The fish concert
The Fish Concert is a novel by Halldór Laxness , published in Iceland in 1957 under the title Brekkukotsannáll. In 1973 it was made into a film by Rolf Hädrich in Iceland. The author also appears in a small role.
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The simple farm Brekkukot is on the outskirts of Reykjavík . There Álfgrímur Hansen lives with his supposed grandparents and talks about life and the adversities on the Brekkukot. The fate of the supposedly famous singer Garðar Hólm is woven into the plot, who, as it turns out later, is actually called Gorgur and belongs to the family. His brilliant return to Iceland is expected, but when he actually arrives one day, it turns out that Hólm leads a very modest life in Denmark at the expense of the local shipowner, Danebrogsmann and grocer Jon Gudmunsen and his son, the wholesaler and commander Gvendur Gudmunsen . The legend of the world star Garðar Hólm, who appears on all major stages around the globe in honor of his Icelandic homeland, and which has been woven around Hólm by the merchants and financial magnates for years, turned out to be a dubious PR measure for the business of the "sponsors" and patrons ", on which the supposed singer of world renown ultimately broke. In truth, Hólm didn't have the slightest hint of voice or talent. As a schoolboy, Álfgrímur himself was hired by the aged pastor Sira Jon when there was no one else to sing at the funerals of the poor. The author assigns a central key role in the novel to the wooden turnstile that separates the Brekkukot from the rest of the world. If the old, sinking world of the simple, honest and god-fearing tadpole fisherman can be found on the courtyard side, who sees the human being at the center of all thought and action, the modern early capitalist path is already dawning outside, which regards humans only as a means to an end either uses it or drops it depending on profitability. Although the brekkukot goes down in the last lines of the novel, it still survives along with its inviolable integrity in the person of the narrator Álfgrímur. Laxness, who laid out Álfgrímur's path in life as both a parallel and an alternative to Garðar Hólms, thus awards the ethical concept of Brekkukot the victory: In contrast to his alter ego Garðar Hólm, Álfgrímur von Gudmunsen did not allow himself to be with one Lure a scholarship contract for the planned study in Denmark, as by accepting Gudmunsen's very tempting offer he would inevitably have become ultimately fatally dependent on the representatives of the market and finance for Garðar Hólm. After the final failure of Hólms, Gudmundsson looked for a suitable substitute, which he believed to have found cheap in the person of Álfgrímur. What Gudmunsen did not suspect, however, was that Álfgrímur had something that Hólm lacked: the unconditional love of his grandparents. In order to make this study possible for him, his grandparents had sold the Brekkukot to Gudmunsen and with this sacrifice of early Christian character secured the independence and thus the future of Álfgrímur. While the corrupted Hólm was being carried to the grave by Sira Jon, Álfgrímur Hansen with his straightforward, unambitious and unpretentious nature developed into a writer of world renown who succeeded in making his homeland, the Brekkukot with all its values and ideals, a literary monument of To set duration and stock.
background
The model for the Brekkukot farm was the Melkot farm, where Guðrún Klængsdóttir, the great-aunt of Halldór Laxness, also lived. His mother grew up in Melkot and met her husband Guðjón Helgason. He worked in the yard.