Novel
Lad and Lass
Piltur og stúlka
Jón Thoroddsen · 1850
Opening lines
Á austanverðu Íslandi liggur hérað eitt mikið og fagurt, er .....hérað heitir; þar gjörðist saga sú, er hér skal rituð.
In the east of Iceland lies a large and beautiful district called .....hérað; it was there that the story to be written here took place.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from netutgafan.snerpa.is
Synopsis
Indriði and Sigríður, two young people from the Icelandic countryside, innocent and virtuous, love each other, but their families oppose their union. The narrative, which opens in the countryside, makes room in its middle for a journey to Reykjavík, and lingers on the people around them, sketched in a few satirical strokes, often comic, sometimes grotesque, in the manner of Dickens.
Context
Written during the winter of 1848-1849, the novel appeared in Copenhagen in 1850, from S. L. Möller, shortly before the author's return to Iceland, then in a second edition in Reykjavík in 1867. It owes something to the English romance and to the reading of Walter Scott and Dickens, but paints the Icelandic society of its time at close quarters and keeps something of the sagas. Translated into four languages, including English, by Arthur Middleton Reeves, in London in 1890, it was staged in Iceland in 1933.
Who it is for
A rural love story, short and often funny, carried by its secondary characters; readable in English.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the first modern Icelandic novel; its author is considered the father of the genre in his country.