The Bondman by Hall Caine

Brother vs. brother in the icy North Atlantic

There is a good chance you’ve never heard of Hall Caine, but at one time he was one of the most popular authors on Planet Earth. His book The Eternal City is the first novel to have sold over one million copies worldwide. Caine’s novel The Bondman, published in 1890, may not have achieved such record sales, but it was still a blockbuster bestseller for its day and firmly established the author’s international success. The story of The Bondman takes place in Iceland and on the Isle of Man, which is located between Great Britain and Ireland. Although born in England, Caine was of Manx (Isle of Man) heritage and later settled there to become that island’s biggest celebrity and favorite son. He also wrote The Manxman, which Alfred Hitchcock made into a silent film. Prior to writing The Bondman, Caine made a research voyage to Iceland to see that country firsthand. 

Rachel Jorgenson, the daughter of the governor of Iceland, is betrothed to marry a Danish count of her father’s choosing, but instead she elopes with a burly Icelandic fisherman named Stephen Orry. Unfortunately, Orry turns out to be an abusive drunkard, and he abandons Rachel and their newborn son Jason, who are left to live in poverty. When Jason grows up, he vows that he will track down his father and kill him, or, if the old man is already dead, he will wreak his vengeance on any of Orry’s offspring. Meanwhile, Orry has run off to the Isle of Man, where he fathers another son, Michael, with a woman of ill repute. Orry mellows in his old age and has a change of heart. He regrets what he did to Rachel and realizes what a terrible father he has been, so he leaves Michael with the governor of the Isle of Man, who raises the boy lovingly in relative wealth. When Michael grows into a man and learns of his father’s history, he vows to find Rachel and his long-lost brother and help them in any way he can. Thus, we have two brothers from two different islands, who have never met, hunting each other down for opposing reasons, each unbeknownst of the other’s motives.

A lot happens in The Bondman. In every chapter, someone is being born, married, killed, imprisoned, elected governor, or relocated to some foreign land. One could say that there’s never a dull moment in The Bondman, but he or she would be lying. Despite the multinational scope and all the momentous events, each chapter is bogged down in a lot of tedious verbiage. The characters engage in much discussion of what’s happened or what’s going to happen. In most cases, the outcomes of these conversations are a foregone conclusion, but one still has to sit through them anyway. Realism is not a major concern in this romance, as the character’s lives are entwined in an intricate web of coincidental encounters and mistaken identities. It somewhat calls to mind the byzantine plot of The Count of Monte Cristo, but Caine’s web is not as skillfully spun as Alexandre Dumas’s. I admired the clever construction of the plot, with all its cyclical occurrences and karmic retribution, but I can’t say that I greatly enjoyed the reading of it.

The Bondman is an adventure romance in the vein of Sir Walter Scott (Rob Roy) or Robert Louis Stevenson (The Master of Ballantrae). The positive aspects of Caine’s writing don’t quite measure up to those two Scottish greats, yet he does share some of their faults. Like Scott and Stevenson, the writing is often clumsily antiquated, the plot elements so heroic they’re predictable, and the very Britishness, Scottishness, or Manxness of the cultural and historical references can be a chore for the ignorant American reader to wade through. (Just to prove I’m not anti-British, James Fenimore Cooper’s novels often have the same problems.) After reading The Bondman, I might say there’s a good reason Caine has been forgotten while the other aforementioned authors are still widely read. If you are really into classic books by Scott, Stevenson, or Cooper, however, The Bondman might be right up your alley.

The Nordic Translation Series

Modern lit from Northern Europe
From 1965 to 1970, the University of Wisconsin Press published its Nordic Translation Series. This collection of books presented works of literature from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden in English translation, thereby introducing English-language readers to the modern authors of those nations. The books in this series include novels, short stories, drama, and memoir. Each book typically has an introduction by a university professor that provides a brief biography of the author and some explanation of the historical context behind the work. 

I believe 16 books were published in the series. Eleven of those books are now available for free download. The University of Wisconsin Press has released these translations as open access books. They can be found at the UW Libraries website. Old Books by Dead Guys has previously reviewed all eleven of those books, and presents an overview of the series below. Though not every book in the series is a masterpiece, each volume presents a welcome glimpse into a corner of the world often neglected by English-language readers. Scandinavian literature (a subset of Nordic) has enjoyed a surge in popularity in recent years, mostly due to mystery novels and thrillers. The books listed below, however, represent some of the highbrow literary luminaries of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who are revered in their native lands. Click on the titles below to read the full reviews.

