Modern Icelandic Plays

Modern Icelandic Plays - Eyvind of the Hills; The Hraun Farm

The first few pages of the book, before the Contents, have been rearranged in the order 4, 5, 2, 1,3. Dividing lines show the original page breaks. Page numbers in [brackets] were not printed in the book, but are extrapolated from adjoining pages. This series of Scandinavian Classics is published by The American-Scandinavian Foundation in the belief that greater familiarity with the chief literary monuments of the North will help Americans to a better understanding of Scandinavians, and thus serve to stimulate their sympathetic coperation to good ends. BOTH volumes of the Scandinavian Classics selected to appear in 1916 are by natives of Iceland. They belong, however, to periods of time and to modes of writing remote from each other. Snorri Sturluson, the greatest of Icelandic historians, was born in 1179. His Prose Edda, the companion-piece of the present volume, is a Christian's account of Old Norse myths and poetic conceptions thus happily preserved as they were about to pass into oblivion. More than seven hundred years separate Jhann Sigurjnsson from Snorri, and his work is in dramatic, not saga form. But even as in outward appearance modern Iceland is not unlike ancient Iceland, so the Icelandic writers of the present have marked kinship with the past. Despite many centuries of relative neglect, the old traditions lived on, cherished by scholars, until now, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Icelandic mind appears to be again renascent and creative. Einar Jnsson, the sculptor, has his counterpart in the domain of letters in such recent writers as Jnas Jnasson, Emar Hjrleifsson, Gudmundur Magnsson, Jnas Gudlaugsson, Gunnar Gunnarson, and Gudmundur Kamban, while every important fjord and valley can claim its own poet or novelist. As yet, the most distinguished performance of these younger authors is the play printed in this volume, Eyvind of the Hills (Bjrg-Ejvind og hans Hustru), by Jhann Sigurjnsson. Among literary phenomena Eyvind of the Hills is a surprise, almost as though Iceland woke to find her naked mountains clothed in forest in a night. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 21937
Author: Sigurjónsson, Jóhann
Release Date: Jun 25, 2007
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Translator: Schanche, Henninge Margrethe Krohn, 1861-