Introduction to the works of Sjón
“Sjón, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Reader of Sjón. Her current mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no Reader has gone before.” Apologies to the writers of Star Trek, in this, its 50th anniversary year, but this is what reading the novels of Icelandic author Sjón is like. The first American edition of Sjón’s novel Moonstone – The Boy Who Never Was, was published earlier this year. While I read it, I often wondered just how it is possible for someone to express so precisely, in such visually compelling language, such foreignness, not only to readers not from Iceland, but also probably for readers from Iceland.
It is in English, capably and truthfully translated by Victoria Cribb, but at the same time it is a journey into places, minds, characters, mores and subjects that I had never before encountered in a novel.
The Iceland where the author lives has an alienness about it in his novels, a strangeness that is hard to comprehend. It is as though he turns the harsh Icelandic landscape and the reputedly tough Icelandic people into creations far more otherworldly than even their Viking ancestors may have been. I prefer, like journalist Charlie Rose, to read new novels “cold” without having studied up on the authors’ writing styles or œuvres beforehand. That way I am largely unbiased. But with Sjón, after having struggled for literally years with one of his earlier novels, The Whispering Muse, I had to resort to reading some interviews with him to make sense of his very short novels or novellas.
AN ASIDE: THE ICELANDIC SAGAS
Sjón – like all Icelanders – is more than familiar with the Icelandic Sagas, or The Sagas of Icelanders (Icelandic: Íslendingasögur), also known as family sagas, prose narratives that also contain long poems. They are based on historical events that took place in Iceland in the 9th, 10th, and early 11th centuries, during the so-called Saga Age.
They are the best-known specimens of Icelandic literature, focused on history, especially genealogical and family history.They reflect the struggle and conflict that arose within the societies of the early generations of Icelandic settlers.
Sometimes Sjón’s writing style has parallels with those sagas, when he uses, as he put it, “cut to the bone” language, but also with the metaphors he uses.
The sagas are about kings, princesses, battles, witches, curses, feuds, voyages, dreams, predictions, poetry, singing, declamations, romance, always the sea, and tales within tales. But occasionally, they refer, plainly, to a town, like “Foss” which is still, after centuries, just a little town in southern Iceland. There is the exoticism of the events and characters in the sagas, and the occasional fantastical element, and then there are the heartfelt emotions, like the connection with the sea, which, still today, ring true; The sea-flood’s “swartness” and “burden” are still with Icelanders.
Here are a few extracts:
“Now when it was told Ketilrid that they had been driven out to sea and were dead, she fell into a faint; but when she came to herself she sang this stave as she looked out toward the sea:
‘No more now may my eyes
meet the sea ungreeting,
Since the day my speech-friend
Sank below the seabanks.
I loathe the sea-flood’s swartness
And the swallowing billow,
Full sore for me the sorrow
Born in sea-wave’s burden.’
(From: The Saga of Viglund the Fair)
Sjón explains:
”One thing I will not do is write a thick book. I have always admired stories that cut to the bone without much ceremony. My stories are really boiled-down epics—they usually take place in times of great upheaval, and they always acknowledge the size of the world even though they happen to take place on the smallest of stages. So that is what I will continue to offer my readers. I think of the novel as a whale you can put in your pocket or handbag. In some cases, it is a blue whale.” (Sjón quoted in Asymptotejournal)
The art of very short novels
That is the best explanation of Sjón’s novels, at least these three; Moonstone – The Boy Who Never Was, The Whispering Muse and The Blue Fox. They are short – The Whispering Muse is 141 pages.; Moonstone – The Boy Who Never Was is 143; and The Blue Fox is 115. The first part of The Blue Fox consists of some 30 pages with only 1 or short paragraphs on each page. Not only the paragraphs are brief, but also the sentences. The novels are small in size and dense with meaning.
Iceland, where all three novels are set, is an island so small that you can drive around the outer edge in about 11 hours, depending on the traffic. There are not many people (332,529 in 2016) and there has never been many people. Like bugs under a microscope, the contained and isolated, but heavily scrutinized nature of the islanders has resulted in some pretty extraordinary accomplishments, such as being the 3rd happiest nation in the world in 2016, the 13th most-developed country in the world, and having outstanding artists, such as Sjón, Björk, Of Monsters and Men (one of my favourite bands); Sigur Rós, Mezzoforte (another favourite since the ‘80s), Baltasar Kormákur (director of 101 Reykjavik, my favourite film director after Aki Kaurismaki) etc., etc.