Denmark 🇩🇰

We Murderers: A Play in Three Acts (1920) by Guðmundur Kamban (1.5 stars)
Kamban was born in Iceland. He moved to Denmark for college and remained in Copenhagen for most of his life, although he lived briefly in New York, London, and Berlin. His play We Murderers is set in New York. As a result, it doesn’t in any way come across as particularly Nordic or Scandinavian, which begs the question, why would anyone translate it for this series? Isn’t the purpose of this series to educate Americans about Nordic culture? Instead, this is a pedestrian marital melodrama involving a jealous husband and a wife with a straying eye. There is a touch of Eugene O’Neill in this, but it would be early-career O’Neill, as seen in such forgettable plays as Welded, Diff’rent, and The First Man. A century after it was first staged, this drama reads as rather pretentious and overly melodramatic.

Finland 🇫🇮

People in the Summer Night (1934) by Frans Eemil Sillanpää (4 stars)
Sillanpää won the 1939 Nobel Prize in Literature, the only Finnish author so far to have done so. This novel paints a vivid portrait of a rural community in Finland. Comprised of 48 short chapters, the structure of the novel is more of a montage than a linear narrative. The story takes place almost entirely over the course of one summer night, when Finland is lit by the strange midnight twilight of Northern latitudes. A large ensemble cast of characters act out the intimate dramas that contribute to the collective history of this fictional rural community. Sillanpää’s style strikes a delicate and satisfying balance between pastoral romanticism and naturalist realism.

The Woodcarver and Death (1940) by Hagar Olsson (2.5 stars)
Olsson was a member of a minority Swedish population in Finland that produced its own body of literature in the Swedish language, of which this novel is an example. A quiet young woodcarver decides to leave his widowed mother’s home and make a pilgrimage to his birthplace. Obsessed with thoughts of death, the pointlessness of life, and the futility of religion, he hopes the journey might help him to discover some meaning to life. This book calls to mind some of the soul-searching wanderer novels of German-Swiss author Hermann Hesse, such as Siddhartha or Narcissus and Goldmund, but drearier and less interesting. This novel is a bit too contemplative and navel-gazing for my taste.

My Childhood by Toivo Pekkanen (4.5 stars)
Unlike most of the works in this series, which have a decidedly modernist style, this partial autobiography by Pekkanen is a straight-up work of old-school naturalism. For most of this narrative, Finland was under the rule of the Russian Empire, and Pekkanen was born in a coastal town near the Russian border. After his father dies of a stroke, Pekkanen and his mother struggle with poverty and hunger that only worsen with the coming of World War I and the Russian Revolution. This powerful and poignant memoir explores timeless and universal themes of coming-of-age through a story that is specific to its time an place. One learns quite a bit about Finnish history and Finnish life in the process. While there are harsh and brutal aspects to this story, it is also suffused with familial love and a resilient hope for the future.

Iceland 🇮🇸

Fire and Ice: Three Icelandic Plays (1915–1955) by Jóhann Sigurjónsson, Davið Stefánsson, and Agnar Þórðarson (3.5 stars)
This trio of Icelandic dramas highlights three important figures in the history of Icelandic theatre, and their works included here depict three distinct periods in Iceland’s history and literature. Sigurjónsson’s The Wish is a Faustian tale of a driven young man who dabbles in black magic. Stefánsson’s Golden Gate is a humorous Christian folktale about an old woman striving to get her recently deceased husband’s soul through the pearly gates of Heaven. Þórðarson’s Atoms and Madams is a modern political satire involving imperialism and resource extraction. Because of its tripartite structure and the editor’s informative introductions, Fire and Ice is one of the more successful books in the Nordic Translation Series at educating the reader about the history and literature of the nation in question.

