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Sjöstafakverið
Sjöstafakverið er síðasta smásagnasafn Halldórs Laxness. Það kom upphaflega út árið 1964 og geymir sjö eftirminnilegar og margræðar sögur, leiftrandi af alkunnum húmor skáldsins.
- GenresShort Stories
189 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1964
3 people are currently reading
52 people want to read
About the author
Halldór Laxness
167 books828 followersBorn 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.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 6, 2017
Somehow this is the only collection of Laxness' short stories to be published in English, and from what I understand, it's an intact translation of his last Icelandic volume of stories. So the question is...when will his other volumes be translated?! I don't understand it! Aside from these seven tales, he has "Lilly" in Icelandic Short Stories and "New Iceland" in Seven Icelandic Short Stories, so...only nine of his short stories in English translation. Unbelievable. And this one has been out of print for over 40 years and goes for high prices; I had to have a friend from another county borrow it from his library's storage room. Where's the English-speakers' love for Laxness' short fiction, I ask? This must be remedied.
Anyway, griping aside, I was so happy to finally get my hands on a copy of this. And perhaps all this time of anticipation gave me a bit of "anticippointment." I loved his two stories from those other collections, and I (mostly) love his novels, but a couple of these left me a bit cold. Two or three of them are pointlessly absurd, like the lesser moments of The Atom Station but with the humor sliding off the edge of the point. Don't get me wrong, I love absurdism, and I even love pointless absurdism - things don't need to happen for a reason! - but I just found a couple of these stories to fall flat. Luckily, though, the others make up for it. The tale of the shameful dog cowering under the bed, the tale of "Hard Knut" grumbling on his death bed, the allegory of Jesus' disciples, the old caretaker going temporarily insane... there are some magical stories here, ones that I think people into good fiction would love to read.
It's encouraging that the interest in Laxness hasn't died, what with another book coming out last year, so let's hope this will continue.
Some favorite passages:
"Whoever hears the river flowing won't gain much from listening to you."
"When I was young I read a large number of books. I believed in seven doctrines. Facts killed them all in the order in which I adopted them. I am a heretic of seven faiths."
"The dog crawled guiltily from under the bed. This dog had broken the dogs' moral code, out of fear. He had crossed the threshold from the lean-to, pushing the spring-door open with his muzzle - a thing he had never done before. He had then run up the steps into the kitchen, where he knew very well a dog must never go. Finally he had nosed his way forward into the women's parlour to the old woman. No wonder he looked guilty when he crawled out from under her bed: no creature on earth had so clear a sense of sin as a dog."
"It needs no more than a single dry day to make up for a whole summer of rain. The bird sits on the fence-post and chirps endlessly, night and day, for two and a half months of summer. The rest of the year is an echo of the summer. A day is measured off in hours and watches, but of all the hours the happiest is when a man falls asleep - though it's one that can't be measured; yes, one that a man will never really know."
"Anything that can be said with words makes me suspect the worst. I listen to the river flowing."
"Then, Knut, what do you believe in?"
"The bird perched on the fence-post there bobs and twitters, and that tells me enough, my lads," said the old man. "That bird knows all that needs to be known about the world. It knows all the ways and means of living in the world. And it's the greatest fountain of stories in the land."
Anyway, griping aside, I was so happy to finally get my hands on a copy of this. And perhaps all this time of anticipation gave me a bit of "anticippointment." I loved his two stories from those other collections, and I (mostly) love his novels, but a couple of these left me a bit cold. Two or three of them are pointlessly absurd, like the lesser moments of The Atom Station but with the humor sliding off the edge of the point. Don't get me wrong, I love absurdism, and I even love pointless absurdism - things don't need to happen for a reason! - but I just found a couple of these stories to fall flat. Luckily, though, the others make up for it. The tale of the shameful dog cowering under the bed, the tale of "Hard Knut" grumbling on his death bed, the allegory of Jesus' disciples, the old caretaker going temporarily insane... there are some magical stories here, ones that I think people into good fiction would love to read.
It's encouraging that the interest in Laxness hasn't died, what with another book coming out last year, so let's hope this will continue.
Some favorite passages:
"Whoever hears the river flowing won't gain much from listening to you."
"When I was young I read a large number of books. I believed in seven doctrines. Facts killed them all in the order in which I adopted them. I am a heretic of seven faiths."
"The dog crawled guiltily from under the bed. This dog had broken the dogs' moral code, out of fear. He had crossed the threshold from the lean-to, pushing the spring-door open with his muzzle - a thing he had never done before. He had then run up the steps into the kitchen, where he knew very well a dog must never go. Finally he had nosed his way forward into the women's parlour to the old woman. No wonder he looked guilty when he crawled out from under her bed: no creature on earth had so clear a sense of sin as a dog."
"It needs no more than a single dry day to make up for a whole summer of rain. The bird sits on the fence-post and chirps endlessly, night and day, for two and a half months of summer. The rest of the year is an echo of the summer. A day is measured off in hours and watches, but of all the hours the happiest is when a man falls asleep - though it's one that can't be measured; yes, one that a man will never really know."
"Anything that can be said with words makes me suspect the worst. I listen to the river flowing."
"Then, Knut, what do you believe in?"
"The bird perched on the fence-post there bobs and twitters, and that tells me enough, my lads," said the old man. "That bird knows all that needs to be known about the world. It knows all the ways and means of living in the world. And it's the greatest fountain of stories in the land."
August 12, 2010
This is a collection of 7 short stories by the Icelandic writer Laxness. The stories, which has its flaws in many ways but nevertheless sucks you in, are a bit nordic in a way, I suppose. The descriptions of Island are beatiful and Laxness' language has some really good qualities to it. It's a short read which gives you a small peak into the lives of the people who lives on the isolated island of Iceland.
September 3, 2021
Ótrúlega skemmtileg.
October 12, 2025
Tryggur staður
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Dúfnaveislan
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Veiðitúr í óbygðum
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Kórvilla á Vestfjörðum
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Corda Atlantica
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Jón í Brauðhúsum
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Fugl á garðstaurnum
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Dúfnaveislan
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Veiðitúr í óbygðum
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Kórvilla á Vestfjörðum
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Corda Atlantica
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Jón í Brauðhúsum
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Fugl á garðstaurnum
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
August 3, 2021
Fínt safn, absúrdismasögurnar heilluðu mig ekkert sérstaklega þó það séu áhugaverðar tilraunir. Fyrsta sagan er góð, vildi óska þess að hún væri lengri. Kórvilla á Vestfjörðum er góð saga og það kæmi mér ekki á óvart Hallgrímur Helga sé sammála mér um það; allavega er margt í landslagsstemningunni þar sem minnir á '66 kíló af sólskini'.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews