NATION-BUILDING THROUGH STORYTELLING IN ANGELS OF THE UNIVERSE:

A LOOK AT ICELANDIC CINEMA AND THE CONTINUED IMPORTANCE OF ICELANDIC LITERATURE AND FOLKLORE

NIAMH SCHÖNHERR ADVISOR: JAMES LASTRA

PRECEPTOR: MATT HAUSKE

THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

MASTER OF ARTS PROGRAM IN THE HUMANITIES UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

12 MAY 2012

MINOR TEXT REVISIONS 10 OCTOBER 2016

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ABSTRACT

In this thesis, Friðrik Þór Friðriksson’s film Angels of the Universe (Englar alheimsins,

2000) is positioned in relation to Iceland’s dominant national art form—literature. In making

such a comparison, I show how Friðrik Þór’s work is magical realist in that it is symptomatic of

a post-colonial and recently modernized culture struggling to define its own national identity

against continued foreign occupation and influence. Magical realism is presented as a new

framework for understanding Iceland’s complex relation with modernity as represented by

America and other foreign powers. In particular, I focus on the way in which the distinction

between what is “supernatural” and “real” in Friðrik Þór’s work has constituted a division

between local and foreign audiences. In making these claims, I argue against the critical

limitations of transnationalist theory, which has heretofore been the only significant means of

understanding Icelandic cinema in English-language scholarship. As the transnationalist

approach tends to overemphasize foreign audiences and global themes, I propose the use of a

nationalist approach to better understand how Icelandic cinema functions within its own country.

In addition to these theoretical claims, this thesis also includes a brief history of Icelandic cinema

and Icelandic literature.

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INTRODUCTION

Until recently, Icelandic cinema has remained largely unexplored outside of Iceland.

Within the last decade, Icelandic cinema has drawn some attention from film scholars interested

in the cinema of small nations and other transnationalist approaches to film theory. These

scholars have largely stressed the ways in which Icelandic cinema shapes the Icelandic national

identity by arguing that Icelanders use cinema not only to create a national identity for

themselves but also to “sell” Iceland to foreign audiences. By placing Icelandic cinema into the

broader context of Nordic cinema as a whole, scholars have been able to better identify certain

themes and concepts within Icelandic cinema.

However, the transnationalist focus on the relationship between the national and the

global has limited our perspective on Icelandic cinema by stressing the “selling” aspect of

Icelandic films over other more explicitly nationalist concerns. This limited perspective arises

because the transnationalist approach naturally tends to highlight universal themes and concepts

in Icelandic film over aspects that have particular regional importance.

It is thus significant that in their writings on Icelandic cinema and its relation to Icelandic

nationalism, most scholars seldom venture outside Icelandic cinema to Iceland’s other art forms,

and make little attempt to ground film within Iceland’s robust literary heritage. Iceland’s literary

history is tied intrinsically to Icelandic nationalism, and so to disregard this important facet of

Icelandic culture will necessarily limit our understanding of how Icelandic film is understood

within its own country.

Despite this general disregard for Icelandic literature, the scholar Björn Norðfjörð

attempts to connect Icelandic cinema with its literature, albeit through a particularly narrow

context. In his dissertation on Icelandic cinema, Norðfjörð investigates Icelandic cinema’s strong

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inclination towards literary adaptation, but ultimately concludes that Icelandic cinema has shown

a great deal of anxiety about tackling the canonical literary classics considered most integral to

Icelandic nationalism. The implication seems to be that because these classics have not been

adapted, Icelandic cinema is only tangentially related to Icelandic literature. Unfortunately, this

assumption ignores the plethora of other means by which cinema and literature can interact.

In this thesis, I will approach Icelandic cinema with a focus on the overwhelming

national importance of literature and the ways in which Icelandic cinema and literature are

engaged in an ongoing dialogue with one another. In particular, I will look at Friðrik Þór

Friðriksson’s film Angels of the Universe (Englar alheimsins, 2000), which is adapted from the

1995 novel of the same name written by Friðrik Þór’s childhood friend and frequent collaborator

Einar Már Guðmundsson. This film’s national concerns have been critically neglected by

transnationalist scholars, who seem more concerned with understanding its international success

rather than its comparable local triumph at the Icelandic box office. By emphasizing Icelandic

cinema’s place within an ongoing tradition of nation-building through the art of storytelling, I

hope to reveal how Friðrik Þór’s Angels of the Universe is actively engaged in constructing a

national history and a sense of the quintessential Icelandic character.

Throughout my investigations, I also hope to show how Angels of the Universe and other

Icelandic films employ a magical realist mode of narration typical of the highly nationalistic

Icelandic storytelling tradition extending back to the Eddas and sagas. This lens will allow us to

clearly see Icelandic art and culture on its own terms, free from the possible sources of

misrepresentation that can occur whenever a culture is repackaged for international consumption.

Ultimately, this will help us better understand Iceland’s place in the modern world.

———————

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This thesis will be divided into four sections. In the first section, I will look at how

Angels of the Universe has been understood so far in English-language scholarship and posit how

it has been misrepresented by the limits of the transnationalist approach. In the second section, I

will give a brief history of Icelandic cinema and its place within film scholarship. In the third

section, I will look at the importance of literature for Icelandic nationalism and discuss its

significant effect of Icelandic art as a whole and cinema in particular, as well as provide some

crucial historical background on Iceland as a nation. Finally, in the fourth section, I will return to

Angels of the Universe, specifically looking at discrepancies between the way Friðrik Þór

conceives of his own films as “realist” and the way in which foreign audiences perceive them as

“supernatural” and how this might help us understand his films as engaging in a culturally

significant mode of magical realist narration.

Additionally, with regards to Icelandic names, I have opted to follow the example set by

Björn Norðfjörð by leaving Icelandic names in their original forms, as current attempts at

Anglicization have proven inadequate. As such, two Icelandic characters in particular may be of

some confusion to English-speakers: þorn (Þþ) and eð (Ðð). Both are roughly equivalent to the

English “th” sound. However, I have eschewed Norðfjörð’s use of patronymic names as if they

were a surname, e.g. I refer to Friðrik Þór Friðrikson as “Friðrik Þór” in the short, rather than

“Friðriksson,” as the name Friðriksson is patronymic rather than an actual surname and merely

indicates the name of Friðrik Þór’s father.

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SECTION I. A PRELIMINARY LOOK AT ANGELS OF THE UNIVERSE

In looking at Angels of the Universe, most scholars note its international success at film

festivals and art house theaters, and make note of its universal themes focused around the issue

of mental illness. However, these scholars neglect to mention its national importance aside from

its incredible success at the local box office, where it sold over 90,000 tickets, reaching just over

one-third of Iceland’s population at that time.1

In some cases, we do get glimpses of why the film succeeded locally, as when Birgir

Thor Møller points out how expectations were high for the film because it was an adaptation of a

critically acclaimed novel. Yet Møller’s interest in international audiences is made immediately

clear when the only example he gives of such acclaim is the fact that the novel won the Nordic

Council’s Literature Prize in 1995. Likewise, after mentioning the local box office success of the

film, he immediately moves on to the international audience, and the “unfortunate though

understandable” tendency of foreign critics to compare the film to Miloš Forman’s One Flew

Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975).2

Møller’s rather brief analysis of the film ultimately positions it as a thematic shift for

Friðrik Þór:

[Angels of the Universe] could easily be seen as the beginning of a new chapter in his [Friðrik Þór’s] life and career, which up until Angels of the Universe had focused thematically on contrasts in modern Iceland, which swings between modern and traditional, the American and the Icelandic, film and the folk tale, city and country.3

                                                                                                               1 Within the cultural context of Iceland, “blockbuster” status is generally considered to occur when ticket sales equal approximately a fifth to a quarter of the population. 2 Birgir Thor Møller, “In and Out of Reykjavík: Framing Iceland in the Global Daze” in Transnational Cinema in a Global Context: Nordic Cinema in Transition, ed. Andrew Nestingen and Trevor G. Elkington (New York: Wayne State University, 2005), 318. 3 Ibid.

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However, it remains somewhat unclear what the dominant themes of Angels of the Universe and

the films that follow it are, though Møller gives some indication at the conclusion of his essay. In

the conclusion, Møller writes how Friðrik Þór’s film Falcons (Falkar, 2002) “is a universal fable

about finding, accepting, and affirming one’s place in life’s cycles. ... Friðriksson is through, for

now at least, with the idea of the Icelandic mentality as a thematically significant synthesis of the

modern and the traditional.”4 In other words, Møller suggests that the national significance that

might have been found in Friðrik Þór’s earlier films has been replaced by broader global themes

and interests in his later films, with Angels of the Universe noted as the pivotal film.

This idea is further supported by Björn Norðfjörð, who identifies the film as ostensibly a

faithful adaptation of the novel, but notes that the film’s focus on the adult life of the protagonist,

Páll,5 effectively removes the national importance in favor of the novel’s broader, global themes:

As Guðni Elísson has pointed out, the symbiosis between Páll’s schizophrenia and the national turmoil of the latter half of the twentieth century is lost by erasing the early period of his life: “[Pall’s] life reflects the nation’s history. Páll is born March 30th 1949, the day Iceland joined NATO and his life ends a little over 40 years later with the fall of the Berlin wall.” Thus, the character’s life no longer functions as an explicit national allegory in the film. In fact, author Guðmundsson and director Friðriksson have gone out of their way in effacing the novel’s period settings in favor of a more abstract and universal one.6

Certainly, the first half of the book is almost entirely absent from the filmic adaptation, but the

film still makes explicit note of the significance of Páll’s birth and death days. This link between

Páll and Iceland is most clearly spelled out when Páll’s psychiatrist Brynjólfur comments, “I

think schizophrenia is deeply rooted in the Icelandic character. Look at all that belief in elves and                                                                                                                4 Ibid, 332. 5 I have followed other film scholars in choosing not to Anglicize Páll’s name, but it may be important to note that English translations of both the novel and the film use the English name Paul, likely to emphasize the Biblical reference with the name of Paul and his friend Peter (Pétur in Icelandic). 6 Björn Norðfjörð, Icelandic Cinema: A National Practice in a Global Context (doctoral dissertation, University of Iowa, 2005), 272.

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spirits, ghosts and trolls. It’s evidence of a split personality.”7 This connection between Páll’s

mental illness and the Icelandic character will be developed more in the fourth section, but for

now it is at least enough to recognize that, although certainly less explicit throughout the plot,

those nationalist connections are still there.

Nonetheless, it is true that Angels of the Universe has fewer moments of overt cultural

specificity than, for example, Friðrik Þór’s earlier film Devil’s Island (Djöflaeyjan, 1996), which

was adapted from two books by Einar Kárason: Þar sem djöflaeyjan rís (As the Devil’s Island

Rises, 1983) and Gulleyjan (Treasure Island, 1985). Like the books, Devil’s Island was heavily

grounded in the socio-political climate of Iceland after the Second World War, and as a result, it

was widely misunderstood by foreign audiences.8

However, it seems to me that Norðfjörð has misinterpreted an attempt to make Angels of

the Universe more accessible to foreign audiences as a deliberate attempt to cut out all national

relevance. In other words, in trying to show the transnational elements of the film, Norðfjörð has

lost sight of the national interests that made the film so widely popular in Iceland. He has ignored

the ways in which the film deliberately plays with Icelandic concepts of the national character,

which it challenges, complicates, and ultimately reshapes through the image of a schizophrenic.

Therefore, I hope to recover the film’s national relevance through its relationship with Icelandic

literature.

                                                                                                               7 Englar alheimsins, DVD, directed by Friðrik Þór Friðriksson (Iceland: Íslenska kvíkmyndasamsteypan, 2000). Quotations are taken from the English subtitles on the 2008 DVD release by Sena, except in instances where I have found the translation to be inaccurate or incomplete. 8 For a more detailed look at this film and the contexts which surround it, see my article “Understanding the Socio-Political Background Behind Devil’s Island,” Senses of Cinema 58 (2011), http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2011/feature-articles/understanding-the-socio-political-background-behind-devil%E2%80%99s-island/

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SECTION II. A BRIEF HISTORY OF ICELANDIC CINEMA AND ITS HANDLING IN

ENGLISH-LANGUAGE SCHOLARSHIP

Before I begin to look closely at Angels of the Universe, it will be useful to look at where

Icelandic cinema is, historically and in terms of film scholarship. In part, this will help

contextualize readers who may be relatively new to Icelandic cinema.9 At the same time, I hope

to also illuminate some additional oversights that have been made by scholars who take a

transnational approach to understanding Icelandic cinema.

The history of Icelandic cinema can be easily divided into two eras, with the moment of

division occurring around 1980, when Icelandic film production suddenly exploded. Prior to

1980, Icelandic film production was highly sporadic, having been funded almost entirely by

independent Icelandic director-producers and co-productions with the Scandinavian10 nations.

Between 1923 and 1977, only fourteen feature films were made in Iceland, with many of them

being primarily Scandinavian productions that used Iceland for its landscape and/or as a source

for literary adaptation, though also at times employing actors and even in some cases directors

from the Icelandic theatre.                                                                                                                9 Those looking for a comprehensive overview of the history of Icelandic cinema may want to seek out the first chapter of Björn Norðfjörð’s dissertation, Icelandic Cinema: A National Practice in a Global Context. His text provides the most in-depth coverage of the history of Icelandic cinema written in English and has been an invaluable resource in my own writing on Icelandic cinema. 10 It may be useful to briefly clarify my own usage of the somewhat vague terms “Nordic” and “Scandinavian,” as no specific consensus has been reached on their usage either popularly or within academia, where it is not uncommon to see the two used interchangeably. In my own writing, I use Nordic as a cultural-linguistic term that refers to the Old Norse roots behind the Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Icelandic languages, with Finnish existing as a completely separate language. I use Scandinavian to refer to the geographical region of Scandinavia, which includes Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland, but excludes Iceland. It should be noted that Iceland’s geographical distance has often marginalized Iceland more than the linguistic barrier has marginalized Finland. This is due in part to the fact that Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian have evolved to such a degree that Icelandic is now almost as incomprehensible to speakers of those languages as is Finnish.

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In 1978, the Icelandic government set up the Icelandic Film Fund (IFF,

Kvikmyndasjóður), a subsidized institution designed to “promote Icelandic filmmaking by

providing financial support.”11 The influence of the IFF quickly became apparent when the year

1980 saw the release of three Icelandic feature films. Since 1980, Iceland has released on

average three to four films a year, with directors such as Ágúst Guðmundsson, Hrafn

Gunnlaugsson, and Friðrik Þór Friðriksson establishing long and comparably prolific careers.

