Halldór Laxness: Travels with Amma
- Bryndís Viglundsdóttir
- Sep 13
- 5 min read
By Bryndís Víglundsdóttir
The Nobel laureate Halldór Kiljan Laxness is the undisputed master of contemporary Icelandic fiction and is considered by many one of the greatest European novelists of the twentieth century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1955.
My question is who he considered as his influencers, the people who molded him, shaped him as a person, and taught him the language that he mastered better than most.
Laxness was very prolific, writing a number of novels, poems, short stories, plays, and articles on pressing subjects of the day. He also wrote four books—memoirs—about his childhood and youth. In these four books, we find the answers to where and how he learned the language.
My input today is not a literary criticism—I leave that to the learned people. Rather, it will be an attempt to share with you what I have heard and read about the love of a young boy, later a Nobel prize winner in literature, the love of that boy for his amma and how that love was ignited and influenced him for his whole life. Her influence, her voice is heard clearly while reading his text, be it in novels or poetry.
Having heard that voice as clearly as I have in Laxness's works I feel and maintain that we, the ammas of the world, are really in a special league of privileged people, that is, if we choose to get involved with our children and grandchildren. I do hope we all have been blessed with that experience.
In his book Í túninu heima (In my Homefield), which may be regarded as an autobiographical work, Halldór talks about his childhood in Laxness with his parents and his amma, Guðný Klængsdóttir.
Guðný moved to Reykjavík from her farm in Ölvus. Her husband drowned while fishing and she had buried her five young children. Her only living child, the daughter Sigríður who was 11 years old, was with her when she came to Reykjavík. As an adult, Sigríður met a young man, Guðjón, and they were married, later to become the parents of Halldór (Guðjónsson) Kiljan Laxness. They bought the farm Laxness and Halldór added that name to his given and taken names. Halldór grew up with his amma. He says that she was small of build, her voice was soft and low, but her persona filled the home.
She taught him rhymes and poems, told him stories of people, creatures, and all kinds of tales using such language and words that he, the child, didn't understand all she was saying. The rhythm and spirit of the language and many words, however, stayed with him and would later echo through his stories and poetry.
I listened to an interview with Laxness on the radio, and there he said, among other things, “My amma was always with me on my travels around the world.”
When Halldór returned home after receiving the Nobel Prize, thousands of people had gathered on the dock, waiting for him to show their respect. He addressed the crowd, his people. With beautiful words, he thanked the ammas of his nation who had hummed rhymes to the children in the twilight of the long winters and told them stories of hidden people, trolls, kings, and royal palaces. Thus, our language was preserved through the ages. His Nobel Prize, praise, and recognition, he said, belonged to the ammas of Iceland. Then he thanked his own amma in words as only Laxness could put together.
Halldór was young, only 17 years old, when he first went abroad and stayed three years in Denmark. Later he visited most countries in Europe, travelled to China, stayed two years in the United States, and spent a year in a monastery in Luxembourg.
“I was never alone,” he said. “My amma, delicate of build and soft-spoken, was always with me.”
Allow me to say again: We, the ammas of the world, are really in a special league of privileged people if we choose to be there.
Now I wish to share with you a few words of Halldór Laxness, from his book, Í túninu heima (In my Homefield.)
“The last time I sat with my amma I had been away for almost three years, in the outlands that were more than far away— to my amma the outlands were unreal. She had two years over ninety and old age had caught up with her.
The morning when the boat carrying me home harbored amma asked my sister if she should greet her Dóri as Halldór, as he was called by his family, while lying in bed or should she get dressed in her best clothes and be sitting while greeting him? The second idea was chosen. She greeted me sitting on the edge of her bed, dressed in her best clothes and asked me to have a seat by her just like I used to do when I was a young boy, struggling to knit socks for the cat.
When I first went to the outlands, she had asked me to take with me a greeting: “If you ever meet an old hag in the outlands who is as pitiful as I am, give her my greetings.”
“Now I say, amma dear, do you remember the greeting you asked me to bring with me?”
“Did you deliver it?” said amma and smiled.
“No,” said I. “It has been my sustenance all the years I was away in the outlands.”
The following morning when I came to her, she asked me two questions.
“Did you sleep well in the bed you slept in last night?”
I reassured her of my very good and sound sleeping.
The other question was about how I felt while in the outlands—how was it in reality?
"Did you really like the food these people in the outlands eat?"
I told her the food was good, however, they didn't eat meat on Fridays. She chuckled softly and said, “Well, well, I say, old customs left over from the old days!”
I only stayed one day in Laxness and then I went back to Reykjavík. On that day my amma died. She had postponed dying until her Dóri was home again.
Halldór Laxness died February 8th, 1998, at the age of 95. There were many wonderful obituaries in our main paper, Morgunblaðið. One of them was by the poet Matthías Johannessen. He wrote:
“The day when the Icelanders forget Halldór Kiljan Laxness's writing genius
they no longer count as a nation.”