2021-04-23 Fri

Halldor Kiljan Laxness was an Icelandic novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1955. He is considered the most creative Icelandic writer of the 20th century.

Laxness spent most of his youth on the family farm. At age 17 he travelled to Europe, where he spent several years and, in the early 1920s, became a Roman Catholic. .

He started to read books and write stories at an early age. He attended the technical school in Reykjavík from 1915 to 1916 and had an article published in the newspaper Morgunblaoio in 1916. By the time his first novel, Barn natturunnar (Child of Nature), was published in 1919 he had already begun his travels on the European continent.

In addition to novels, Laxness published plays, poetry, short stories, critical essays, and translations, and he edited several Icelandic sagas. In the 1970s and ’80s, he published several volumes of memoirs, including Sagan af brauddinu dyra (The Bread of Life) and Dagar hja munkum (Days with Monks).

To honor him Iceland Postal Department has issued a stamp of value 100 Icelandic Krona in 2002.

Image Source: colnect.com