Iceland’s film industry was again restructured by the Icelandic Film Law (Kvikmyndalög)

of 2001, which culminated with the creation of the Icelandic Film Centre (IFC,

Kvikmyndamiðstöð Íslands) in 2003. The IFC was put in control of the IFF as well as the newly-

formed National Film Archive (Kvikmyndasafn Íslands). According to the Film Law, the IFC has

four primary roles:

1. Support the production and distribution of Icelandic films. 2. Facilitate the promotion, circulation, and sale of Icelandic films at home and abroad, and collect and disseminate information on Icelandic films. 3. Strengthen film culture in Iceland. 4. Facilitate increased communication with foreign parties in the field of film art.12

The fourth point is perhaps most significant, because although the IFC has not had a noticeable

effect on the rate of film production in Iceland since 2003, it has arguably helped raise awareness

and interest in Icelandic film abroad. It has certainly proved an important point for scholars

taking the transnationalist approach in recent years, although this approach is hardly new to

academic studies of Icelandic cinema.

The first English-language treatment of Icelandic cinema appeared in 1992 when Peter

Cowie devoted fourteen pages to the topic in his survey Scandinavian Cinema.13 The chapter is

                                                                                                               11 Reglugerð um Kvikmyndasjóð nr. 229, article 1, March 31, 2003. 12 Kvikmyndalög nr. 137, article 3, December 21, 2001. 13 Peter Cowie, Scandinavian Cinema (London: Tantivy, 1992).

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an admirable attempt to summarize Icelandic cinema’s history up to that point, but it is

nonetheless clear that this attempt would likely never have been made were it not for the broader

project of Scandinavian cinema as a whole. Six years later, Astrid Söderburgh-Widding wrote a

chapter on Icelandic cinema in the book Nordic National Cinemas, but at only two pages, the

chapter does little if anything to add to what Cowie has already done.14

During the early 2000s, an explicit transnationalist approach came into vogue. The 2005

book Transnational Cinema in a Global North: Nordic Cinema in Transition has two chapters

devoted to Icelandic cinema, one by Bjørn Sørenssen that is devoted in particular to Hrafn

Gunnlaugsson’s Viking trilogy and another by Birgir Thor Møller on Icelandic cinema as a

whole, but with a particular interest in Friðrik Þór Friðriksson.15 Both essays deal with Icelandic

cinema’s relationship to the cinemas of other nations. Sørenssen compares the Viking film genre

with Spaghetti Westerns and Japanese samurai films as a means of universalizing the violence

prevalent in the old sagas that served as inspiration for the Viking films. Møller is certainly more

nuanced in his approach and focuses largely on Icelandic cinema itself, although he shows a

particular interest in the internationally acclaimed films of Friðrik Þór. Still, his filmic analyses

generally focus more on the films’ universal themes and transnational appeal rather than local

themes and concerns. He identifies the key trend running throughout Icelandic cinema, and

particularly in Friðrik Þór’s work, as the tension between city (Reykjavík, modernity) and nature

(the countryside, tradition).

According to Møller, the trend of nature versus city is symptomatic of Iceland’s relatively

recent thrust into modernity during its process of rapid urbanization that occurred around the                                                                                                                14 Tytti Soila, Astrid Söderburgh-Widding, and Gunnar Iversen, ed., Nordic National Cinemas (London: Routledge, 1998). 15 Andrew Nestingen and Trevor G. Elkington, ed., Transnational Cinema in a Global Context: Nordic Cinema in Transition (New York: Wayne State University, 2005).

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time of the Second World War. In other words, the tension between nature and city is the product

of Iceland’s current historical moment—the concerns of a culture still is the process of switching

from a traditional, rural existence to a modern, urban existence. Møller believes that nature

versus city has largely run its course within Icelandic filmmaking, as one might see from the

growing prevalence of the city in films and the dwindling usage of landscape shots since 2000.

He suggests that in the struggle between nature and city, the city has finally won out.

One might expect that Björn Norðfjörð’s dissertation on Icelandic cinema broke with the

transnational approach in favor of a more nationalistic view, as it devotes over 300 pages to the

small national cinema—the most comprehensive overview of Icelandic cinema to date. However,

one look at the dissertation’s title already makes its transnational stance clear: Icelandic Cinema:

A National Practice in a Global Context.16 Revised excerpts of this dissertation would later be

published in the book The Cinema of Small Nations, which does not place Icelandic cinema

within the context of Nordic cinema, but rather other “small nations” like Scotland, New

Zealand, and Tunisia.17 Norðfjörð’s most recent work is ostensibly a close reading of the

Icelandic film Nói albinói (2003, sometimes translated as Noi the Albino), but he still uses the

opportunity to posit Icelandic cinema as an “island cinema,” which is defined by both its

interactions with and isolation from other nations.18

Overall, Norðfjörð makes the best case for approaching Icelandic cinema transnationally.

As the title of his dissertation suggests, he views transnationalism as a way of understanding

                                                                                                               16 Björn Norðfjörð, Icelandic Cinema: A National Practice in a Global Context (doctoral dissertation, University of Iowa, 2005). 17 Mette Hjort and Duncan Petrie, ed., The Cinema of Small Nations (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007). 18 Björn Norðfjörð, Dagur Kári's Nói the Albino (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010).

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what happens when national cinemas come in contact with global audiences. He states this idea

most clearly in his book on Nói albinói:

The transnational should not be confined to describing things crisscrossing among nations, as the concept can be equally helpful in addressing things that originate in one nation but are directed toward another. In such cases, the transnational is nothing but the national dressed up for the globe.19

Norðfjörð thus seems remarkable in his ability to use Iceland’s international successes as a

means of illuminating something in particular about the Icelandic nationality.

However, at times Norðfjörð risks oversimplifying Icelandic nationalism by ignoring the

discrepancies between how Icelanders want to be perceived abroad and how they perceive

themselves. In other words, he risks discrediting national perceptions and understandings about

Icelandic cinema in favor of the ways Icelandic cinema attempts to appeal to international

audiences. This is perhaps best evinced when Norðfjörð concludes: “In fact, is not the recent

explosion of new national cinemas ultimately a characteristic of globalization—a desperate call

for representation in the crowded global village?”20 This statement seems to relegate nationalist

concerns solely to the realm of global representation, ignoring its local importance for the

creation of a national self-image that can, at times, conflict with the way a nation represents itself

abroad.

By favoring transnationalism over all other possible approaches to Icelandic cinema, we

are in danger of critically misunderstanding not only Icelandic cinema, but also the Icelandic

culture. Therefore, I propose that in addition to transnational approaches to Icelandic cinema, we

must also look at Icelandic cinema from a nationalist perspective that stresses the ways in which

Icelandic film relates to other elements of Icelandic culture, namely its oldest and most

                                                                                                               19 Ibid, 59. 20 Ibid.

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prominent art form—literature. Making this shift in perspective will help us better understand

discrepancies in the way that Icelandic film is viewed at home and abroad by revealing that

Icelandic cinema is actively engaged in continuing older storytelling traditions.

