Frank Ponzi, "Introduction," Ísland á nítjándu öld: Leiðangrar og listamenn (19th-Century Iceland: Artists and Odysseys). Reykjavík: Almenna bókafélagið, 1986, pp. 19-23.

Excerpt from Frank Ponzi's essay on nineteenth-century travellers in Iceland (copyright material quoted by permission of the author):

In the cultural evolution of 19th-century Europe, the popular genre of travel literature played a distinct and decisive role. Its widespread proliferation brought to a predominantly stationary reading public a cornucopia of new information and intriguing entertainment, much as the mass media do today. In its way, the travel book was the 19th century's television window onto an unknown world. Through vividly written accounts of hitherto inaccessible faraway lands, man's concept of his world was broadened and the boundaries of his geographical knowledge extended. But more than this, by changing man's vision and expanding his ideological frame of reference, travel stories also stimulated and inspired images of other worlds -- those equally remote places residing solely in the human imagination. Thus, as an integrated part of society, travel and travel literature significantly affected the tenor of 19th-century thought and left in its wake an indelible and pervasive mark on science, literature and art.

In an age notably characterized by colonial ambition, the motivation for voyages to distant places was primarily trade and territory. But with improvements in sailing methods and the coming of steam propulsion, travel in general entered a new era. Contemporary advances in technology made possible the further expansion and diversification of traditional trade routes and, in so doing, also opened a vast array of virgin destinations, previously beyond the imagination and reach of the common traveller. With this new incentive, the tourist trade that began in the 19th century went into its stride. Though there still remained those who set off with renewed zeal in pursuit of territorial and commercial gain, there now also came a fresh breed seized with wanderlust, who ventured great distances in search of adventure and romantic escape, while still others embarked for obscure corners of the globe on dedicated missions of scientific discovery...

A profusion of travel literature was soon to fill a continuous, ever-growing demand. Publications ranged in format from the day-to-day journals containing the diarist's descriptions of places and personal adventure to the more elaborate scientific tomes recording accurate observations and measured data. Most travel books supplemented their textas with maps, engravings and lithographs, which generally depicted the more extraordinary features of the sites. Translations appeared throughout Europe, Scandinavia and the U.S. and provided a wide public with descriptions of a vast, previously unseen world. The reader at home could now fancifully embark on imaginative and engrossing literary and pictorial journeys into spheres of the unusual, the mysterious, the bizarre, and that which, though actual, was still unreal.

Over the years, Iceland -- enigmatic, isolated by the sea, enveloped in legend and myth, its surface world the home of heroic sagas, its underworld the home of tempestuous fires -- has captivated the speculative as well as the fanciful imagination of early writers. Its menacing volcano Hekla was known as the "mouth of Hell," its Snæfellsjökull provided Jules Verne with an access to the centre of the earth, and its awesome Geysir gave its name as the generic term for all boiling hot springs in the world. Until the latter half of the 18th century, invention had often served to supplement the little that was actually and accurately known about the country. Only with the first exploratory surveys undertaken by Eggert Olafsson and Bjarni Pálsson during the summers of 1752 to 1757, by Joseph Banks in 1771 and by John Thomas Stanley in 1789, did a clearer picture of the country begin to emerge for Europeans. Revelations from the tracts and journals of these earlier travellers encouraged others curious to learn about the country's natural phenomena, history, literature and customs.

The beginning of the 19th century saw the summer visits of the botanist, William Jackson Hooker, in 1809 and a year later the mineralogist, Sir George Steuart Mackenzie. These were soon followed (in 1814-1815) by the year-round residence in Iceland of the theologian, the Reverend Ebenezer Henderson. As a result of their subsequent publications, further interest in Iceland spread throughout Europe, Scandinavia and North America. Soon scores of travellers -- natural scientists, historians, philologists, doctors, writers, artists and others -- arrived to make on-the-spot depictions and personal observations, sometimes with what seems to be exaggeration. John Barrow, Jr. in 1834 described Iceland as "an island of deep interest, and one not easily accessible, where the grand agencies of Nature employed in creating, changing and destroying the earth's surface, are carried on to a greater extent probably than most other parts of the globe."

