Laxness, Halldór Gudjónsson (1902-1998)

Icelandic novelist. He wrote about Icelandic life in the style of the early sagas. His novel Salka Valka (1931-32) is a vivid, realistic portrayal of a small fishing community and centres on a strong female character. Other novels include Sjálfstætt fólk/Independent People (1935), about farm life, and Heimsljós/The World's Light (1937), about an Icelandic folk-poet. Although set in exact locations, the social criticism embodied in Laxness's novels has much wider implications, and his language, though strong and colloquial, is also poetic. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1955.

He was born in Reykjavik and spent his youth in the country where he learned about the life of its people, later described in his novels. He travelled widely, became a Roman Catholic in 1924, and then turned to socialism.