Two representatives of the Icelandic »New Wave« in literature

Navigating the straits of narrativity

BY BJÖRN ÞÓR VILHJÁLMSSON

Two prominent representatives of what tentatively might be called the »new wave« of Icelandic literature (»new« in the sense of the writers being young, »wave« because they are numerous, »new wave« because they share an outlook equally influenced by international pop culture as it is by the »official« cultural heritage), Steinar Bragi and Guðrún Eva Mínervudóttir, published in 2002 their most ambitious and accomplished works to date. Both have, however, been quite prolific and, in the span of less then five years, have published about a dozen works of fiction combined, alternating between novels, poetry and short story collections. Indeed, this productivity can be viewed as reaching an important culmination with their most recent books – novels in both instances – as persistent thematic concerns find their full expression and their respective styles, distinctive from the first, can now be recognized as an assured authorial voice.
In his second novel, Anxiety Dolls (Áhyggjudúkkur, 2002), Steinar Bragi thus capitalizes on authorial traits familiar to readers of his earlier books of poetry, most notably Lie Pinocchio, Lie (Ljúgðu Gosi, ljúgðu, 2001), such as grotesque physical imagery, streams and slices of a bitter consciousness and a raging temperament; yet combining these with a fresh sense for the linguistic mediation of social experience and managing to place his often fiercely aggressive textual ‘behaviour’ in a disciplined, if still unusual and highly original, form. Guðrún Eva’s career has followed a somewhat more palpable logic then Steinar’s, and The Tale of the Cast Adrift Pianos (Sagan af sjóreknu píanóunum, 2002) can thus profitably be read in conjunction with her earlier novels, although in scope and subject matter its most significant predecessor is undoubtedly A Lecture on Happiness (Fyrirlestur um hamingjuna, 2000). These two novels share a delight in the richness of language; and in both a family history, spanning several generations, is narrated with the author’s signature eye for the eccentricities, pains and pleasures of everyday life.
Guðrún Eva's and Steinar Bragi’s fictions share a milieu, Reykjavik, and a central emphasis on young protagonists who come of age in an era of disposability, conspicuous consumption and information overload. Shared also is a preoccupation with language, narrativity and modernity; but as representatives of a shift in perspective among young Icelandic writers, their striking differences are no less telling then what they have in common. Moving away from a literary tradition which still bears the traces of an agrarian and seafaring culture, a tradition in which, aside from one or two minor seizures, writers and reality have kept on quite friendly terms, Steinar Bragi attempts to address questions of personal agency in a society so emptied of inner human meanings as to have become almost unreal to its members, a condition frequently aligned with postmodernism, and one which is signalled in his work by abstract or surreal interludes and undercurrents. Indeed, in his first novel, The Tower (Turninn, 2000), an evolutionary allegory, those traits which can be considered distinctively human remain locked inside a magical tower, approachable and visible up until the modern era when the tower disappears from view.
In her Tale of the Cast Adrift Pianos, Guðrún Eva Mí-nervadóttir on the other hand posits a world in which there is no shortage of meaning, rather the opposite. The multiplicity of partial narratives, each embedded with the possibility of meaning, if only deciphered correctly, almost proves too much for the protagonists, the lovers Kolbeinn and Solveig. The mournful tones of the abandoned pianos provide apt if melancholy background music for their attempts to navigate the virtual sea of stories surrounding them; and having reached an understanding of the subjective and relative nature of narrativity, they, in a sense, have moved in a direction pointing to the vast gallery of characters presented in Steinar’s Anxiety Dolls.
Steinar Bragi’s engagement with contemporary culture, however, is exemplified by his method of structuring his novel, which features no protagonists but a plethora of personalities, between whom the reader is swept at a breathless pace. What evolves is thus not a linear narrative but a panoramic view of a time and a place, persons and positions in a social space, and language as an instrument, sometimes blunt, at other times beautiful, but always unavoidable. The linguistic strategies used to create a literary text are thus highlighted, but deftly avoiding the convulsive catalepsy of privatized linguistic gymnastics in the form of circular self-referentiality, the motivating force behind Steinar’s project is to present social reality as a construct, one which is suspiciously akin to a narrative text, and the narrative as a social text, relative to our culture because it demonstrates how fictional writings incorporate within their discourse the crisis and possibilities of that same culture.

Björn þór Vilhjálmsson is a graduate student and literary critic