: Seven Icelandic Short Stories by Sgeir P Tursson Editor Steingr Mur J Orsteinsson Editor - Short stories Icelandic Translations into English Short Stories

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INTRODUCTION BY STEINGRIMUR J. PORSTEINSSON

ANONYMOUS THE STORY OF AUDUNN AND THE BEAR TRANSLATED BY G. TURVILLE-PEIRE

EINAR H. KVARAN A DRY SPELL TRANSLATED BY JAKOBINA JOHNSON

GU?MUNDUR FRI?J?NSSON THE OLD HAY TRANSLATED BY MEKKIN SVEINSON PERKINS

JON TRAUSTI WHEN I WAS ON THE FRIGATE TRANSLATED BY ARNOLD R. TAYLOR

GUNNAR GUNNARSSON FATHER AND SON TRANSLATED BY PETER FOOTE

GU?MUNDUR G. HAGALIN THE FOX SKIN TRANSLATED BY MEKKIN SVEINSON PERKINS

HALLD?R KILJAN LAXNESS NEW ICELAND TRANSLATED BY AXEL EYBERG AND JOHN WATKINS

INTRODUCTION

Of the seven Icelandic short stories which appear here, the first was probably written early in the thirteenth century, while the rest all date from the early twentieth century. It might therefore be supposed that the earliest of these stories was written in a language more or less unintelligible to modern Icelanders, and that there was a gap of many centuries in the literary production of the nation. This, however, is not the case.

The Norsemen who colonized Iceland in the last quarter of the ninth century brought with than the language then spoken throughout the whole of Scandinavia. This ancestor of the modern Scandinavian tongues has been preserved in Iceland so little changed that every Icelander still understands, without the aid of explanatory commentaries, the oldest preserved prose written in their country 850 years ago. The principal reasons for this were probably limited communications between Iceland and other countries, frequent migrations inside the island, and, not least important, a long and uninterrupted literary tradition. As a consequence, Icelandic has not developed any dialects in the ordinary sense.

It is to their language and literature, as well as to the island separateness of their country, that the 175 thousand inhabitants of this North-Atlantic state of a little more than a hundred thousand square kilometres owe their existence as an independent and separate nation.

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