Steinn Steinarr
Encyclopedia
Steinn Steinarr was an Iceland
Iceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...

ic poet.

Many Icelanders
Icelanders
Icelanders are a Scandinavian ethnic group and a nation, native to Iceland.On 17 June 1944, when an Icelandic republic was founded the Icelanders became independent from the Danish monarchy. The language spoken is Icelandic, a North Germanic language, and Lutheranism is the predominant religion...

 regard Steinn Steinarr as their greatest poet, although he remains almost unknown outside of Iceland, due perhaps to a lack of effective translations of his poetry. In 2008, 100 years after his birth and 50 years after his death, he is beginning to gain popularity outside of Iceland. Not only is he wildly popular among Iceland
Iceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...

’s youth, but international interest in his poetry is growing.

Early life

Steinn Steinarr was nicknamed Alli (a standard nickname for Aðalsteinn). His farm laborer parents in northwest Iceland (sveittabæ) were so poor that the local authorities divided up the family. The three oldest children were shipped off for adoption, during which relocation the oldest died. The rest of the family was escorted off to a west coast farm. Before long Alli was the only family member left on the farm, where he languished in misery. In all probability the world would never have heard from him again had it not been for an elderly governess three years later. Her name was Kristin Tómasdóttir. She discovered the boy by accident and was so shocked to witness the abuse he had suffered that she adopted him on the spot.

It soon dawned on Kristín, however, that Alli was no ordinary child, but a rebellious, undisciplined loner who loved to ponder and read but detested physical work. His attitude soon earned him the wrath of the local kids who wasted no time before ganging up on him. As always he was quick to wield the most powerful weapon in his arsenal: nasty limericks!

Alli’s second lucky break came in the person of a widely beloved Icelandic poet, Stefán frá Hvítadal, who happened to live in his county. When he heard some of the boy’s “poetry” he urged his foster family not to punish but to encourage him. One of his teachers, a talented young poet, Jóhannes úr Kötlum
Jóhannes úr Kötlum
Jóhannes Jónasson úr Kötlum was an Icelandic author. He used the pseudonym Anonymus when he published poems written in modern style.-Publications:* 1926: Bí bí og blaka, poems* 1932: Jólin koma, poems...

, agreed. But poetry was a luxury for a destitute farm boy. In 1926, at the age of 18, he moved to Reykjavik
Reykjavík
Reykjavík is the capital and largest city in Iceland.Its latitude at 64°08' N makes it the world's northernmost capital of a sovereign state. It is located in southwestern Iceland, on the southern shore of Faxaflói Bay...

. Penniless and friendless in the fast-growing capital, he was determined to make good. Despite his aversion to physical work he swallowed his pride and labored day and night in the burgeoning building industry. His reward was a serious attack of polio that left him with a paralyzed left side.

Once again Stefán came to his rescue. He took him to his friend Erlendur who ran the "infamous" Unuhús coffee-house, a hangout for radical, avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

 artists and thinkers. It was there that a new generation of well-known left wing writers, including Halldór Laxness
Halldór Laxness
Halldór Kiljan Laxness was a twentieth-century Icelandic writer. Throughout his career Laxness wrote poetry, newspaper articles, plays, travelogues, short stories, and novels...

 and Þórbergur Þórðarson
Þórbergur Þórðarson
Þórbergur Þórðarson was an Icelandic socialist author and Esperantist...

, met and discussed the fate of their nation and the world.

The Great Depression

Stefán and Laxness were fervent Catholics and urged their protégé to follow suit. Just then the Great Depression hit Iceland like a tidal wave. Along with some of his Unuhús friends he was present when the Communist Party of Iceland
Communist Party of Iceland
The Communist Party of Iceland was a political party in Iceland from 1930 to 1938.-History:In the early 1920s a group of young militants of the Social Democratic Party came into contact with the international communist movement. Their ideology and that of their party leader, was quickly growing...

 saw its first light of day towards the end of 1930. Just then – by a strange coincidence - his only childhood friend drowned when his fishing boat went down in a storm. Alli’s first official poem was a eulogy
Eulogy
A eulogy is a speech or writing in praise of a person or thing, especially one recently deceased or retired. Eulogies may be given as part of funeral services. However, some denominations either discourage or do not permit eulogies at services to maintain respect for traditions...

 to his former ally.

Soon Iceland was sinking into chaos. After a riot ripped the capital apart in 1932 he got involved in the workers’ struggle. A year later he and a group of men trampled on a Nazi flag in a fishing village in the north of the country. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court. Despite the two-month suspended jail sentence, his comrades, amazingly, used this opportunity to oust him from the Communist Party. He never forgave them.