Norway 🇳🇴

The Fourth Night Watch (1923) by Johan Falkberget (4 stars)
Falkberget, a very prolific author of historical novels, is highly respected in his home country. As a representative of the regionalist movement in Norwegian literature, his writing exhibits similar characteristics to authors such as Honoré de Balzac, Anthony Trollope or Emile Zola. This novel is set in the mining region where Falkberget was born, and the story takes place around 1807, about the time Norway won its independence from Denmark and entered a war against Sweden. The plot involves a realistic depiction of forbidden love, as well as contrasting characters of different social classes. Although this is not a religious novel, it portrays the significant role that Christianity played in Norwegian society during this time period. The reader learns much about Norwegian history from reading this book.

The Great Cycle (1934) by Tarjei Vesaas (5 stars)
While literary critics often classify Vesaas as one of Norway’s groundbreaking modernists, The Great Cycle is pretty traditional stylistically and reads like a naturalistic depiction of Norwegian rural life in a bygone era. This is a coming-of-age story about a boy born and raised on an isolated farm in the rural countryside. As he grows into adolescence, he chafes at the idea of being forced to take over the family farm. While the Norwegian setting is made intimately real for the reader, the life events and the feelings they engender are universally human. Though understated and modest on the surface, this excellent novel delivers a deep and powerful reading experience. It reads like a kinder, gentler variation on Knut Hamsun’s masterpiece Growth of the Soil. I consider this the best book in the Nordic Translation Series.

Werewolf (1958) by Aksel Sandemose (3 stars)
Sandemose was born in Denmark and moved to Norway as an adult. The “werewolf” of the title is only a metaphor, similar to the wolf of Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf. The story involves a successful but alcoholic writer who periodically comes into contact with a love from his younger days, whom he seduced when she was half his age. There are also some references to the Nazi occupation during World War II, but most of the novel is really about the characters’ love lives and sex lives. This is a work of modernist literature that goes overboard with its modernism, obscuring the narrative with self-indulgent and ostentatious artiness. Sandemose doesn’t present the story in chronological order, and the lives of these characters are a puzzle that the reader has to piece together. This might have been a more compelling story if it weren’t so deliberately difficult and pretentious.

Sweden 🇸🇪

Kallocain (1940) by Karin Boye (4.5 stars)
Though best known as a poet, Boye also wrote five novels, including this science fiction story set in a dystopian future. The narrator, a scientist, describes a highly militaristic society subject to a draconian bureaucracy called the Worldstate. The citizens of this land live underground under heavy surveillance. Written during the rise of the Nazis and Stalin’s reign over the Soviet Union, this novel is a warning cry against totalitarian dictatorships and the military-industrial complex. Boye, however, emphasizes the personal over the political by investigating issues of human nature: the need for love, the fear of intimacy, the allure of conformity, the poison of jealousy, the paranoia of betrayal, and the reluctance to acknowledge or reveal one’s true self.

Bread of Love (1945) by Peder Sjögren (3 stars)
This novel takes place during the Finnish Continuation War of 1941 to 1944, a conflict that formed part of the Eastern Front of World War II. It is based on some of Sjögren’s own wartime experiences. The narrator is one of a troop of 20 soldiers holed up in underground burrows beneath the ice and snow, surrounded by mine fields. This novel would have been better had it been a relentlessly realistic novel of war, but instead Sjögren softens the blow with overly poetical prose, a fairy-tale romance, and suggestions of supernatural forces toying with the destinies of man, all of which diverts the narrative from reality into the realm of fable.

Rose of Jericho and Other Stories (1946–1949) by Tage Aurell (2.5 stars)
Aurell grew up in Värmland, a rather rustic area of Sweden. Much like America’s William Faulkner, however, he writes about rural and small-town life in an experimental, modernist style that would appeal more to
big-city and university intellectuals than to the simple country folk he depicts in his stories. In general, Aurell’s writing is too abstract for my taste. These stories are often frustrating in their deliberate obscurity, but about a third of the nine stories assembled here deliver a moving story with characters that the reader really grows to care about. Overall, however, the book didn’t teach me much about Swedish country life.

Additional Books in the Series
The following books were also published in the Nordic Translation Series, but they are not currently available in open access editions (probably due to copyright and permissions issues). Old Books by Dead Guys has not reviewed them.

Two Minutes of Silence by H. C. Branner (Denmark)
This collection of short stories appears to be out of print. Only used copies available.

World Light by Halldór Laxness (Iceland)
An English translation of this novel is currently available from the publisher Vintage.

