Sjón

Oooof. Reading the first part of this slim novel, it seemed to me I was reading a modernized animal fable. Told in poetic language we read about a blue fox, “the vixen”, being tracked through the winter Icelandic landscape of 1883 by a hunter, universalized as “the man”. And then the story explodes into something else, signified by two short lines:

She raises her head.
Reverend Baldur Skuggason pulls the trigger.

The following sections of the novel gradually spool out a horrific and, alas, an all too human sort of story, told in more traditional though still lyrically heightened prose. I had not looked at reviews before reading this; if I had, I would have seen my Goodreads friend Meike’s review which points out the etymology of the Icelandic word skuggabaldur, the novel’s original title in Iceland, which according to Wiktionary has the meanings:

1. An Icelandic folktale creature, the offspring of a tomcat and a vixen (or dog)
2. An evil spirit
3. An evildoer who anonymously does their evil

Icelandic speakers, or people who read smart Goodreads reviews, would thus know right away that the name Baldur Skuggason bodes very ill. I got to find out more gradually. The Reverend Baldur Skuggason has done something hideously evil, unspeakable, and Sjón twines together that brutal story with the safer language of fable, where the moral is guaranteed its victory in the end.

There’s an interesting exchange between Reverend Baldur Skuggason and the vixen that suggestively takes place in a cave (underneath a glacier, being Iceland!). Skuggason challenges the vixen to a debate about electricity. He claims that God materially makes up the world, and that it is thus particles of God that are transmitted through electric wires. To treat God in such a way is a degradation of His nature. The vixen replies that if God causes the light to shine, and if God furthermore is light, then God is shining forth from every lamp, and shouldn’t the Church desire that? The Reverend cynically replies, “Do you really believe, Madam Vixen, that the radiance from these electric bulbs of yours can penetrate the human soul?” He then stabs the vixen through the heart with a knife he has grabbed while the vixen was composing her reply.

Digging out of the cave through the snow right after, the Reverend calls out:

”Light, more light!”
But the closer the priest came to his goal, the less man there was in him, the more beast.

I think there’s enough suggested in these few pages to power several theology classes.… (mehr)

A relatively short but interesting look into an aspect of history I had no real insight into. The novel follows the life of a young Icelandic man growing up in the post-WW2 era and yet being lured into Neo-Nazism. It takes an interesting approach of showing his early life in a standard narrative structure (giving a relatively objective view of his early life) before switching to letters as he becomes an adult (thereby switching to his own mindset, albeit in smaller windows). I mainly ranked it "I liked it" because while it was interesting it was also a bit too brief to really dig into the subject matter.… (mehr)

One of the stranger works of historical fiction I've read, this stream-of-consciousness tale moves through territory of history, fable, story, poetry, and forays into the speculative at a frightening pace, but is carried along by a tough lyricism that all but demands a reader keep going. It feels like this book might be one which could benefit from a second and even a third read, but so much of what I enjoyed here was in the 'experience' and poetry of the first reading, I suspect I'm more likely to try one of Sjon's other works. This one was an interesting one, certainly, but covered so much territory that the reading felt more fragmented and wandering than I really would have liked.… (mehr)