In 1933 his idol, Tómas Guðmundsson
Tómas Guðmundsson
Tómas Guðmundsson was an Icelandic author. He was known as Reykjavík's poet ....

, published his second book of poetry. Adalsteinn’s first book – written under his new pen name, Steinn Steinarr - came out a year later (both parts of his pen name derive from the second half of his given name, Aðalsteinn). Although it was obvious that he had studied Tómas’s poetry, their view of the world could hardly have been more different. Tómas's volume was called Beautiful World (Fagra veröld). An instant hit, the book made its author the darling of the bourgeoisie
Bourgeoisie
In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...

. By contrast Steinn called his work The Red Flame Burns (Rauður loginn brann) and got a glowing reception from Iceland’s working classes.

When his second book, Poems (Ljóð), came out three years later his former comrades were quick to point out that the red flame of revolution had given way to the white smoke of self-doubt. Soon afterward he met an attractive young lady, Ásthildur Björnsdóttir, who was a great admirer of him and his poetry. No sooner had they started to date, however, than her family forced her to terminate this unwelcome relationship.

The later years

Ever since Iceland had obtained its independence
Icelandic National Day
Icelandic National Day , 17 June, is a holiday in Iceland and celebrates the day in 1944 that The Republic of Iceland was formed....

 from Denmark in 1918 the arts in Iceland had been on a roll. Then the Depression set in and by 1939 professional artists could no longer survive without government stipends and handouts. At that very moment in time one of the nation’s most powerful politician, Jónas frá Hriflu, was put in charge of government funding of the arts. The timing could not have been more unfortunate. Jonas was a cultural reactionary
Reactionary
The term reactionary refers to viewpoints that seek to return to a previous state in a society. The term is meant to describe one end of a political spectrum whose opposite pole is "radical". While it has not been generally considered a term of praise it has been adopted as a self-description by...

 who considered all forms of modern art
Modern art
Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...

 "degenerate" and anyone who opposed him a “Communist”.

Meanwhile, thanks to the war
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, avant-garde artists from around the world were returning home
Nostos
Nostos is the Greek word for homecoming. It is a theme dealt with in many Homeric writings such as the Odyssey, in which the main character, Odysseus, strives to get home after the Trojan War...

 in droves full of new and revolutionary ideas, dying to turn this cultural backwater upside down. Among the newcomers were two young and attractive abstract painters, Louisa Matthíasdóttir
Louisa Matthíasdóttir
Louisa Matthíasdóttir was an Icelandic-American painter.Matthíasdóttir was born in Reykjavík. She showed artistic ability at an early age, and studied first in Denmark and then under Marcel Gromaire in Paris...

 and Nína Tryggvadóttir
Nína Tryggvadóttir
Nína Tryggvadóttir was born Jónína Tryggvadóttir in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland.Nína Tryggvadóttir is one of Iceland's most important abstract expressionist artists and one of very few Icelandic female artists of her generation. Mainly working in painting she also did paper collage, stained glass work,...

, fresh from their studies in Paris. Erlendur suggested that Steinn model for Nína. Through Nína he soon met and modeled for Louisa. Before long Steinn and “his girls” were the talk of town.

In May 1940, the Allied
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...

 occupation of Iceland began. Finally Iceland’s economy
Economic history of Iceland
The economy of Iceland remained similar for centuries after settlement in the 9th century, which was determined by natural resources and the constraints of culture and technology.-20th century:Animal husbandry was a major livelihood...

 began to pick up steam. The same year Steinn’s third book of poems, Footprints in Sand (Fótspor í sandi) came out and was well received. For the first time he was earning a bit of money from his poetry. Meanwhile, Louisa was beginning to turn his life around. From now on some of his greatest poetry would be inspired by his deepening love and admiration for her. They even began to work on a book together based on his poem about a little country girl, Halla. Just as his fourth and most successful book of poetry to date, Journey without Destination (Ferð án fyrirheits), hit the stores – in December 1942 - Louisa went to New York to continue her studies. Not long after Nina joined her.

In 1943 Steinn’s brilliant satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 about Hitler and the Nazis, The Tin Soldiers (Tindátarnir), superbly illustrated by Nína, came out. In 1948, he married his former girlfriend, Ásthildur Björnsdottir. The same year his masterpiece
Masterpiece
Masterpiece in modern usage refers to a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or to a work of outstanding creativity, skill or workmanship....