SECTION III. A BRIEF HISTORY OF ICELANDIC LITERATURE AND ITS IMPORTANCE

FOR ICELANDIC NATIONALISM AND ART

The history of Icelandic literature is intrinsically tied with the history of the nation itself,

extending all the way back to the nation’s settlement during the 9th and 10th centuries CE, which

was well-documented in Landnámabók (The Book of Settlement). During the time of the

Icelandic Commonwealth (860–1262),21 Iceland developed a robust poetic tradition, based on the

Old Norse poetry of the time with some possible Celtic influence. Although using ostensibly the

same forms as other Norse and Germanic poets, the Icelanders were considered particularly

adept and were widely prized in royal courts.

When internal struggles resulted in Iceland’s submission to the Norwegian crown in

1262, Iceland began its written literature in earnest. It was during this time that the Poetic Edda

(also called the Elder Edda or Sæmundar Edda) was committed to vellum in a manuscript now                                                                                                                21 For those unfamiliar with Icelandic history, the Commonwealth (Þjóðveldið) saw the creation of the world’s oldest parliament, called the Alþing. During this time, Iceland was controlled by chieftains known as goðar (sing. goði) who had control over political alliances known as goðorð. Goðar were not elected. Instead, the title of goði was considered property that could be sold, borrowed, inherited, etc. However, a person could, in theory, decide which goðorð they belonged to, and thus which goði spoke for them at the Alþing. The Alþing possessed both judicial and legislative authority. However, there was no executive power, and so it was in the hands of the people to see to it that the court’s decisions were carried out. This would prove fatal for the Commonwealth during the Age of the Sturlungs (Sturlungaöld), when the goðar became consolidated among a few prominent families, the most powerful family being the Sturlungs. This resulted in an explosion of violence and civil war based around family feuds and ongoing cycles of revenge. In the hopes of restoring peace, Iceland finally submitted to the Norwegian king Haraldr hárfagri in 1262. Although this ended the feuding, Iceland would remain a colony of Norway and subsequently Denmark for over 650 years.

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known as the Codex Regius. This manuscript is the only known source today for numerous Eddic

poems detailing Old Norse mythology, cosmology, and practice. Also around this time, the

Icelandic scholar Snorri Sturluson wrote his Prose Edda (also called the Younger Edda or Snorra

Edda), which included numerous samples of skaldic and Eddic poetry as well as his own

explanation and analysis of the poems’ forms and meanings.

In the following centuries, a uniquely Icelandic form of proto-novel emerged—the

Icelandic saga. Most sagas were written in the 13th and 14th centuries, but take place during the

time of the Commonwealth and in particular the so-called Age of the Sagas (söguöld) from 930–

1030. The sagas were part-history and part-fiction, drawing on historical figures and events but

fabricating most of the plot that ties these figures and events together. Many sagas dwelt on

issues of revenge and the failings of the court system, suggesting a strong preoccupation with the

events of the Age of the Sturlungs that led to the fall of the Commonwealth in 1262.

This preoccupation is generally understood as the beginnings of a strong Icelandic sense

of nationalism, which would come to fruition with the Icelandic independence movement that

reached its peak in the 19th and early 20th centuries. As Daisy Neijmann notes in her introduction

to A History of Icelandic Literature:

During Iceland’s long struggle for independence during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, its literary heritage, which had remained a living tradition in part thanks to the fact that the language spoken by the common people had remained largely unchanged, became a powerful weapon, testimony to Iceland’s cultural distinctiveness.22

This importance is perhaps best exemplified by the historical figure and Icelandic national hero

Árni Magnússon (1663–1730), who is primarily notable for assembling the Arnamagnæan

Manuscript Collection. This collection is the most extensive collection of Icelandic manuscripts,                                                                                                                22 Daisy Neijmann, ed., A History of Icelandic Literature (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), x.

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including the Codex Regius and many other ancient vellum manuscripts of the Eddas and

Icelandic sagas. The collection was held at the University of Copenhagen, where Árni first

studied and then worked as a scholar.23 Prior to Iceland’s declaration of independence in 1944,

the people of Iceland began petitioning that the collection be moved to Iceland. In 1965, the

Danish parliament finally conceded that the Arnamagnæan Manuscript Collection constituted

Icelandic cultural property belonging to the nation of Iceland, and the decision to move the

collection to the University of Iceland was ratified in 1971. As of 1997, the full collection has

been relocated to the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies (Stofnun Árna Magnússonar

í íslenskum fræðum) in Reykjavík, Iceland.

Although the Eddas and sagas hold such incredible national importance, the benefits of

their lasting effect on Icelandic literature have often been debated, with many modern writers

fearing that by overemphasizing the sagas, Iceland has often discredited newer works as inferior.

One prominent figure in this regard was Halldór Laxness who, in his early years, lamented the

difficulties of writing under the shadow of the sagas. However, with time, he proved the modern

Icelandic novel capable of living up to the ancient sagas. Then, in 1943, he made an attempt at

modernizing and revitalizing the saga form with his three-book novel Iceland’s Bell

(Íslandsklukkan, 1943–1946).

In its utilization of the saga form, Iceland’s Bell built its fiction around historical figures

and events from the late 17th and early 18th century, most notably with the character Arnas

Arnæus, based on Árni Magnússon, and the Copenhagen fire that caused significant damage to

the Arnamagnæan Manuscript Collection. While the sagas were written after the fall of the

                                                                                                               23 As Iceland did not have its own institutes of higher learning at the time, the Danish universities were the only opportunity for Icelanders interested in academia. Thus, most early Icelandic scholars lived and worked in Denmark and often wrote in Danish or Latin.

Schönherr 17  

Commonwealth, Iceland’s Bell was released at the same time that Iceland was finally regaining

its independence. Iceland’s Bell proved to be strongly nationalistic but also challenging,

reminding Icelanders of the long journey that had brought them to this crucial moment and

suggesting that there was still work that had to be done. As scholar Ástráður Eysteinsson puts it:

The novel itself constitutes a historical quest, aiming to prove that “being mindful of one’s history” is a crucial element in bringing about “better times,” for the novel has a not-so-hidden message for its contemporary readers, who had just achieved independence from Denmark but now had to cope with the presence of a world super power on the island.24

That world super power was the United States of America, whose military base at Keflavík

would become the dominant social issue in Iceland after World War II.

In 1940, Iceland was occupied by Britain, who subsequently handed it over to America

the following year. America established the US Naval Air Station at Keflavík, located just

southwest of Reykjavík. After the war, American forces continued to occupy the Keflavík base

and even pressured the Icelandic government to lease three military bases in Iceland for the next

99 years, though the Icelandic government denied their requests. Sigurður A. Magnússon writes

in his essay “Iceland and the American Presence” that there is a “relative inability of foreigners

to see the Keflavík issue in the context of Iceland’s long struggle for independence, and not

merely as a link in the chain of NATO defense.”25

The Keflavík base brought with it American money and American culture, which

ultimately prompted a rapid process of sudden modernization and urbanization in Iceland. With

an influx of American dollars, the economy experienced a tremendous boom. Furthermore, the

                                                                                                               24 Ástráður Eysteinsson, “Icelandic Prose Literature, 1940-1980,” in A History of Icelandic Literature, ed. Daisy Neijmann (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 405. 25 Sigurður A. Magnússon. “Iceland and the American Presence.” Queen’s Quarterly 85, no.1 (1978): 79. This article is most likely one of the best summaries of the base issue written explicitly for foreigners.

