Women's life and art

For her book about Karitas, Kristín Marja Baldursdóttir thoroughly researched many disregarded and forgotten 20th C. Icelandic female artists

Nominated for the Nordic Council's Literature Award

Kristín Marja Baldursdóttir
Karítas án titils (Karitas Untitled)
Mál og Menning IS

By Erik Skyum-Nielsen

"What have you got to offer me?" a young woman asks the man whose child she is carrying beneath her breasts. - "A fertile valley, a beautiful fiord, and the most colourful mountain view in Iceland."

Later they settle on the eastern seaboard, on the shores of the remote Borgar Fiord, where they get married and together struggle hard to make a living as more and more children are born. Thus far - but no further - does Kristín Marja Baldursdóttir's voluminous account of women's conditions in the period between the First and Second World War resemble the story so often heard about "hardy Icelandic people", and the courage and endurance of Icelandic women.

For there is a significant non sequitur in this story: Karitas is simply not cut out to be a peasant's wife! She is an artist, and, what's more, a particularly talented one at that. Which is why this comprehensive volume, of which she is the main character, is not just a realistic family saga, but also an insistent and near contemporary portrayal of an artist's deeply personal struggle: material which calls for a broad paint-brush, many colours, and a large canvas.

As for the plot, the novel spans three stages in Karitas' life. The first covers her childhood and upbringing in Western and Northern Iceland, especially in the larger provincial town of Akureyri, and ends with her coming to the Copenhagen Academy of Art. In the second part, from which my initial quotation derives, she puts her artistic career on the shelf, as it were, preferring instead to live - or rather, one might say, to sacrifice herself - for her husband and children. In fact it is only in the last part, when her husband, Sigmar, tries to get the family together again after many years' absence, that there is any major new departure and break with the past.

At last she can realize her dream of becoming a "real" artist - at last her passion can become something more than a neglected spare-time hobby.

What makes this plot by no means as formulaic as it may seem here, may be ascribed to two significant characteristics of the work. On the one hand, Kristín Marja Baldursdóttir contrives to give the various scenes in the book (which are written in the past tense) colour and richness, and, on the other, she has inserted some intermediate chapters (which are written in the present tense) where we hear Karitas' own voice in sensitive commentary on her own art. This is brilliantly done and raises the book far above its realistic material, but, more than this, it tangibly illustrates the struggle between life and art which the author has tried to convey to us. Quite literally, in fact, in her claim that those who "neglect their loved ones", and only think of themselves - whether in the pursuit of art or of frivolous pleasure - will be both repudiated and despised.

Kristín Marja Baldursdóttir, who was born in 1949, produced her first novel, Mávahlátur, in 1995. "A Seagull's Laughter", as the title may be translated, was made into a film and a play, and has since been translated not only into Danish and Swedish, but also into German and Dutch. For this story about Karitas, she has thoroughly researched many disregarded and forgotten 20th C. Icelandic female artists. Besides her four novels, she herself has published a collection of short stories, and written a book about the Icelandic poet, Vilborg Dagbjartsdóttir.

Erik Skyum-Nielsen is lecturer at Copenhagen University and an active literary critic

Translated by Philip Edmonds