The Black Cliffs by Gunnar Gunnarsson (Iceland)
Out of print (in English, at least). Look for used copies.

Havoc by Tom Kristensen (Denmark)
An English translation of this novel is currently available from New York Review of Books Classics.

Jørgen Stein by Jacob Paludan (Denmark)
Out of print (in English, at least). Look for used copies.

Fire and Ice: Three Icelandic Plays by Jóhann Sigurjónsson, Davið Stefánsson, and Agnar Þórðarson

Trio of important Nordic playwrights

Published in 1967, Fire and Ice: Three Icelanic Plays is a volume in the Nordic Translation Series from the University of Wisconsin Press. It reprints in English Translation three plays previously staged and published earlier in the twentieth century. The volume is edited by Einar Hagen, a distinguished professor of Norwegian linguistics and literature, who provides introductions to each of the plays. In the late ‘60s, The Nordic Translation Series introduced works of modern Scandinavian writers to English-language readers. Eleven books from this series, including Fire and Ice, are now available for free download from the University of Wisconsin Libraries website.

This trio of Icelandic dramas highlights three important figures in the history of Icelandic theatre. In his general introduction to the book, Haugen explains that Icelandic culture was dominated by Danish influences early in the twentieth century, when Denmark ruled Iceland as a colony. Iceland gained partial independence from Denmark in 1918 and full independence in 1944. During these decades of transition, Icelandic playwrights worked to come out from under the shadow of Danish literature, build an Icelandic theatre scene, and develop a national literature. Despite Iceland’s small population, these Icelandic-born stage productions found a respectably large and supportive audience in the country’s very literate population.

The first selection, The Wish (original title: Galdra-Loftur) by Jóhann Sigurjónsson premiered in 1915. It is a Faust-like tale of a studious young man with a thirst for arcane knowledge who dabbles in black magic. The second play, Davið Stefánsson’s Golden Gate (Gullna hliðið), debuted in 1941. It is about an old woman determined to get her recently deceased husband into Heaven by carrying his soul to the Pearly Gates. Both of these plays are based on Icelandic folktales, not pagan folklore but Christian folklore. From these two works, one gets the idea that Christianity was a prominent force to be reckoned with in Icelandic society during this time period. The Wish, being the earlier of the two productions, takes itself seriously as a moral drama. Golden Gate, on the other hand, treats its religious subject matter with much irreverent humor that would have likely been considered scandalous a couple decades earlier. The humor, however, is pretty obvious and grows rather tedious, making Golden Gate the least successful entry in the volume.

The final selection, Agnar Þórðarson’s Atoms and Madams (Kjarnorka og kvenhylli) from 1955, is an Icelandic pony-sized horse of an entirely different color, being a secular political satire. A scientist from Canada, sent by the International Scientific Commission, discovers uranium in an Icelandic mountain. A local senator schemes to swindle the valuable land away from his farmer friend. Through satire, Þórðarson expresses the reality of Iceland’s newfound independence, in which America and the larger European nations meddle in the island nation’s post–war future, covet its natural resources, and infect the Icelandic populace with contagious opportunism. This is quite a clever and entertaining comedy.

Because of its tripartite structure and Haugen’s informative contextual introductions, Fire and Ice is one of the more successful books in the Nordic Translation Series at educating the reader about the history and literature of the nation in question. And although Stefánsson’s less impressive offering drags on far too long, the other two plays make for gratifying reading.

Plays in this collection

The Wish by Jóhann Sigurjónsson

Golden Gate by Davið Stefánsson

Atoms and Madams by Agnar Þórðarson

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We Murderers: A Play in Three Acts by Guðmundur Kamban

Scandinavian drama of an American marriage

Playwright Guðmundur Kamban was born in Iceland. He moved to Denmark for college and remained in Copenhagen for most of his life, although he lived briefly in New York, London, and Berlin. His play We Murderers was first staged in Denmark in 1920. The play is set in New York, where Kamban and his wife had recently lived for a year or two. In 1970, We Murderers was published in English as one of about a dozen books in the Nordic Translation Series from the University of Wisconsin Press. One notable thing about this series is that the University of Wisconsin has made these translations freely available to the public. The books can be downloaded from the UW Libraries website, allowing curious readers to sample the works of 20th-century Scandinavian writers, many of whom are revered in their home countries but little known in America.