, Time and Water, was finally published securing his reputation as Iceland’s foremost modern poet. In 1955 Halldór Laxness, his mentor and ally, received the Nobel Prize for literature. Steinn Steinarr died three years later, on May 25, 1958. He was 49 years old. His widow, Ásthildur, died on July 18, 1998. She was 81. After Louisa died in the year 2000 the manuscript that they worked on together, Halla, was finally rediscovered and published. The book became Steinn Steinarr’s seventh and final book of poetry.

The poetry

Steinn Steinarr is sometimes considered the first important Icelandic modernist poet, but he also had a good command of traditional Icelandic poetics. His poetry has aged surprisingly well. In fact it is in many ways more timely today than it was when it was written. One reason may be that his favorite theme, the struggle of the eternal loner/outsider against the entrenched tyranny of corrupt power, rings at least as true now as it did back in the 1930s and '40s. Another reason may be that Steinn’s works are a spin-off of one of the world’s great literary traditions: the poetry of the mediaeval Icelandic skalds, famed for their complex and riddling style, although Steinn was also one of the first Icelandic poets to move away from the dominance of strict meter and alliteration.

Examples of style

Here is a well known stanza
Stanza
In poetry, a stanza is a unit within a larger poem. In modern poetry, the term is often equivalent with strophe; in popular vocal music, a stanza is typically referred to as a "verse"...

 from one of his works (VI 1):

Lífs um angurs víðan vang
víst ég ganginn herði,
eikin spanga, í þitt fang
oft mig langa gerði.


Across life's broad plain of grief
I surely quickened my pace;
oh lady, in your embrace
often I did long to be.

This is not only a perfect imitation of the style of the rímur
Rímur
In Icelandic literature, a ríma is an epic poem written in any of the so-called rímnahættir . They are rhymed, they alliterate and consist of two to four lines per stanza...

, with the sometimes inherent repetitiveness of syntax and the circumlocution
Circumlocution
Circumlocution is an ambiguous or roundabout figure of speech...

s known as kenningar (the word for "lady" in the original is a traditional kenning component literally denoting an oak tree, though the skaldic device of the heiti
Heiti
A heiti is a synonym used in Old Norse poetry in place of the normal word for something...

 happens to be absent here), but it has just that little bit of its author's own invention to make it art in its own right too.

Another stanza actually makes the whole point clear (I 4):

Þó ég meini þetta og hitt,
þér ég reyna vil að segja:
þú ert eina yndið mitt
unz ég seinast fer að deyja.

Although I mean this and that,
I want to try to tell you:
you alone are my darling
until at last I die.

Here there are no poetical circumlocutions, just ice-cold irony
Irony
Irony is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions...

.

Steinn Steinarr's best known work is The Time and the Water, of which the following is the first part.

Tíminn er eins og vatnið,
og vatnið er kalt og djúpt
eins og vitund mín sjálfs.

Og tíminn er eins og mynd,
sem er máluð af vatninu
og mér til hálfs.

Og tíminn og vatnið
renna veglaust til þurrðar
inn í vitund mín sjálfs.

(Quoted from ljod.is)


Time is like the water,
and the water is cold and deep
like my own consciousness.

And time is like a picture,
which is painted of water,
half of it by me.

And time and the water
flow trackless to extinction
into my own consciousness.

(Translation by Marshall Brement
Marshall Brement
Marshall Brement was a career United States Foreign Service officer, who served as United States Ambassador to Iceland in 1981-1985 and after retirement was a professor at the University of Virginia.-Early life and education:Brement graduated from Brooklyn College with a Bachelor of Arts in 1952...

)

The second stanza here may be regarded as an object lesson in the difficulty of translation, and perhaps of translating the work of Steinn Steinarr in particular. Its second line may refer to a picture painted "of" the water, or, just as readily, to a picture painted "by" the water, i.e. to a picture the water paints, since "of" and "by" are both among the possible translations of the preposition af. This is all the more important since the first two words of the third line of the stanza simply mean "and me" and do not themselves indicate whether the picture is painted of the narrator or by him. Also, whereas the translator here has interpreted til hálfs in the third line of the stanza as indicating that the narrator has painted half the picture, it is commonly used as an idiom to mean "imperfectly" or "inadequately". Thus the third line here may, for example, mean "and me, imperfectly". This would be consistent with an interpretation according to which both the water and the narrator were inadequate painters. Furthermore, the word máluð in the second line, translated here as "painted", can also mean "worded" or "put into words": this use of the word was archaic by the time this poem was written, but so was a good deal of the skaldic diction Steinn used elsewhere in his poetry.