Of these luminaries, Sjón stands out for me as someone who has captured the essence of Iceland. But more than that, he creates an odd, alternate view of it. His novels are more than just about Iceland, they create a wonder, a puzzlement about the world and its meaning by injecting an unexpected element of strangeness into the everyday. And his “everyday”, the “normal” settings, are described in such a way that they are tantalizingly exotic and desirable, from a little, perky blue-grey-furred vixen hiding out in the snow (The Blue Fox), to the girl dressed in black like a vampire on a motorcycle (Moonstone – The Boy Who Never Was), to bales of off-white papers moving on a cable across the water, like big flakes of snow – with a dead hand hanging out of it (The Whispering Muse).
Do not misjudge Sjón’s skinny novels for being simplistic. His use of language is economical, but every word is packed with meaning, and while you are cruising through the “normal” parts, and you think you understand it as just an ordinary plot, you will soon, without warning, be dropped into that alternate universe of exceeding strangeness to which I have referred. And it is literally in the space of a paragraph: one page – normal, next page, surreal, just like in the Icelandic sagas.
The Blue Fox
It is rare to find an arctic fox described as beautifully as in The Blue Fox. It is about the Archdeacon of a small village, “Baldur Skugasson”, who shoots and kills the fox, and pharmacist and botanist “Fridrik Fridjónsson”, who shelters a severely traumatized – raped, tortured and apparently dumb – girl, “Hafdís Jónsdóttir” on his farm. But it is also about the just desserts for cruelty and intolerance. Again, the story is set in specific periods in Icelandic history, 1883 and 1868, and accurately – bluntly – states how Icelanders of that time handled mentally ill and retarded people: they called them “eejits” (idiots) and sent them to live on people’s farms, much to the chagrin of the farmers. (pp. 63 – 64)
The clue of the relationship between Baldur and Fridrik is in the names, the patronymic naming system: In Icelandic, a girl child’s surname or maiden name, is the first name of her father, with “dóttir” (daughter) added on. So Hafdis Jónsdóttir is the daughter of somebody with the first name of Jón. Same for boys, with “son” (son) added on. So, somebody called Fridjónsson is the son of Fridjón. So the clue there is the common name “Jón”. But “John’s daughter” in Icelandic means no more than “Icelander’s daughter” – it’s like “Jane Doe”.
Fridrik finds the mistreated and apparently retarded girl tied up in a chicken coop in the village:
“The figure in the corner became aware of him. She looked up and met his eyes; she smiled and her smile doubled the happiness of the world. But before he could nod in return, the smile vanished from her face and was at once replaced by a mask so tragic that Fredrik burst into tears.” (p. 58)
The girl, “Abba” – called that because that was the only word she initially spoke – comforts him and croons apparent gibberish “Furru amh-ahm, furru amh-amh”. The reader will only find out right at the end of the story that Abba/Háfdis is not retarded, but was perfectly civilized, religious, and kind, and had developed her own language. Háfdis dies, and Fredrik gives her a suitable burial ceremony, while he passes off a coffin filled with cow dung, rotten planks and a sheep’s skeleton as her corpse to the Archdeacon:
“Ghost-sun is a name given by poets to their friend the moon, and it is fitting tonight when its ashen light bathes the grove of trees that stand in the dip above the farmhouse at Brekka[…] The rowan draws shadow pictures on the snow crust; there’s a low sough in the naked boughs and the odd twig still bears a cluster of dried berries that the birds over-looked last year.” (p. 71)
He buries her and sings to her:
“A summer bird sang
on a sunny day;
Happiness led me,
O’er the airy way
My friend for to see.
The little bird sang
Of its rowan tree.” (p. 74)
And now for the weird bit…
The archdeacon, shortly after the death and burial of Abba, goes out into the snow and ice to hunt a blue fox. The fox outwits him time and again, but eventually he does shoot it. But he is caught in an avalanche and deposited in a cave and the fox, in one of those Sjón-like shifts from reality to magic – comes to life. “The vixen sprang forth onto the floor of the cave. She spun in a circle, plumped down on her rump – and began to lick herself like a house cat.” (p.96).
The vixen then proceeds to spit out the shot embedded in her from the archdeacon’s shotgun blast, and the two argue about all sorts of things, including religion and electricity. So things are getting surreal. And then the archdeacon kills the vixen again, this time with a knife. He has, in the meantime, recovered from various broken bones, and clad in the skin of the vixen, digs his way through the snow out of the cave. He pricks his ears and sees a fox in heat in the valley far below, and off he goes. The archdeacon has turned into a fox. Or he is dead, or mad, or all three? Why the terrible fate of what seems to be just a stupid hunter?
In the last brief chapter, Fredrik explains in a letter to a friend the horrendous backstory of the archdeacon and Fredrik’s beloved Abba. Also, he explains what “Furru amh-ahm” means: “Furru” means person, “ahmn-ahmn” means beautiful, good. So even in her traumatized state, tied up like a farm animal, Abba had comforted the wealthy, educated Fredrik, calling him a beautiful, good person. What else could he have done but love her? What else could have befallen the archdeacon but a fate from hell? I got the idea that the laughing, sly and gorgeous blue fox was Abba, taking her own revenge. Which is served cold, in this case, very cold, in the snow.