We Murderers presents the tumultuous marriage of Ernest and Norma Macintyre. They had previously enjoyed a happy and stable marriage, but since Norma took a solo vacation to Florida, their relationship has not been the same. Norma has recently taken up flying lessons with an instructor named Mr. Rattigan, whom she met in Florida. She swears that there is nothing romantic happening between them, but Ernest is a very jealous husband who resents the amount of time his wife is spending with another man. Norma thus feels she has to lie to Ernest when she spends time with Rattigan, and her mother and sister aid her in her deceptions. Ernest has had enough and demands a divorce. Norma refuses to agree to a divorce, and swears that she will change her behavior to please her husband. For Ernest, however, their love has been tainted by dishonesty, and he will not settle for anything less than true love and complete devotion.

There is a touch of Eugene O’Neill in this, but it would be early-career O’Neill, as seen in such forgettable plays as Welded, Diff’rent, and The First Man. This ain’t no Long Days Journey Into Night. Kamban clearly sympathizes with Ernest in this conflict, but to readers a century later the husband’s stance seems like unreasonable overreacting. Kamban’s views of love, as voiced by Ernest, seem pretty high-falutin a century later. Even the title, We Murderers, is rather pretentious for what today feels like a rather pedestrian marital drama.

Why would a Scandinavian playwright set his play in New York? Perhaps the Danish audience would have liked that. The bigger question is, why would anyone translate it for this series? If you’re doing a series on Nordic literature, why not translate books that give some insight into Scandinavian life? For the American reader, this little play about a New York marriage is not very special. The introduction by D. E. Askey informs us that Kamban was satirizing American society but if so, this isn’t a very biting satire.

The story of Kamban’s death is one of the saddest that I’ve ever heard. On the day that World War II ended in Denmark, Kamban was wrongly suspected of being a Nazi collaborator and was shot in the head in front of his family. During his life, Kamban was also reputed to have psychic abilities. He sounds like an interesting man, but this play unfortunately is not very interesting. Of the several volumes I’ve read in the Nordic Translations Series, this is the weakest entry. Thankfully, it might also be the shortest book in the series, so it doesn’t require a major investment in reading time.
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Seven Icelandic Short Stories, edited by Ásgeir Pétursson and Steingrímur J. Thorsteinsson

Hard lives in a harsh land

Halldór Laxness

Seven Icelandic Short Stories was published in 1961 by the Reykjavik Ministry of Education, presumably for the purpose of educating English-language readers about Icelandic literature. The introduction by Steingrímur J. Thorsteinsson gives a brief and interesting overview of the nation’s literary history. Each of the volume’s seven selections has a different author and translator. The final story is by Halldór Laxness, winner of the 1955 Nobel Prize in literature, the only name here likely to ring a bell with most English-language readers.

The first story featured in the collection is an anonymous tale from the 13th century, “The Story of Audunn and the Bear.” In this fable emphasizing right manners and gratitude, Audunn travels to Denmark to give the Danish king the gift of a polar bear. Despite its antiquity, this brief example of Iceland’s medieval literature is admirably clever and still quite entertaining.

The book’s remaining selections were all originally published from 1905 to 1927. All the stories are concerned in some way with the lives of Icelandic common folk such as farmers, fishermen, and shepherds. In Einar H. Kvaran’s story “A Dry Spell,” the narrator operates a country store in a rural town, where he is witness to agricultural life during the haymaking season. In a similar vein, “The Old Hay” by Gudmundur Fridjónsson is about an industrious farmer who prides himself on his private stockpile of hay. When weather conditions threaten to starve the region’s sheep, his neighbors come begging for him to give up his stash. In “The Fox Fur” by Gudmundur G. Hagalin, a farmer is troubled by a chicken skulking amongst his sheep, until he finds the animal dead, shot by a hunter. In an oddly comic twist, he claims the kill as his own, and the fox fur becomes his prized possession and source of vanity.

