Jón úr Vör

Patreksfjörður

The writer Jón úr Vör (real name: Jón Jónsson ) (born January 21, 1917 at the Vatneyri farm on Patreksfjörður , Iceland ; † March 4, 2000 in Kópavogur , Iceland) was an Icelandic poet , editor and librarian.

Life

Jón Jónsson, who later called himself Jón úr Vör as a writer, was born into a poor family with a total of 15 children.

When the mother's health was poor, the 2½-year-old Jón was given to foster parents on the Geirseyri farm. They took great affection for him and he stayed with them, even when the mother was better. But he was still able to maintain a close relationship with his actual family.

He was first in elementary school in the nearest town Patreksfjörður in the southern West Fjords of Iceland. Then he went to the secondary school Núpsskóli for two years a little further north on Dýrafjörður . During the holidays he worked at home, a. a. while fishing and bought volumes of poetry from his first wages, and a. Svartar fjaðrir by Davíð Stefánsson .

He too began to write poetry at a young age. At the age of 18 he moved to Reykjavík and was able to publish his first own poetry there. In Reykjavík he got by with a variety of jobs and attended evening school at the same time. He worked z. B. as a seller and also in road construction.

From 1938 Jón stayed abroad for study purposes, in Sweden, also in Switzerland and traveled through Western and Central Europe. At the beginning of the Second World War, however, he returned to Iceland.

There he worked as an editor and radio station, including the cultural magazine Útvarpstíðindi .

Jón married and eventually settled in Kópavogur, where he continued to work as a publisher, editor and antiquarian, but above all as a librarian.

He died in 2000.

plant

His first volume of poetry, Ég ber að dyrum , came out in 1937 and was an immediate success. Sometimes he still suffered from homesickness for the West Fjords at that time. B. put it down in his poem Heim .

The second volume of poetry was Stund milli stríða and appeared in 1942.

After the war he stayed in Sweden again for a while, where he wrote poems that were published in the volume Þorpið (“The Village”) in 1946. An example is an excerpt from a poem in German translation

In Dýrafjörður

The last winter months

And do you remember the long

dairy days in the middle of winter

the last few months catch second choice,

the fountain house

and the clear song of the water jet,

Boats in their sheds,

covered with burlap,

Sheep on the bank

and cold feet

and evenings long like eternity itself,

often at that time was impatient

Catch weather waited and fresh

Fish for the pot. (...)

With these works he sparked heated literary discussions in his home country, as he had meanwhile turned to the open form and thus used neither rhymes nor a meter. This was still extremely unusual in Iceland at the time. In the meantime, the writer had also turned politically to the left. On the other hand, the poems were also published in translation in Sweden and were very well received there. As a result, the general attitude towards this writer and his work also changed in Iceland and he was recognized there from then on.

Jón úr Vör is one of the founders of the Icelandic Writers' Union . A poetry competition is now held annually in Kópavogur in and in his name.

In 1986 he was nominated for the Nordic Council's Literature Prize.

literature

Primary literature

• Þorpið - The village , by Jón úr Vör, translated from Icelandic by Sigrún Valbergsdóttir and Wolfgang Schiffer , with drawings by Kjartan Guðjónsson, Queich Verlag 2014, ISBN 978-3-939207-21-4

Web links

• Obituary in Morgunblaðið on March 15, 2000 (Icelandic)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Obituary in Morgunblaðið from March 15, 2000; Retrieved November 4, 2015
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k} Jón R. Hjálmarsson: Með þjóðskjáldum við þjóðveginn . Reykjavík 2004, 75-79
3. ↑ ^{a b} Icelandic poetry. Ed. S. Aðalsteinsdóttir, u. a. Berlin 2011, 222. ISBN 978-3-458-35754-4
4. ↑ Icelandic Poetry. Ed. S. Aðalsteinsdóttir, u. a. Berlin 2011, 92. ISBN 978-3-458-35754-4
5. ↑ http://rsi.is/2015/10/26/ljodstafur-jons-ur-vor-ljodasamkeppni-i-kopavogi-verdlaunafe-tvofaldad/ This regarding. Icelandic Writers' Union website (Rithöfundasamband Íslands); Retrieved November 4, 2015
6. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated November 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Nordic Council website; Retrieved November 4, 2015 

Note: Icelanders are referred to by their first name or first and last name, but not just their surname. Further information can be found under Icelandic personal name .