The substantial body of travel literature on Iceland written during the last century claims generous space and a prized place in the rare-book section of today's libraries. Not surprisingly, well-thumbed volumes not only continue to provide entertaining reading, but also store between their covers a rich lode of source material yet to be fully probed by historians, scholars, scientists, and Icelandophiles.... These books are cherished in our time not only for the intrinsic charm emanating from yesteryear's prose mannerisms but also for the arresting illustrations that often decorate the pages of text. Today, for a country having only a rather recent pictorial past of its own, these depictions have come to constitute some of the earliest and rarest of visual documents. They reveal the natural physiognomy of the country, aspects of its social life and the customs of its people. They are, in fact, invaluable records of its history.

Frank Ponzi, "Introduction," Ísland á 18. öld (18th-Century Iceland). Reykjavík: Almenna bókafélagið, 1980, p. 25.

Excerpt from Frank Ponzi's essay on eighteenth-century travellers in Iceland (copyright material quoted by permission of the author):

The image of Iceland, emerging from early pictorial records passed down through time, is one of mystery, wonder and intriguing incompleteness. The oldest depictions, accompanying ancient maps, manuscripts and fragmentary accounts, were based on scant knowledge liberally embellished with vivid imaginings having their source in medieval myth and hearsay. Not until centuries later do first-hand outside reports appear containing perceived descriptions and reliable information. From the seventeenth century on, however, the country finds itself a fascinating subject of interest for avid portraitists delving intimately into its historical, geological, biological and literary features. And yet, with all this latter-day scrutiny, neither a sharp-focused nor a wholly tenable picture flashes to mind when one thinks of Iceland. It is as though the land, with its diverse, ever-changing and contradictory character, thwarts distinct definition and, like some compelling poem having its own special intrinsic magic, frustrates all attempts at analysis. Shrouded in a kind of ubiquitous veil of the unreal, it continues to defy description and remains today, as ever, elusive.

Whether the country is seen from within by inhabitants intimately familiar with its terrain, capricious weather, beauty and stark realities, or by the foreign visitor stepping ashore saddled with his own particular cultural baggage, the impressions are bound to differ and at times be at variance. Viewed from near or from afar, the "motif", unobliging and difficult as it is, places many obstacles in the path of the observer bent on objective truth, and more often than not, a subjective interpretation is inevitably the result. Nevertheless, in spite of a predilection for objectivity, it is specifically in the introspective nature of the documents from the Banks and Stanley expeditions that much of the charm and enjoyable rewards are to be found. For here, not only are we given well-learned gentlemen as travelling companions, but are also offered a rare idiosyncratic view seen through an eighteenth-century English window. The watercolours and sketches from these two expeditions are, therefore, as much imaginative, artistic creations as they are factual, historical records - and as such, tell us as much about the observers as that which is being observed.

Alan Boucher, "Foreword," The Iceland Traveller: A Hundred Years of Adventure. Reykjavík: Iceland Review, 1989, v-vi.

Thus wrote E.J. Oswald on her first visit to Iceland in 1875, and to a large extent her words apply to this day (to geology might be added ornithology), though summer visitors to Iceland are no longer few and for many the main attraction is probably simply the lure of the unfamiliar. Foreign travel is no longer the privilege of the wealthy and most of the hardship and danger has been taken out of it. Nevertheless there will always be some for whom Iceland has a special quality, both for its geographical strangeness and its historical associations. By its nature, travel is a search and an escape: a search for difference, and an escape from the self with its environmental limitations. Some carry their environment with them, wherever they travel, and find only disillusionment; others find what they are looking for, though it exists mostly in their own minds. But through the eyes of all some glimpse of truth can be seen, either about themselves or about the objects of their observation. And like Donne's map-reader, we can enjoy vicariously the experience of those who "worlds on worlds have shown," even if it tells us as much about the traveller as about the land through which he travels.