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American troops brought with them American culture, particularly through the establishment of

a military-run television station in 1950, which was soon broadcast to approximately three-

fourths of the population. It would not be until 1966 when RÚV (Ríkisútvarpið, the Icelandic

National Broadcasting Service) would finally premiere the first Icelandic television channel,

Sjónvarpið. Even after the establishment of RÚV, the cultural influence of American television

remained a hot point for Icelanders. Sigurður notes:

Three years after Icelandic television had started, a sociological survey conducted among school children in the ten to twelve age bracket had shown an alarming trend. The children in Keflavík … knew next to nothing about their own society, but a great deal about American society and leading American personalities.26

Just years after achieving independence, Icelanders began to fear the new threat of

Americanization which loomed in the post-war years.

Although the Keflavík base issue was dealt to some extent by Laxness in his 1948 novel

The Atom Station (Atómstöðin), it would ultimately flourish amidst a younger generation of

writers who were born and raised in Reykjavík during the post-war years and grew up listening

to American rock music and watching American films and television shows. This particular

generation of writers developed a genre of sorts that Ástráður Eysteinsson and Úlfhildur

Dagsdóttir have dubbed the “urban epic” based on its focus on Reykjavík and the issues of

modernization, urbanization, and Americanization.27 It should be noted that Friðrik Þór

Friðriksson also grew up as part of this generation, and has often relied on urban epic novelists as

scriptwriters for his films, most notably Einar Kárason and Einar Már Guðmundsson, who have

worked with Friðrik Þór on three film scripts each. Additionally, Friðrik Þór’s film Niceland

                                                                                                               26 Ibid, 81-82. 27 Ástráður Eysteinsson and Úlfhildur Dagsdóttir, “Icelandic Prose Literature, 1980-2000,” in A History of Icelandic Literature, ed. Daisy Neijmann (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 459.

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(2004) was scripted by another urban epic novelist, Huldar Breiðfjörð, meaning that seven of

Friðrik Þór’s nine feature films were scripted by urban epic novelists.28

For these newer novelists, Laxness ironically became just as daunting a shadow over

Icelandic literature as the sagas had been for Laxness, with the new generation declaring its own

difficulties in living up to the national tendency to glorify Laxness’ works. This is played off

comically in works like Hallgrímur Helgason’s novel 101 Reykjavík, where the protagonist

complains that Icelanders should not swear using the American phrase “Jesus Christ,” and

recommends using “Halldór Laxness” instead.29 A comedic mocking of Laxness also appears in

a scene in both the novel Angels of the Universe and its filmic adaptation. Páll sits outside his

parents’ house, drinking a bottle of wine and reading a Playboy. When his father shows up and

asks him if he is going to get a job, Páll replies that he is thinking of becoming an author. His

father responds, “An author, you? … I could just imagine Halldór Laxness sitting on the steps of

his house reading a porno magazine.” Páll shoots back, “Laxness … Who’s that?”30 The

implication is clear: Páll, who within the narrative is supposed to be the author of this text, is no

Laxness, but that does not mean his story is less valid.

This attempt to define oneself against the narrative tradition is evident in another

contemporary critic of the sagas: Friðrik Þór Friðriksson. Before he had established himself

internationally with Children of Nature (Börn náttúrunnar, 1991) or even domestically with the

punk rock documentary Rock in Reykjavík (Rokk í Reykjavík, 1982), Friðrik Þór created a short

film “adaptation” of Iceland’s treasured literary classic Brennu-Njáls saga (late 13th century),

                                                                                                               28 See the filmography of Friðrik Þór Friðriksson provided at the end of this essay, where I have included the scriptwriters for each film. 29 Hallgrímur Helgason, 101 Reykajík, trans. Brian FitzGibbon (New York: Scribner, 2002), 51. 30 Einar Már Guðmundsson, Angels of the Universe, trans. Bernard Scudder (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 109.

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which translates to “Burning-Njál’s saga” and is frequently referred to in Iceland and abroad as

simply Njáls saga. If the film shows little resemblance to the saga in terms of narrative, it is at

least a very faithful interpretation of the saga’s title, as the film consists of nothing more than

footage of Friðrik Þór setting fire to a copy of Njáls saga and watching it burn down to ash for

approximately eighteen minutes.

Brennu-Njáls saga shows a clear rejection of the saga tradition, and was considered so

blasphemous that many Icelanders still have not forgiven him for it. However, it is important to

remember two things in considering this film. First, even though it does so in a radical and

controversial way, Friðrik Þór’s Brennu-Njáls saga is nonetheless still engaged in an explicit

dialogue with Iceland’s literary heritage. In fact, it is significant that he feels a need to position

himself against the sagas even though he works in the entirely different medium of film. This

fact is, in and of itself, a testament to the lasting cultural influence of the sagas on all Icelandic

arts, not just literature.31

Secondly, it might be imprudent to hold Friðrik Þór too staunchly to the sentiments

expressed in Brennu-Njáls saga, as his work would evolve considerably as the years passed.

Brennu-Njáls saga was, in fact, only his second work, his first being the short Nomina Sunt

Odiosa (1975), which intercut footage of a high school graduation with assembly line footage of

Coke bottles being filled and capped. This cynical approach to culture would find its place in his

full-length documentary Rock in Reykjavík (Rokk í Reykjavík, 1982) and even to some extent in

his first feature film White Whales (Skytturnar, lit. “Sharpshooters,” 1987). However, by the time

                                                                                                               31 The involvement of the punk rock band Þeyr in producing the soundtrack to Brennu-Njáls saga might also testify to the ways in which Icelandic music has also entered into dialogue with Iceland’s literary heritage, a topic deserving a scholastic treatment in its own right.

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of Children of Nature in 1991, Friðrik Þór had already dropped this overt cynicism in favor of a

directorial style far more befitting European art house theaters.

Therefore, it might be beneficial to take a more nuanced approach to Friðrik Þór

Friðriksson’s relationship with Iceland’s literary heritage. It is possible that he, like Laxness,

would later take a more nuanced stance in his opinion of the sagas.

SECTION IV: ICELANDIC NATIONAL IDENTITY IN ANGELS OF THE UNIVERSE

Angels of the Universe begins with a title sequence that features the leitmotif of Hilmar

Örn Hilmarsson’s haunting score, and in which the film’s titles are superimposed over an aerial

shot of clouds and mist moving across the moss-green and rock-strewn hills, mountains, and

fields of the unspoiled Icelandic countryside. Friðrik Þór hides a dissolve when a large cloud fills

the screen with white, which fades away to reveal an aerial shot of a suburban neighborhood in

Reykjavík. The camera moves downwards, focusing on a house with a blue roof and a tree out

front. In later establishing shots, we will come to recognize this as the home of Páll’s family.

This shot dissolves into a medium shot of Páll’s mother who sits in a chair occupying the right

side of the screen. She is holding a cup of coffee and gazing at a photograph of a young child,

perhaps Páll, on the shelf beside her. The camera slowly zooms towards the photograph, and then

another dissolve reveals the photo in close-up. In a voiceover narration, Páll tells us that his

mother had a dream of four horses while she was pregnant with him.

The shot of the photograph dissolves into a long shot of four horses running through the

ocean, at times appearing to almost run across the surface. It cuts to another long shot, this time

the horses are trotting along the beach, but one horse begins to waver and falter. His legs give

way under his own weight, and he falls down onto his back, kicking wildly in the air. Cymbals

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and drums accompany its fall, clashing harshly with Hilmar Örn’s soft melody. This drumming

carries over into the next shot—Páll is playing his drum set in his room.

