Icelandic cabin book

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Icelandic Cabin Book is a novel by the writer Werner Helwig .

content

The first-person narrator goes on an adventurous trip to Iceland with his friend, the fisherman and bridge builder Mister Brygg, in the 1950s. The journey is made with an old Studebaker via Denmark, Sweden and Norway and then by ship. In the interior of the island, you continue on foot, by boat on the Myvatn and with the help of the old farmer Geirr and Icelandic horses over the second largest glacier on the island, the Langjökull , where the real events are temporarily transformed into the unreal realm of Icelandic nature spirits.

“... whose radiation of cold forced us into our coats. It was night before we reached Langjökull. ” (P. 175)

Landscape on Langjökull glacier

The action is interrupted by numerous hair-raising stories by the two friends and by the stories of the locals about the mythical secrets of Iceland.

History of origin

Werner Helwig spent the Second World War in Liechtenstein and was prohibited from publishing in Switzerland during this time. He published the novel in 1950 under the pseudonym Einar Halvid. The artist Richard Seewald , who also emigrated, illustrated the cover. It was not until 1961 that the novel appeared in Germany - initially only as a paperback edition. In 1983 Limes-Verlag brought out a newly reviewed book edition.

reception

The 1983 edition was favorably received by critics. The Rheinische Post noted that "the new edition of the book, which is full of nostalgic experiences, was long overdue" and the literary critic Peter Jokostra particularly praised the description of the glacier hike: "This is where Helwig's linguistic art reaches its climax" and rated the novel in the daily newspaper Die Welt as a “masterpiece of essayistic reflective prose” . The writer colleague Karl Krolow attested in a detailed book review that the author had "brilliantly succeeded" in the transition from reality to the "second reality" of the old Icelandic sagas .

Text analysis and literary evaluation

The book is not a travel guide, it is more of an adventure book, the first part of which, the journey to Iceland, is written in a language that is unusual for Helwig. The built-in narratives and dialogues of the first-person narrator and Mister Brygg are full of humor, sarcastic ridicule and tongue-in-cheek exaggeration. It is not for nothing that there is a motto from Grimm's fairy tales at the beginning of the book : "And if you have just told this, your mouth is still warm" .

In the second part, the language intensifies, which is often determined by impressive and poetic images. “Sleep let its loose hair fall over us,” says Helwig, describing the condition of the two hikers when, exhausted, they were able to sleep again in the dry for the first time, and continues: “Long, loose hair, in which ancient water ran down, always down , always down into the eternally unexplored depth ” . The art of the novel consists in the fact that it is able to gradually pull the reader, just like the two protagonists , into another reality through the narrative power of the Icelanders with their elves , trolls and saga worlds, so that the transition into the non-real first is hardly noticed.

Excursus: Sagas
At the end of the book a Mr. Kristmundsohn tells the two of them about the mentality of the Icelanders and their sagas in the capital Reykjavík. The author also elicited the Egils saga of Skallagrímsson from a Kristmundson in 1972 in his 44-page “unplatonic dialogue” with the title Skald Egil by cleverly asking ; in other texts Helwig dealt with the Icelandic sagas.

Richard Bersch describes the book or the journey as a novel of initiation . The climax, the ascent of the glacier, gives the narrator "an experience of death that immediately turns into a longing for life". The journey follows the pattern of an underworld journey, as it is known in Greek and Celtic mythology .

Quote

“The horses steamed and pecked us with the smell of their sweat. We held out the saddle for seven hours. Then a sting in the thighs began to torment us. Barely started, every conversation died at its roots. A curlew accompanied our ride incessantly, fluttering up in front of us, settling down on our path and eyeing us curiously until we were close enough to cause it to rise again. "

- Werner Helwig

literature

Text output

  • 1950: Diana Verlag, Zurich. Under the pseudonym: Einar Halvid. Cover drawing by Richard Seewald
  • 1961: Diana-Verlag, Konstanz and Stuttgart. Diana p. No. 61
  • 1983: Limes Verlag, Wiesbaden and Munich. Revised new edition. ISBN 3-8090-2200-4

Secondary literature

  • Paul Huebner : Icelandic cabin book. An overdue new edition . In: Rheinische Post from May 30, 1983
  • Peter Jokostra : About elves, trolls and archipelago mermaids . In: Die Welt from June 11, 1983
  • Karl Krolow : Joy in adventure. Werner Helwig's Icelandic cabin book . In: Darmstädter Echo from April 16, 1983

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Jokostra: Of elves, trolls and archipelago mermaids . In: Die Welt from June 11, 1983
  2. ^ Karl Krolow: Joy in adventure. Werner Helwig's Icelandic cabin book . In: Darmstädter Echo from April 16, 1983
  3. ↑ Quoted from the book edition (see text editions)
  4. ↑ Skald Egil. An unplatonic dialogue . In: New German Issues . No. 4. 1972
  5. ↑ For example: The world of sagas . In: Mercury . No. 201. 1964
  6. ↑ Richard Bersch: Pathos and Myth. Studies on Werner Helwig's work with a bio-bibliographical appendix. Lang, Frankfurt am Main, Bern, New York, Paris 1992. (Studies on Literature from Trier, Volume 22), ISBN 3-631-44541-5
  7. ^ Text edition (1983), page 141

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