Any Icelandic Weird Fiction Recommendations?

[Specficjunkie]

Hi folks,

I'll be visiting Iceland in August and was hoping to find some Icelandic weird fiction ahead of that trip. Does anyone have any recommendations? At this point, I'm planning on reading some of the Icelandic Sagas but that's all I know of.

Thanks and Happy New Year!

[Calenture]

Can never resist a challenge, however unlikely to succeed!

Goodreads has nearly 30 books 'shelved' as Icelandic fiction.

Goodreads

Angels of the Universe by Einar Már Guðmundsson is said to be a narrative of a 'fantastic, schizophrenic, painful world.'

And I'm painfully aware I'm winging it here and you can Google this stuff as well as me!

[Viva June]

There is the pseudonymous Sjón, whose novels are written up by broadsheet reviewers (and off by me) as magic realism. Two of them are available in English: From the Mouth of the Whale and The Blue Fox. He also writes lyrics for Björk. Be forewarned, though: he has won a good handful of the Nordic countries' most prestigious literary awards.

[Specficjunkie]

Thanks to you both! I'll check these out!

[MadsPLP]

Quote Originally Posted by Viva June

There is the pseudonymous Sjón, whose novels are written up by broadsheet reviewers (and off by me) as magic realism. Two of them are available in English: From the Mouth of the Whale and The Blue Fox. He also writes lyrics for Björk. Be forewarned, though: he has won a good handful of the Nordic countries' most prestigious literary awards.

In Sjón's defence, though, it must be said that he has also written a libretto based on Stefan Grabinski's 'The Motion Demon'.

Gyrðir Elíasson, who won the prestigious Nordic Council Literary Prize in 2011, should supposedly work in a fantastic mode bordering on the weird. I haven't read anything by him, so I can't say for certain. It may simply be because of a total lack of understanding of weird fiction on the part of Danish reviewers (I won't dignify them with the word 'critics', and I doubt they would even have an understanding of magic realism, let alone fantastic literature), but I think it might be worth a try - I have an idea he may be a good writer anyway.

[Drasl]

Steinar Bragi is the only author I can think of that writes - almost exclusively - weird/horror stories. His novel "Women" was critically acclaimed when it was released back in 2008 and sold well (to my amazement, for the subject matter is anything but commercially appealing). The novel revolves around a woman trapped in a penthouse apartment subjected to mental and physical torment (but done in a way that is far from just being trite "torture porn" or the ####ty scandinavian thriller approach to violence) by unseen individuals. It gets weirder by every chapter and the ending of this novel (and his other new novel Hálendið) enter a world of utter madness. His more recent work "The Sky over Þingvöll"; a collection of 3 novelettes that was criticized for being "too weird" by some literary critics (He had originally planned on writing 15 short stories but settled with the 3 novelettes instead, much to my dismay). "His latest novel "Hálendið" was released in 2011 and is a psychological horror with plenty of weird scenarios. His book from 2002 called "Áhyggjudúkkur" (Worry Dolls) is supposed to be good, although I haven't read it. I am not sure if any of his work has been translated into english.


Sjón wrote at least one great weird short story about a man that has recurring dreams of a succubus stealing his seed. It's written in a first person narrative, as the protagonist writes a letter to his wife, explaining his ailment and asking his wife to stay with him after he rids himself of the demon by self-castration. All the more disturbing is his encounter with the succubus as a child before his dreams started (my memory is faulty, but I recall that the scene was somewhat sexual and had him urinating in front of her, while she just stared and asked him to do things for her). It has an effective ending: is the main character simply going insane or is it a supernatural entity tormenting him? I haven't read it since 2006, so it might be better in my memory.