Páll silences the cymbal with his hand, and at this moment his friend Rögnvaldur32 begins

to tell Páll’s sister about Egill Skallagrímsson, the eponymous anti-hero of one of Iceland’s most

treasured sagas, Egils saga. “He started drinking when he was three years old, wrote his first

poem when he was six, and killed a man when he was eight after losing to him at football.”

Although we do not know it yet within the film, this tension between the self-destructive, poetic,

and violent sides of Egill will play out in Páll’s character as well as he struggles with

schizophrenia.

If anyone might doubt this connection, the film gives us another piece of evidence early

on in the narrative. Like the appeal to stories of Egill, this moment again figures the supporting

character of Rögnvaldur, who is linked with the sagas and traditional Icelandic beliefs both in the

novel and the film not only in his interest in the ancient literary works, but also in his almost

supernatural prescience.33 In this scene, Rögnvaldur and Páll are walking down the street.

Rögnvaldur says to Páll, “You’ve got it all worked out. You know exactly what you want,” to

which Páll responds, “I want to capture the wildness, the chaos and landscape inside us, the

volcanoes in our souls, the earthquakes when we make love.” Páll’s remarks emphasize his own

poetic, artistic side, which Rögnvaldur then complicates with a moment of prescience, “You’ll

end up being a famous painter. Crazy, but famous, like Van Gogh or Gauguin.” This exchange

again suggests Páll’s tension between his poetic side and his self-destructive, violent side that

                                                                                                               32 Anglicized as “Rognvald” in English translations. 33 Although the film certainly references this aspect of Rögnvaldur, it might be expressed most succinctly in this passage from the novel: “I have sometimes wondered whether Rognvald was a soothsayer, as it used to be called, whether he could see into the future and knew for whom the bell of the universe tolls. At least, he seemed to hear his own bell tolling.” Guðmundson, 87.

Schönherr 23  

make up his schizophrenia as it will later show itself, while at the same time contextualizing it

within the old saga motif of foreshadowing through supernatural powers of prediction.

However, I think it is important to also note the landscape references in Páll’s lines,

which are crucial as we finally return to that opening title sequence—the aerial landscape shot

that, hiding its transition a bit behind the whiteness of the clouds, dissolves into an aerial shot of

Reykjavík and, in particular, Páll’s childhood home. The use of the dissolve is significant, as the

film tends to use this transition to indicate a temporal shift while maintaining spatial unity. In

fact, it most frequently appears as a transition between shots filmed from the exact same angle

and location, where the only changes are the placement and actions of the characters. For

example, in a scene when Páll throws a fit in the hallway at the psychiatric hospital, dissolves

take us from five identically composed long shots: 1. the struggle with the warden, 2. the guards

tearing Páll away and holding him down, 3. the injection of a sedative, 4. picking the sedated

Páll up to carry him away, and finally 5. the empty hallway. Therefore, the dissolve during the

opening shot might indicate a kind of displacement not of space (landscape to cityscape), but

rather of time (the past to the present). In this sense, the opening shot situates the cityscape of

Angels of the Universe within a greater historical context extending back to the landscapes of the

sagas, just as the reference to Egill places the character of Páll within a long line of Icelandic

anti-heroes.

This historical connection to older Icelandic stories also appears in the scene mentioned

earlier, where Páll’s psychiatrist Brynjólfur comments, “I think schizophrenia is deeply rooted in

the Icelandic character. Look at all that belief in elves and spirits, ghosts and trolls. It’s evidence

of a split personality.”34 Of course, what he is referring to are old folktales of various creatures,

                                                                                                               34 Englar alheimsins.

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some good and some bad, that are inherently tied to notions of the Icelandic landscape. Perhaps

the most culturally significant of these mythic figures are the elves (álfar), also known as the

hidden-folk (huldufólk), which are the subject of some often-misrepresented statistics about

Iceland suggesting that the majority of the population believes in elves.

The most popular statistics cited state that either 70% or 54.4% of the population believe

in elves. The first statistic is particularly misused, coming from Pétur Pétursson’s 1995 survey

not of the general Icelandic populace, but specifically Icelanders “with a confirmed interest in

mysticism and unconventional medicine.”35 The other statistic is correctly cited, but its reliability

is suspect, having been conducted as an informal opinion poll in 1998 by the newspaper

Dagblaðið Vísir which only gave the options of answering yes or no. Thus, the far more reliable

statistic comes from a detailed survey conducted in 1975 by psychologist Erlendur Haraldsson.

According to Erlendur’s survey, only 7% of the Icelanders polled said the existence of

elves was “certain,” while 15% said “likely,” 33% “possible,” 18% “unlikely,” 10%

“impossible,” and finally 17% reporting no opinion.36 This survey gained additional validity in

2007, when Terry Gunnel, University of Iceland’s professor of Folkloristics, conducted a similar

survey that turned up similar results.37 In an interview with the English-language cultural

newspaper Reykjavík Grapevine, Gunnel called the belief in elves “a kind of cultural vocabulary;

a way of talking about experiences that happen to all of us [Icelanders].”38

Ultimately, the discrepancy between these statistics suggests, as Brynjólfur puts it in

Angels of the Universe, “a split-personality” in two different ways. In one sense, there is the                                                                                                                35 Valdimar Tr. Hafstein, “The Elves’ Point of View: Cultural identity in contemporary Icelandic elf tradition” Fabula 41 (2000): 88. 36 Ibid, 87-88. 37 Sveinn Birkir Björnsson, “Elves in Cultural Vocabulary,” Reykjavík Grapevine, October 6, 2007, http://www.grapevine.is/Home/ReadArticle/Elves-in-Cultural-Vocabulary 38 Ibid.

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more obvious connotation given in the film that there is a tension in Iceland between rational,

modern thought and irrational, traditional beliefs. Gunnel notes:

You won’t find Icelanders saying ‘I believe in elves’, but here is a test I often tell foreign journalists to try when they come here. Ask an Icelander this question: ‘imagine you are going to build a hot tub in your garden. The problem is that there is a big rock where you want to put the hot tub and you need to blow it up to put in the tub. Then some one tells you, ‘don’t, that is an elf rock’, will you blow it up?’ And this is where people hesitate.39

The idea of hesitation is key to our understanding of Icelandic storytelling traditions as magical

realist, for, according to the theorist Tzvetan Todorov, hesitation is the key defining factor of

what he calls “the fantastic”:

[T]he text must oblige the reader to consider the world of the characters as a world of living persons and to hesitate between a natural and a supernatural explanation of the events described.40

Since there is a clear sense of hesitation in Icelandic culture when it comes to the existence of

elves, it is easy to see how these folktales and beliefs can be seen as quintessentially magical

realist. Within Icelandic thought, there seems to be a stronger hesitation between the rational,

modern view of the world and traditional, irrational beliefs with regards to folklore.

This is reinforced by another “split personality” evident in the discrepancy between the

statistics most popular among Icelanders in understanding their own culture (those from the 1975

and 2007 surveys) and the statistics most often cited in travel guides and other material directed

towards tourists and even foreign journalists, which give the figures of 54.4% or 70%. In other

words, Iceland has continued to market itself abroad by removing the inherent sense of hesitation

and instead promoting the supernatural explanation. This continues to reinforce foreign notions

that Iceland is a particularly magical, supernatural land, a marketing tactic that has even extended                                                                                                                39 Ibid. 40 Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, trans. Richard Howard (Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1970), 33.

