Novel
The Virgin of Skalholt
Skálholt
Guðmundur Kamban · 1930
Synopsis
At the episcopal seat of Skálholt, in the seventeenth century, Bishop Brynjólfur Sveinsson, a man of authority but a loving father, has as his secretary Daði Halldórsson, who also teaches his daughter Ragnheiður. When rumour credits them with an affair, Ragnheiður publicly swears her virginity in the cathedral, on 11 May 1661; nine months later, she gives birth to Daði's child. The bishop, who loves his daughter but cannot bring himself to forgive her, punishes the two young people harshly, and a contest of wills begins between father and child.
Context
The novel appeared in four volumes from 1930 to 1932; Britannica sees in it a meticulously documented novelistic study of the life of the bishop's daughter. The first two volumes appeared in English in Boston in 1935, and a Dutch review of the same year, concerning Annie Posthumus's translation, praised the dramatist who knows how to isolate his main characters. The author also wrote a play on the same subject, which he did not regard as an adaptation of the novel, and the story of Ragnheiður inspired in 2013 an opera by Gunnar Þórðarson.
Who it is for
Four volumes, in Icelandic or Danish; the first two can be read in English, nothing in French.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the major work of one of the great Icelandic dramatists and novelists of the twentieth century.