Gyrðir Elíasson is a huge fan of Bruno Schulz (even mentions him in his work). Gyrðir's stories are often very short (3-6 pages), anecdotal, and sometimes seem to have no proper beginning or ending. But I have unfortunately not read his early work, which, from what I have read about it, seem to be weirder than his latest work.
Most of his work is poetic but often with simple sentences.
His latest novel is about a sardonic author's fragmentary thoughts, as he tries to write a novel in solitude in a small village. It seems to be autobiographical to some extent; as the protagonist mentions/references multiple times authors Gyrðir likes (e.g. Schulz, Mishima, Poe, Rilke, Narayan).

Here are some poorly and awkwardly translated (by myself) excerpts from the book:

"In the evening before I fall asleep (or not sleep at all) I read a book that includes the letters of Bruno Schulz. These are depressing letters. He gives no empty (false) hope about life, and never had any specific reason for doing so.

"The mild evening wind and the slow din from the ocean is like a cello and a church organ. In fact, one wouldn't need any other music."


Ásta Sigurðardóttir. An outcast that had to live in abandoned army barracks after the US/British army left Iceland at the end of WW2 (These old army posts became a home to the poorest people of the country). She often couldn't get a job, lived in poverty most of her life, was even homeless for a whole summer and was shunned by the general public (I am not sure for how long she was subjugated to this, as I can't find a lot of biographical facts about this author).
Most of her stories revolve around loss, depressing situations and frequently have mentally unstable protagonists. Her work was deemed as filth for its portrayal of taboo subject matter (i.e. rape, abortion, graphic description of child mutilation, whores, insanity, obsession etc.) and she never got the recognition she deserved until the late 80's. She only wrote short stories and a few poems in in the early 50's till the late 60's. She died in 1971 at the age of 40.

I am not sure if her work has been translated to english, perhaps a story or two, but it's a shame if none of her stories are available in english.

Her story "The Dream" was written in 1950 and is one of my favorite of hers.
Ignore the synopsis if you want to read this story, as it pretty much ruins the experience of reading it for the first time and my bland retelling of it does not do the story justice or show its strength or power.

Synopsis: A woman gets pregnant (the way the narrator speaks gives the impression she is a simpleton) and is overcome with joy from this "gift from god". As the story progresses, she finds out that the man she slept with doesn't want the child and demands of her to have an abortion. As she refuses to have an abortion she starts noticing how people start staring at her belly "with menacing eyes" and calling her a whore on the street. In the mid part of the story she has a dream where her son is maybe a 2 years old and a figure visit her she mistakes for God. After a conversation with this entity she then comes to the conclusion that the figure is in fact the devil and the next scene describes the the mutilation and murder of her child in detail by this strange figure. As she looks in a mirror she notices that she is the creature that killed her baby. After the dream she is suddenly walking down the street in a state of delirium, and notices blood on her dress. As she the blood keeps on flowing down her thighs she stops at a bench and starts praying for death. Thought from the abortion clinic and her dead fetus in a trash bin is all she can think about. Two young girl walk by laughing, while one of them remarks: "I have seen a barbed-wire-whore curse, but have you ever seen a Corrugated-iron-whore pray?"


There are a few other authors that I know of that have written something weird, but aren't really weird fiction writer. None of the before mention are strictly in weird fiction. I might write something more substantial about their works (instead of just retelling their stories) and other authors/artists when I have some more time.

Other than that you can find some weird stuff in old folk tales/legends that might have been translated.

[Calenture]

The first that I found that I actually felt any inclination to read myself, was this one:

That image is linked to the relevant Fantastic Fiction page.

Blurb:

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 Sn?fells Glacier, who, among other things, appears to have given up burying the dead. But once he arrives, the emissary finds 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.


The author also wrote Iceland's Bell (listed on that Goodreads page) which I think is an updating of the sagas.

[Specficjunkie]

Wow, thanks for these great responses!

[Specficjunkie]

Hi folks, I appreciate the suggestions offered in response to the question in my original post. I'm leaving for Iceland at the end of this week and thought I'd ask a related question: does anyone have any recommendations for good Icelandic fiction (in English translation) worth picking up while there. In other words, are there books that are difficult to acquire elsewhere that I should seek out? Thanks!