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to its international celebrities, most notably the singer Björk, who is “quite well known for her

natural/elfish/childlike image.”41 A similar marketing tactic has accompanied the band Sigur

Rós, and in particular its frontman Jónsi.

In a similar way, the international film community has largely accepted the idea that

Friðrik Þór’s films are magical or supernatural affairs, an assertion that Friðrik Þór has reacted

against, saying:

What foreigners find supernatural, I consider natural. I don’t agree that my films tend towards the supernatural. Mostly, events are very natural. My movies are quite realistic. … The supernatural is mostly things happening about us. One tries to highlight it a bit, but I never overdo it.42

This quote suggests the extent to which the supernatural idea of “elves and spirits, ghosts and

trolls” is culturally inscribed into ideas of the Icelandic landscape. The supernatural can be

perceived as “natural” in that it is an intrinsic part of the Icelandic folkloric understanding of

nature itself. To put it another way, foreign audiences frequently see only the “magical” part of

Friðrik Þór’s magical realism. It is also important to note that although Friðrik Þór’s feature films

often contain elements of the supernatural, his documentaries never tread this line even when

such elements might be appropriate, suggesting there is also a cultural difference between what

Icelanders and foreigners are willing to accept as realistic in fiction.

Within Icelandic literature, the line between the supernatural and natural has often been

blurred, with its furthest roots extending to the mythology espoused in the Eddas. Likewise, the

sagas are frequently described by scholars as “magical realist,” in particular with regards to the

legendary sagas (fornaldarsögur), which are highly populated with trolls, dwarves, and black                                                                                                                41 Katla Kjartansdóttir, “Remote, Rough and Romantic: Contemporary Images of Iceland in Visual, Oral and Textual Narrations,” in Images of the North: Histories - Identities – Ideas, ed. Sverrir Jakobsson (Amsterdam: Rodolpi, 2009), 276. 42 “Making of Angels of the Universe,” a 25-minute documentary included with the 2008 DVD release of Englar alheimsins by the Icelandic company Sena.

Schönherr 27  

magicians.43 Even the considerably more “realistic” sagas of the Icelanders (Íslendingasögur)

such as Njáls saga and Egils saga contain supernatural elements such as the soothsayers.

Notably, in Hrafnkels saga, a saga considered so realistic by Icelanders that it has frequently

been taken as unassailable historical truth, there are still moments that suggest the supernatural.

While the saga’s protagonist, Hrafnkell Freysgóði,44 rejects the Old Norse paganism in favor of a

purely secular worldview, the events leading up to this decision are highly tinged with

incredulous events that reinforce a pagan sense of fatalism. For example, Sigurður Nordal notes

how Hrafnkel’s shepherd Einar must ride the forbidden stallion Freyfaxi (the name literally

meaning “Freyr’s black stallion”), therefore assuring his own death, when all the other horses

behave erratically, running away from him as if unaccustomed to humans while Freyfaxi remains

“as still as if he had been rooted to the spot.”45

In this regard, it is also highly significant that the urban epic so closely tied to Friðrik

Þór’s work is said to be indebted to both neorealism and magical realism. For example, both the

novel Angels of the Universe and its film adaptation are curiously narrated by Páll after his death,

and as noted earlier, show possible supernatural elements through Rögnvaldur’s moments of

prescience. Also significant is the dream of the four horses that Páll’s mother has, a prophetic

dream foretelling Páll’s troubles. Perhaps the magical realism of Angels of the Universe is put

most poetically at the end of the film. After Páll’s death, his mother remembers her dream of the

four horses when she picks up one of the books in his apartment, Collected Poems by Sigfús

Daðason, and reads theses lines: “Dreams: at the bottom of them we perceive the merciless                                                                                                                43 See, for example, Hans Jacob Orning, “The magical reality of the late Middle Ages: Exploring the world of the fornaldarsögur,” Scandinavian Journal Of History 35, no. 1 (March 2010): 3-20. 44 The appellation “Freyr’s goði” indicates not only a political role (goði meaning “chieftain”) but also a religious role (goði meaning “priest”). 45 Sigurður Nordal, “Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða: A Study,” trans. R. George Thomas (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1958), 25.

Schönherr 28  

onslaught of reality.”46 On one level, this quote can refer directly to the mother’s dream, which

foreshadows the reality of Páll’s schizophrenia. At a deeper level, it can refer to the

schizophrenia itself as the “dream” that, despite its apparent separation from reality, is able to

reveal something profound about the world. In other words, by virtue of its apparent irrationality,

insanity is able to reveal something to the world and to human existence that has been lost or

forgotten by modern attempts to rationalize all of existence.

The film extends this tension between rationality and irrationality to the cinematography

as well, with the most notable shot occurring during one of Páll’s sudden mood swings. The

sequence leading to this shot begins with Páll and his friend Rögnvaldur in a diner. Páll sits in

his booth, sulking about the fact that Dagný stood him up on their date to go see Chaplin’s

Modern Times. Rögnvaldur gives Páll some advice, then presents him with a switchblade,

saying, “Egill Skallgrímsson wouldn’t have had any trouble making it bloody.” Rögnvaldur then

squirts ketchup all over Páll’s fries, to which Páll responds by rising from his seat and shouting,

“Waiter. Someone’s ejaculated all over my food!” He rushes out of the diner and, walking

passed the windows of a fancy restaurant, spies Dagný inside. When he pushes his way past the

line waiting to get in, he is told by the bouncer that he should, “Wait in line like everybody else.”

Páll screams in English, “But I’m not like everybody else!” and pulls the switchblade on the

bouncer. Police suddenly appear, and Páll runs off, leading to the shot in question. In an extreme

long shot, Páll runs from around the corner of a building and then, the camera panning along

with him, walks out onto the surface of Tjörnin, a small lake in downtown Reykjavík. The police

officers, however, must wade through the water in order to reach Páll, who now stands stoically

on the water’s surface.

                                                                                                               46 Englar alheimsins.

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Although the events leading up to the moment when Páll walks on water are identical to

the novel, the culmination—walking on water—is conveyed far more realistically in the novel.

Páll does “walk on water” in a sense, but only because in the novel, the lake is frozen over:

I could feel them [the policemen] at my heels like sharks and when I reached the lake I leapt out on to the ice. When one of the policemen leapt on to the ice after me, it broke and we both flailed around in the cold and muddy water.47

Part of the reason for the change may be so that Friðrik Þór could recapture something that was

lost in the adaptation to film. Einar Guðmundsson’s narrative style is “characterized by a mixture

of traditional storytelling and postmodern fragmentation.”48 The novel’s extremely non-linear

and fluid sense of time, where causality seems highly subjective, is difficult to convey within the

confines of the film medium’s tendency towards temporal linearity. In a way, Friðrik Þór has

traded one magical realist element for another.

Another shot also plays with the tension between the supernatural and the real. In a

tightly-framed shot, Páll appears to levitate slightly above his bed. The camera rotates and we

realize he is, in fact, standing next to his bed, which he has propped against the wall. At this

moment, Páll proceeds to move the bed around, shoving it hard against the wall and screaming.

