazione per il buddhismo, alla psichedelia (uno dei capitoli più importanti, Intergalactic Communication, ha un titolo degno di un’outtake di The Piper at the Gates of Dawn), perfino alla guerra in Vietnam.

Ma è il personaggio femminile il più affascinante e perturbante del romanzo, la misteriosa ed elusiva Úa: “Sorella della Solveig del Peer Gynt di Ibsen e della Indra del Sogno di Strindberg, Úa è la donna irresistibile che si trasforma: strega, puttana, madre, iniziatrice sessuale, fonte di saggezza. Úa sostiene di avere cinquantadue anni […] ma in realtà è metamorfica e immortale” (ipsa Sontag dixit). A lei è affidato il finale aperto, inatteso e meditabondo di questo capolavoro dai molteplici livelli di lettura: filosofico, religioso, epistemiologico, narratologico…

I feedbacks su Cabaret Bisanzio sono molto graditi!
http://www.cabaretbisanzio.com/2012/1...

[Debi Cates · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have only one theory.
I have the theory that water is good.
One doesn't even have to go by my theory
unless one is thirsty.
--recalcitrant Pastor Jón Primus

Well, well. Well! How to describe what I just read?

In a nutshell--a nutty nutshell--this short novel takes place in a remote Icelandic village where Christianity hasn't fully taken hold, not even by 1968. The village sits near a glacier and strange things are happening there.

This is the same glacier that Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth used to reach the mysterious beginnings of life. In this work by Laxness, the glacier's presence and energy is also recognized as something quite special, as an unrelenting pressure on human understanding of Time. And, it's a real glacier! Snæfellsjökull.

Here, under the glacier, it is as if Creation is still ongoing. Thus how can any religious or spiritual or intergalactic understanding be "set"? Christianity does, though, see things as set.

The novel begins when alarming rumors have reached the Bishop of Iceland: the village pastor is not performing his high office duties. The church is nailed up, the pastor's wife has been missing, and perhaps most alarming, there has been a mystery burial up on the glacier instead of in the churchyard.

The Bishop dispatches a young emissary to interview the villagers, to record their answers and report back. One gets the impression the self-effacing young man is chosen because he knows how to operate new technology: the tape recorder. (And the "kid" can be had on the cheap.) He is given strict instructions not to believe or disbelieve, not to engage in theological debate, not to try to correct or judge anyone. Just report back what was said.

Embi, as he calls himself, short for "Bishop's Emissary", does exactly that in spite of the many challenges. The instructions were sound because the quirky villagers say things so remarkable and so regularly include comical non sequiturs that I can't imagine anyone else performing so well under those conditions. However, they clearly convey their love for their Pastor Jón and have absolutely no complaints about how he conducts the burden of his office, which he fulfills mostly by being a tireless and talented handyman of old technologies, like horseshoeing and repairing Primus camp stoves. No one is particularly concerned that the church is nailed shut and rotting, of having no services even at Christmas, nor especially worried about the many additional mysteries that come up here and there in their interviews with Embi. Everyone is content. Content with their pastor and with their personal doctrines that each has taken firmly to heart--each being a personalized patchwork of scripture, sagas, and a skewed or maybe not skewed world view.

In this place, Christianity does seem odd and though never disparaged, it just doesn't fit, is not practical, and doesn't help with the hardscrabble struggles of the villagers nor the village's continuation of a near ancient way of life. Christianity is lacking the full power for life under the shadow of all that, plus a glacier.

Multiple times Embi thinks his assigned task is complete--the interviews requested have been duly recorded, if hardly coherent, and ready to submit. He is ready to leave this wackadoodle place. But when a villager unexpectedly dies, he must stay to help oversee the proper arrangements for burial. He does that and again he's ready to finalize his reports and go. But now, suddenly, the time has been deemed right for the coffin buried up at the glacier to be retrieved and an infamous resurrection be conducted. Embi again must stay to protect the church building, which the resurrectors would love to use for the purpose.

What happens next was a doozy.

I most heartily hope to read this again! And definitely more Laxness is in my future. But I would not banter around a recommendation, willy-nilly. I'm not sure I personally know anyone who would like this but me.

Wait. I can think of one person, not living though (how apt). My deceased mother would have enjoyed it. But even if there were such a thing as a current manifestation of Lord Maitreya who could teach how to resurrect a woman (he has also done fish), would a resurrected still be interested in reading? I like to think if any would, it would be my mom.

So, in spite of my not having any knowledge about Iceland except Bjork and loving her music, and in spite of reading this work in translation, and in spite of my head spinning with the many zany philosophies encountered (Theosophy, oh my), in spite of all those obstacles, I absolutely loved this. It was a page-turning, head-scratching, belly-chuckling WTF for me.