The seafaring life is also well-covered. In Jón Trausti’s “When I Was on the Frigate,” a traveler in a small coastal town needs transportation to the opposite side of the fjord. Due to the bad weather, the only ferryman he can get is an old fishing boat captain rumored to be mentally ill. The story provides some good sailing action, but is primarily a touching character study. The best selection in the book is “Father and Son” by Gunnar Gunnarsson, a moving depiction of two poor fishermen, a father and his twelve year old son, who share a hard but honest life devoted to one another. Laxness provides another strong entry in the volume’s closing selection, “New Iceland,” which is also the name of an Icelandic settlement in Manitoba, Canada. With hope for a new and prosperous beginning, a farmer moves his family to this foreign outpost, but finds that life in the New World may be even more harsh than the life he left behind in his homeland.

Though some stories are stronger than others, there really isn’t a bad selection in the book. As intended, this volume would make an excellent introduction to any reader looking to investigate Iceland’s literature. The stories included here give the reader a fascinating glimpse of life in the harsh climate of this North Atlantic island, and they all aptly demonstrate the literary merit one would expect from such a book-loving nation.

Stories in this collection

The Story of Audunn and the Bear by Anonymous 

A Dry Spell by Einar H. Kvaran 

The Old Hay by Gudmundur Fridjonsson 

When I Was on the Frigate by Jón Trausti 

Father and Son by Gunnar Gunnarsson

The Fox Skin by Gudmundur G. Hagalin 

New Iceland by Halldór Kiljan Laxness

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The Atom Station by Halldór Laxness

The humor is an acquired taste
The Atom Station, published in 1948, is a novel by Icelandic author Halldór Laxness, winner of the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature. I had previously read his novel Independent People, which I enjoyed, so I thought I’d give this one a try. Though Laxness writes novels of modern Iceland, he depicts Icelandic life and culture as being firmly grounded in the classic sagas of his nation’s literature. There’s often a tension between the nation’s entry into the modern world and a harkening back to the traditions of the past. Chances are, the more you understand Iceland’s history and literature, the more you will enjoy Laxness’s work, which may prove a problem for many English-language readers, myself included. The Atom Station is a political satire, which complicates matters even further, and I’ll confess much of the humor was lost on me.

Ugla, a girl from a rural village in Northern Iceland, moves to Reykjavik to take up work as a servant in the home of Búi Arland, a member of parliament. The wealthy urban lifestyle of the legislator’s family is a culture shock to the small-town girl, but she soon earns the family’s trust and becomes an integral member of the household. Arland and his political cronies are plotting to “sell the country” to America, which wants to build a nuclear missile site in Iceland. Not only is this a threat to Icelandic sovereignty; it also endangers the lives of all the nation’s citizens if nuclear war should break out between the two Cold War superpowers. Part of the pro-American faction’s strategy for winning the hearts and minds of the populace, or at least distracting them, is to repatriate the bones of the Nation’s Darling, a revered poet who had been buried in Denmark. Ugla becomes involved with a communist cell who opposes the government’s plan. This episode, based on actual events, gives Laxness the opportunity to contrast rich and poor, urban and rural, North and South, conservative and communist—lampooning everyone in the process.

A few chapters into the book, Ugla goes to an organist’s house to take lessons on the harmonium. There she meets two men referred to as the atom poet and the god of Brilliantine, who speak mostly nonsense. There’s also a character named Two Hundred Thousand Pliers, an industrialist who serves as one of the villains in the book. Do we have Laxness to blame for these goofy names, or are these poorly handled puns on the part of the English translator? Hard to tell, but it was all a bit too heavy-handed and slapstick for me. Later in the book, there are some more serious scenes that give a better idea of Laxness’s talents as a writer. Ugla’s relationship with the family who employs her, and her own family in the North, allow for some moving moments, as does her desire to live as an independent woman. You really do feel for the character, and there’s a definite feminist message to the book that’s ahead of its time. But just when you think Laxness has given you something to hold onto, something to care about, he forces you to wade through another absurd conversation that feels like an utter waste of time.

I can see how The Atom Station might be hailed as a comic masterpiece in Iceland, much like the movie Dr. Strangelove is regarded in the U.S. However, few English-language readers will have the prior knowledge of Icelandic politics and culture necessary to get the jokes. What I liked about Independent People is that it gave me a glimpse into the life and history of a nation I know little about, but the social realism of that novel is a lot more accessible than the parody of this one. I don’t think I’m done with Laxness yet, but if I see another book of his described as “comedy” or “satire,” I’m going to steer clear.
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