Photographs of Reykavik and a few other places in Iceland from a century or more ago. The text is in Icelandic.

Having spent eighteen years in humiliating servitude, Bjartur wants nothing more than to raise his flocks unbeholden to any man. But Bjartur's spirited daughter wants to live unbeholden to him. What ensues is a battle of wills that is by turns harsh and touching, elemental in its emotional intensity and intimate in its homely detail. Vast in scope and deeply rewarding, Independent People is a masterpiece.

"There are good books and there are great books and there may be a book that is something still more: it is the book of your life.... My favorite book by a living novelist is Independent People." – Brad Leithauser, from the Introduction
"Reader, rejoice! At last this funny, clever, sardonic and brilliant book is back in print. Independent People is one of my Top Ten Favorite Books of All Time." – E. Annie Proulx

The long search in a harsh, materialistic world for some kind of spiritual beauty leads Olaf Karason through a turbulent life in the villages of Iceland in the early twentieth century. Sent away by his mother as an infant, crippled until a bizarre cure in late boyhood, and later a self-taught poet living once more on charity, he was always a social outcast. His quest for the spirit of this world shows him much of the chaos of existence until, at the end, he discovers the beauty which can transcend the pain of life. He is never in his own eyes merely a passive victim, however; forever incapable of compromising his ideals among people different from himself, his life is a series of trying circumstances. Despite the death of his child, his near-desertion of the strange woman whose only intent is to protect him, encounters with the "True Icelanders," and his jail sentence for fornication, he never ceases to explore the ever-diminishing possibilities of existence.

Of equal importance to his story are Olaf's natural surroundings and their effect on all men. Caught in a poverty-stricken land, where centuries of struggle for subsistence have blighted almost all beauty in the narrow and. puritanical minds of the Icelanders, Olaf Karason remains an outsider, unconsciously trapped by a society he cannot understand, dependent for support on a community that values poetry only as it is perverted to propaganda or marriage proposals. We follow his gradual realization that no man is free, that the effects of an action on other, weaker people must be considered, and that one must bring himself to suffer the consequences of being human. As poet, father, and teacher he fails utterly, but before his death he comes to accept the glories and failures that are life. His struggles and final vision take the reader far beyond the life of Olaf Karason of Iceland into the lives of all men, as we see in him the archetypal anti-hero of our century.

"Isolated and off the beaten path" beyond the black cliffs of northwestern Iceland lies Syvendeaa – Bjarni's farm, and scene of one of the most sensational murders in Icelandic history. Bjarni's story is told by the Reverend Eiulv who "had never met a man like Bjarni . . . standing there tall and powerful. . . he touched my heart more than I can say: it was just like being put eye to eye with your fate." And throughout the trial, Eiulv who had initiated the proceedings with his deposition, felt an increasing sense of kinship and a growing responsibility to God for this man who "had the bad luck to kill Ion Thorgrimsson."

In 1928, ten years after he first saw Syvendeaa and had thoroughly studied maps of the area and records of the trial, Gunnar Gunnarsson wrote Svartfugl (The Black Cliffs), essentially as a psychological study of human reactions to the events and personalities involved with the crime. Born in 1889 in eastern Iceland, Gunnarsson published two collections of poems in Icelandic in 1906 and composed his first story in Danish the following year while en route to school in Denmark. Realizing that writing in Icelandic could neither support him financially nor gain him a European audience, he elected to write in Danish. Completion of The Family from Borg (At Borgslaegtens Historie) in four volumes in 1914 established his reputation in Scandinavia. A series of pessimistic books followed on the heels of World War I, then historical novels, and between 1923 and 1928, five volumes of an extensive, fictionalized autobiography, The Church on the Mountain (Kirken paa Bierget), probably his major work. Immediately after completing this great hymn to life, Gunnarsson addressed himself to the story of the black and brutal Syvendeaa crime, and published Svartfugl in 1929.