This is why Sjón is a fantastic writer – with his forceful directness and economical language come poignancy, completely unexpected twists, surrealism and mind-blowingly original ideas. Others have called him brilliant. I agree.top
About the Author
Sigurjón Birgir Sigurðsson (born 27 August 1962), known as Sjón (/ˈʃoʊn/ shohn), is an Icelandic poet, novelist, and lyricist. His pen name (meaning “sight”) is an abbreviation of his given name (Sigurjón). Sjón frequently collaborates with the singer Björk and has performed with The Sugarcubes as “Johnny Triumph”. His official website, Sjonorama, is here. His works have been translated into more than 35 languages. If you have any doubt as to his status as an established and acclaimed author – look at the lists below. He has won numerous awards including the Nordic Council Literature Prize 2005, and he was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for the song I’ve Seen It All from the film about Björk, Dancer in the Dark, for which he wrote the lyrics in collaboration with film director Lars von Trier. The song also features on Björk’s album of the film soundtrack, Selmasongs.
NOVELS:
Night of Steel (“Stálnótt”, Mál og menning, 1987)
Angel, Stovehat and Strawberries (“Engill, pípuhattur og jarðarber”, Mál og menning, 1989)
Night of the Lemon (Greyhound Press, 1993)
Made in Secret / Your Eyes Saw Me (“Augu þín sáu mig”, Mál og menning, 1994)
The Story of the Great Cap (“Sagan af húfunni fínu”, Mál og menning, 1995)
Númi and his Seven Heads (“Númi og höfuðin sjö”, Mál og menning, 2000)
With a Quivering Tear (“Með titrandi tár”, Mál og menning, 2001)
The Story of the Strange Bird (“Sagan af furðufugli”, Mál og menning, 2002)
The Blue Fox (“Skugga-Baldur”, Bjartur, 2003)
The Whispering Muse / The Splinter from Argo (“Argóarflísin”, Bjartur, 2005)
From the Mouth of the Whale / The Marvels of Twilight (“Rökkurbýsnir”, Bjartur, 2008)
Moonstone – The Boy Who Never Was (“Mánasteinn – drengurinn sem aldrei var til”, JPV/Forlagið, 2013)
POETRY:
Visions (“Sýnir”, 1978)
Madonna (1979)
Birgitta (Medúsa, 1979)
How Does One Make Love to Hands? (with Matthías Sigurður Magnússon) (“Hvernig elskar maður hendur?”, Medúsa, 1981)
The Blind Man’s Bicycle (“Reiðhjól blinda mannsins”, 1982)
The Book of Illusions (“Sjónhverfingabókin”, Medúsa, 1983)
Oh, Isn’t it Wild? (Medúsa, 1985)
obscure figures (“myrkar fígúrur”, Mál og menning, 1998)
the song of the stone collector (“söngur steinasafnarans”, Bjartur, 2007)
Collected Poems 1978–2008 (“Ljóðasafn 1978–2008”, Bjartur, 2008)
STAGE:
“Shadow Play” (“Skuggaleikur”) – a libretto based on the short story “Skyggen” by H. C. Andersen – Strengjaleikhúsið – Reykjavík 2006
“Gargoyles” (“Ufsagrýlur”) – a play – Lab Loki – Reykjavík 2010
“Tales from a Sea Journey” – a play written in collaboration with the theatre group – New International Encounter – Oslo 2011
“The Motion Demon” – a libretto based on the short stories of Stefan Grabinski – Figura Ensemble – Copenhagen 2011
“Red Waters” – a libretto co-written with Keren Ann and Barði Jóhannsson – CDN Orleans – Rouen 2011
“Folie à Deux” – a libretto in six songs created with composer Emily Hall for opera company – Mahogany Opera Group – premiered Bergen 2015
COLLABORATIONS WITH BJÖRK:
“Isobel” on the album Post (1995)”Bachelorette” on the album Homogenic (1997)
“Jóga” on the album Homogenic (1997)
“Scary,” an extra track on the original “Bachelorette” UK single (1997)
Lyrics for the songs featured in the film Dancer in the Dark and its soundtrack, Selmasongs, written in collaboration with Lars von Trier (2000)
“Oceania,” written for the opening ceremony of the 2004 Summer Olympics and featured on the album Medúlla (2004)
“Wanderlust” on the album Volta (2007)
“The Comet Song” featured in the film Moomins and the Comet Chase (2010)
“Cosmogony,” “Virus,” and “Solstice” on the album Biophilia (2011)
SEVEN CIRCUMSTANCES 