Literary Pilgrimage

By : Angelika Gundlach

A description of a journey into two different realms – that of Iceland and that of literature.

The many-talented Poul Vad, originally an art historian, achieved considerable recognition in the USA a couple of years ago when his large-scale study of the Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi, Hammershøi. Værk og Liv from 1988 was published in Kenneth Tindall´s translation as Vilhelm Hammershøi and Danish Art at the Turn of the Century (1992). In contrast to this book, it is difficult in the case with Nord for Vatnajøkel (North of Vatnajökull) to say exactly to which genre it belongs essays about a journey, a description of a journey, but a journey into two different realms - that of Iceland and that of literature.

A pilgrimage to Iceland
Some time at the beginning of the 60s, Poul Vad got to know an Icelandic painter in Paris. On his return to Iceland, this painter, who was an enthusiastic connoisseur of architecture, sent Vad an article on Icelandic architecture ("still roughly the same as at the time of the settlement", i.e. the 9th and 10th centuries) and a copy of Hrafnkel´s Saga, at the same time urging him to go to Iceland in order to be convinced of what he was saying about the architecture there. This last idea, and in particular the compact, unpretentious and at the same time complex mediaeval text, probably the most unusual and enigmatic of the sagas, refused to leave Poul Vad in peace: some ten years later he embarked on a pilgrimage to the centre of Iceland, to "De øde Egne Nord for Vatnajökull" (The desolate areas north of Vamajökull), as the title of a 1927 travel guide which came into Vad´s possession in Iceland had it. We shall later discover where. So driving a Landrover Poul Vad roamed the countryside to the north of the highest glacier in the island, an area which seven hundred years previously - the saga was written in the 13th century and is said to be "set" some 200 years before that - had been described by the anonymous writer of a saga. Twenty years after this journey, and thirty years after his meeting with the painter, the outcome of the two encounters is now presented to us in form of the book to be discussed here.

Anonymous authors
The anonymity of the saga authors means that Poul Vad does not have at his disposal the usual goals of the modern literary tourist: no birthplace to be seen, no native village to wander through, no graves to visit. He must be content to travel all over the area which the saga writer chose as the frame for his story. Thus the countryside and the people whom Vad meets on his travels are given a "mythical" import, and the concrete reality of the present seems itself to belong to the saga.

Hrafnkel´s Saga
Hrafnkel´s Saga plays a major part in Vad´s book, and it is inherent in it that we should not immediately be provided with a handy summary of the saga: Of all the Icelandic sagas there is surely no other of which there are so many controversial interpretations. Vad´s book offers the reader several approaches to the story of the mighty farmer Hrafnkel on his farm of Adalbol, a man who has dedicated his favourite horse Freyfaxi to the god Freyr and sworn that he will kill anyone riding the stallion without his permission. Nevertheless, the luckless shepherd Einar does ride Freyfaxi and is slain by Hrafnkel, who "never pays penalties". Thereupon Einar´s father Thorbjörn demands compensation. Although - perhaps because - contrary to his custom, Hrafnkel is prepared to pay (he will provide for the entire surviving family and even adopt them if Thorbjörn is no longer capable of running his own household), Thorbjörn grows reckless and insists on hauling his mighty overlord before the Althing, an act that sets in motion a train of dramatic events. Admittedly, at the end everything is as before: the murderer, who for a time has been outlawed, is once more in his old farm of Adalbol and is richer and mightier than ever - his return having begun with the killing of Eyvindr, the brother of Sámr, who had taken upon himself to present Thorbjörn´s complaint of the Althing.

A maelstrom of mistakes
So in Hrafnkel´s Saga good does not prevail over evil: indeed the opposite could be argued were it not for the laconic manner and what one commentator calls the "glacial cold" with which the saga is related. It shows no interest "morals", and exhibits none, something that has preoccupied many interpreters and also led Poul Vad to study the saga for decades. He sees it as a maelstrom of mistakes, mistakes when measured by the yardstick of - power. It is all about power - how to win it, who exercises it, who loses it and about power as a form of consciousness. In one of the book´s 22 chapters (or essays), entitled "Theory and Practice of Power", Vad compares the "morals" of the saga writer with that of Machiavelli, in particular with The Prince, finding many things in this work predating him by 200 years that anticipate, the Florentine writer. In the preceding chapter he has "taken apart" a novel by an author colleague - the Swede Per Olof Sundman´s adaptation of the material in Berättelsen om Såm (1977) (The Story of Såm), in which - petty-mindedly and socialdemocratically in Vad´s opinion - instead of the representative of the chieftain class (Hrafnkel) the representative ofthe "humble people" (Sámr) is presented as the hero, and the saga´s motif of the wife-less Hrafnkel´s will to power is replaced by that of jealousy in a wretched marriage.

The farm of Adalbol
The concrete goal of Vad´s expedition is the farm of Adalbol in the desolate Hrafnkel Valley. Having time after time, in view of the hardships he can expect, been advised against embarking on the journey into the interior of the island, he himself hardly believes (and neither does the reader) that he will one day reach his goal. So when having started from Egilsstadir in his Landrover and driven along gravel tracks and over rough terrain - he actually arrives there, we can scarcely believe in this either, for in the meantime we have formed such a concrete archaic picture of the Adalbol of the saga that the present-day overdimensioned "concrete castle" (a further contribution to the theme of Icclandic architecture) comes as a complete surprise.

Historical accounts or fiction?
Is this really the setting of Hrafnkel´s Saga? Here, at the very heart of Iceland, Páll Gislason, the farmer of Adalbol and the owner of a huge library containing all the literature of Iceland, gives the Dane Poul Vad the Danish guide book through the desolate regions North of Vatnajökull which he has carefully kept in a drawer, and discusses with him the old problem of whether the sagas are historical accounts or fiction. "Do you want to know whether the story is true or simply whether it happened?" is the unanswered question, and fundamentally we no longer need to knom, the answer after this journey through this closely woven tapestry of Icelandic landscape and literature.


This article first appeared in Danish Literary Magazine nr. 8, 1995

Translated by W. Glyn Jones