Steinn satirized anything and everything, and spared nobody, as can be seen from his poem "Ein sorgleg vísa um Sósíalistaflokkinn og mig" ("One Tragic Poem about the Socialist Party and Me"). Another very well known poem is "Passíusálmur No. 51" ("Passion Psalm No. 51"). The title is a reference to the greatest work of legendary Icelandic poet Hallgrímur Pétursson
Hallgrímur Pétursson
Hallgrímur Pétursson was one of Iceland's most famous poets and a minister at Hvalneskirkja and Saurbær in Hvalfjörður. The Hallgrímskirkja in Reykjavík and the Hallgrímskirkja in Saurbær are named after him. He was one of the most influential pastors during the Age of Orthodoxy...

 (d. 1674), Passíusálmar (Passion
Passion (Christianity)
The Passion is the Christian theological term used for the events and suffering – physical, spiritual, and mental – of Jesus in the hours before and including his trial and execution by crucifixion...

 Psalms
Psalms
The Book of Psalms , commonly referred to simply as Psalms, is a book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible...

), 50 in all. Steinn added the 51st:

Á Valhúsahæðinni
er verið að krossfesta mann.
Og fólkið kaupir sér far
með strætisvagninum
til þess að horfa á hann.

Það er sólskin og hiti,
og sjórinn er sléttur og blár.

Þetta er laglegur maður
með mikið enni
og mógult hár.

Og stúlka með sægræn augu
segir við mig:

Skyldi manninum ekki leiðast
að láta krossfesta sig?



There's a man being crucified
on Valhúsahæðin hill.
And people buy themselves a ride
on the bus
to watch him.

There's sunshine and warmth,
and the sea is calm and blue.

This is a fine looking man
with a high forehead
and golden brown hair.

And a girl with sea-green eyes
says to me:

Won't the man get bored
of being crucified?


Here the crucifixion is shown in an Icelandic setting, probably as the little girl imagines it. The metre is new, but not without such traditional devices as rhyme
Rhyme
A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds in two or more words and is most often used in poetry and songs. The word "rhyme" may also refer to a short poem, such as a rhyming couplet or other brief rhyming poem such as nursery rhymes.-Etymology:...

 and alliteration
Alliterative verse
In prosody, alliterative verse is a form of verse that uses alliteration as the principal structuring device to unify lines of poetry, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. The most commonly studied traditions of alliterative verse are those found in the oldest literature of many Germanic...

, making this a poem to be appreciated especially when read aloud.

But Steinn Steinarr not only satirized his contemporaries. He was also a master of self-parody. His great book of poetry, Journey without Destination (Ferð án fyrirheits), ends with this haunting self-portrait.

UNDIRSKRIFT

Lesendum þessarar bókar ef einhverjir eru
Hef ég ekkert fleira að segja í raun og veru
Sjá hér er ég sjálfur og þetta er allur minn auður
Hið eina sem ég hef að bjóða lifandi og dauður.

Ég veit að þið teljið mig aldrei í ykkar hópi
Og ætlið mig skringilegt sambland af fanti og glópi
Ég er langt að koninn úr heimkynnum niðdimmrar nætur
Og niður í myrkursins djúp liggja enn mínar rætur.

Ég ber þess að sjálfsögðu ævilangt óbrigðult merki
Því örlög hvers manns gefa lit sinn og hljóm sinn hans verki
Það var lítið um dýrðir og næsta naumt fyrir andann
Mitt nafn er Steinn Steinarr, skáld. Ég kveðst á við fjandann.

SIGNATURE

To the readers of this book if any exist
Nothing else I can tell, nothing else I can list.
This is all that I am, the harvest of my strife.
The only thing I offer, dead or alive.

I know you will never count me as one of your class
And conclude instead I am either a thug or an ass.
I have come afar from a dim and dreary place
And into the depths of darkness my roots are traced.

I will no doubt be doomed for the rest of my life
'Cause our destiny marks and colors the works we contrive.
The times were sparse for the spirit on every level.
Steinn Steinarr the poet’s my name. I rap with the devil
Devil
The Devil is believed in many religions and cultures to be a powerful, supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The nature of the role varies greatly...

.

(Translation by Jon Othar)

List of original works

  • 1934-Rauður loginn brann (The Red Flame Burns)
  • 1937-Ljóð (Poems)
  • 1940-Fótspor í sandi (Footprints in Sand)
  • 1942-Ferð án fyrirheits (Journey without Destination)
  • 1943-Tindátarnir (The Tin Soldiers)
  • 1948-Tíminn og vatnið (The Time and the Water)
  • 2000-Halla
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