Unlike the moment in which Páll walks on water, this scene turns out to be entirely “real.” It is

our mistaken perception that has made reality appear in some way supernatural. There is an

uneasiness here that calls into question what is truly real and what is not. The scene in which Páll

walks on water begins fairly realistically, but the moment he steps out onto the surface of the

water, the reality is suddenly disrupted. Conversely, the scene with the bed opens with the

apparently supernatural event of levitation, but then through camera movement, realism is

                                                                                                               47 Guðmundsson, 100. 48 Eysteinsson and Dagsdóttir, 260.

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reinstated. Again and again, the film challenges us to reconsider what is reality and what is

insanity.

Ultimately, Friðrik Þór’s work serves to translate the magical realism of Icelandic

literature into the visual medium of film. Despite the fact that his film Angels of the Universe

seems to go out of its way “in effacing the novel’s period settings in favor of a more abstract and

universal one,”49 the film still works within a particular magical realist mode of narration that

clearly resonated with local audiences. While the film’s attempts to challenge notions of reality

and madness can also be appreciated by foreign audiences, this universal theme is given regional

specificity by placing Páll within the Icelandic cultural contexts.

CONCLUSION: THE NATIONALIST FUNCTION OF ICELANDIC MAGICAL REALISM

In Angels of the Universe, Páll’s schizophrenia is portrayed as highly representative of

Icelandic national identity, which is caught in the historical moment of rapid modernization. Of

course, my use of the term “magical realist” throughout this thesis, instead of Todorov’s “the

fantastic” or some other term, is very deliberate, as it not only implies a deeper connection

between film and literature, but also contains the connotation of post-colonial discourse.

Although Iceland is in many ways different from South America, where the term magical

realism was first applied, it is still important to recognize Iceland’s long history of struggle as a

Danish colony, as well as its subsequent relations with the occupying American forces. As in

other national versions of magical realism, the Icelandic magical realism can be seen as strongly

nationalistic precisely in the way that it reasserts traditional beliefs and folklore as an essential

part of its modern nationalism. Throughout its history, Iceland asserts its folklore as a means of

                                                                                                               49 Norðfjörð, Icelandic Cinema, 272.

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differentiating itself from the colonizing or occupying foreign powers that threaten, or are

believed to threaten, not only Icelandic independence and sovereignty, but also the Icelandic

nationality, language, and culture.

Therefore, modern Icelandic novels and Icelandic cinema share something with the

robust literary heritage which came before them in that the modern arts continue to define

Iceland through its history, its traditions, and its folklore. Even in a film such as Angels of the

Universe, where folkloric creatures are never shown, the traditional magical realist mode is

nonetheless reapplied into a modern context—it is in those mad, poetic dreams where one finds

the true reality, not in the sane, modern reality which belongs to the foreign occupiers. In modern

Iceland literature and cinema, the presence of a hesitation between the rational and the irrational

remains prominent. Ultimately, novels and films like Angels of the Universe suggest an

unwillingness to either fully reject or embrace the traditional beliefs that persisted in Iceland for

so many years.

In both the novel and the film, Páll’s birth and death days link his life with Iceland’s

involvement with the Cold War, which began with NATO and ended with the fall of the Berlin

Wall. This is dealt with most explicitly during a discussion between Páll and his psychologist

Brynjólfur:

PÁLL: NATO made me crazy. I was born on the day Iceland joined NATO. Every year the communists protest against my birthday.

BRYNJÓLFUR: Isn’t that going a bit far? PÁLL: No, it’s all the same thing. The mental hospital and society. BRYNJÓLFUR: What? PÁLL: Just read the NATO treaty. BRYNJÓLFUR: I never did get around to doing that. PÁLL: No, you lot can never be bothered to think about such things. We are given

medication to keep us under control: big doses to counteract the symptoms of insanity, with high protein binding and a strong effect on signals to the brain. But societies use weapons to defend themselves against all the madness in the world. So the world’s a madman in microcosm, deranged, a

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split personality with chronic psychosis. That’s why I say that when Iceland joined NATO, the chaos inside my head was ratified by this country’s government.50

At a global level, Páll is clearly referring to the madness of a world in which war and strife seem

to be eternal constants, but Páll is also alluding at a national level to the U.S. military base at

Keflavík, which was ratified as part of the founding of NATO, and which is the primary point of

contention during the communist protests every year. The base was under heavy operation during

the Cold War, but the 1990s saw a decrease in the American military presence at Keflavík,

particularly after the monumental occasion of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the base was

officially closed on 8 September 2006. However, the fall of the Berlin Wall did not completely

end the base issue. Páll, watching a news report about the Berlin Wall shortly before its fall and

his death, observes: “This wall might fall down one day, but the walls between me and the world

will never fall down. They stand unbreachable and firm, even though no one can see them with

the naked eye.”51 Indeed, just as Páll lives on in a sense by speaking to us from beyond the grave,

the cultural crisis of the post-war period also continues on, unable to fully resolve itself. This can

be seen in the continued cultural and political importance of the Keflavík base, even after

American forces officially closed the base,52 but also in the way that Iceland continues to define

itself as something separate, isolated, and pure.

Therefore, Páll’s madness, his struggle between the rational and the irrational, acts as a

metaphor for Iceland’s continued struggle against Americanization, its hesitation between

traditional national identity and modern American culture. In Angels of the Universe, we see an

                                                                                                               50 Englar alheimsins. 51 Ibid. 52 For example, see Paul Nikolov, “Private Army Sets Sights on Iceland,” The Reykjavík Grapevine, March 18, 2010, http://www.grapevine.is/News/ReadArticle/Private-Army-Sets-Sights-on-Iceland.

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explicit use of the magical realist mode of storytelling so central to the narrative arts in Iceland,

which suggests that this struggle against modernity has been and will continue to be inscribed as

a quintessential aspect of the Icelandic national character.

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FILMOGRAPHY OF FRIÐRIK ÞÓR FRIÐRIKSSON

YEAR ORIGINAL TITLE ENGLISH TITLE SCRIPTWRITER(S) 1975 Nomina Sunt Odiosa (S) Nomina Sunt Odiosa N/A

1980 Brennu-Njálssaga (S) N/A N/A

1981 Eldsmaðurinn (S) The Blacksmith N/A

1982 Rokk í Reykjavík (D) Rock in Reykjavík N/A

1984 Kúrekar norðursins (D) Icelandic Cowboys N/A

1985 Hringurinn (S) N/A N/A

1987 Skytturnar White Whales Einar Kárason

1989 Flugþrá (TV) N/A Friðrik Þór Friðriksson

1991 Börn náttúrunnar Children of Nature Friðrik Þór Friðriksson & Einar Már Guðmundsson

1994 Bíodagur Movie Days Friðrik Þór Friðriksson & Einar Már Guðmundsson

1995 Á köldum klaka Cold Fever Friðrik Þór Friðriksson & Jim Stark

1996 Djöflaeyjan Devil’s Island Einar Kárason

2000 Englar alheimsins Angels of the Universe Einar Már Guðmundsson

2002 Fálkar Falcons Friðrik Þór Friðriksson & Einar Kárason

2002 On Top Down Under — Friðrik Þór Friðriksson

2004 Niceland — Huldar Breiðfjörð

2009 Sólskinsdrengurinn (D) The Sunshine Boy a.k.a. Friðrik Þór Friðriksson A Mother’s Courage

2010 Mamma Gógó Mamma Gogo Friðrik Þór Friðriksson

(S) signifies a short film. (D) signified a documentary. (TV) indicates a made-for-TV movie.