Paradise Reclaimed by Halldor Laxness

Icelanders reap justice This book does not profess to give the history of the festivities which were held at Þingvellir to commemorate the thousandth anniversary of the settlement of Iceland* and to welcome the Danish king. Detailed accounts of these events were compiled at the time, and later some excellent books were written. But there were one or two not entirely irrelevant incidents, in the judgement of some, which never received attention in those worthy publications. This is the story of one such incident, only to be found in some of the less significant books, which are none the less true for all that.

But first, a few words on a topic that people now are apt to overlook: there was a time once when Icelanders, despite the fact that they were the most indigent nation in Europe, all traced their ancestry back to kings. Indeed, in their literature they have given life to many kings whom other nations had made little effort to remember and who would otherwise have been consigned to oblivion in this world and the next. Most people in Iceland traced their lineage back to the kings who were written about in the sagas; some only claimed descent from warrior-kings or sea-kings, others to remote petty kings in the valleys of Norway and elsewhere in Scandinavia, or to the leaders of the Norse warriors who served in the Varangian Guard under the emperor in Constantinople; * but a few claimed descent from kings who, it can be proved, were actually crowned. No farmer was considered worth his salt if he could not trace his genealogy back to Harald hárfagri (Fine-Hair)* or his namesake Harald hilditönn (War-Tooth).* All Icelandic genealogies can be traced back to the Ynglings and the Scyldings*-if there happens to be anyone left in the world who knows who these folk were. It was child's play for most of the Icelanders to prove kinship with Sigurd the Dragon-Killer, King Gautrekur of Gotaland,* and Ganger-Hrolf; * but those of yet more recondite erudition could claim connection with Charlemagne and Frederick Barbarossa, or could work their way right back to Agamemnon, noblest of the Greeks, the conqueror of Troy. Learned foreigners called the Icelanders the greatest genealogists in Europe after royal pedigrees had been denounced as pomp and vanity as a result of the French Revolution.