Paradise Reclaimed by Halldor Laxness

Meanwhile, Bishop Þjóðrekur had been travelling around Iceland for two years preaching the faith to people and immersing them, after spending a winter in Denmark composing a pamphlet for the Icelanders and having it printed. In Iceland he spent most of his time in areas where no Mormons had been before; his preaching provoked very little interest and even fewer beatings. As regards his pamphlet, this Apostle has declared that it is the only religious book which has been hawked around Iceland by special permission of the Danish king directly against the will of the populace, particularly the sheriffs, and the first book composed by an Icelander in Icelandic in which the religious ideas were not all on loan from the Danish king. He said he never grudged the Danish king's destitute slaves in Iceland the beatings they gave him; their blows affected him about as much as when a pauper beats dried fish up in Langanes. Of King Kristian Wilhelmsson, Bishop Þjóðrekur has said in print that the king was the only person in the kingdom who considered the Prophet Joseph's authorized missionary his equal in matters of faith, and for that reason he had Bishop Þjóðrekur's undivided respect; indeed, this king was a countryman of the spiritual father of the Danes, Luther himself. Þjóðrekur the Mormon had now been beaten up so often and in so many places in Iceland without any result that most people, one might say, could no longer be bothered with it. Wherever Bishop Þjóðrekur took jobs during his missionary tour he earned everyone's respect, according to the weekly Þjóðólfur. The Mormons have a law, instituted by God through the mouth of the Prophet, that the Apostles of the Gospel should not set forth with a purse, but should earn their own keep on missionary journeys. Bishop Þjóðrekur had been a labourer for two summers up north, and worked on a fishing-boat for a season in the east and one in the west.

Towards the end of the second summer that Bishop Þjóðrekur spent in Iceland on this occasion, he remembered that he had an important errand to perform south in Steinahlíðar before he left the country-to deliver to a woman there a packet of needles, etc. This he had promised to some man or other in Copenhagen nearly three years previously. It so happened that he had to pass through this district on his way west at the time of the autumn round-ups. He had nothing with him except his hat wrapped in grease-proof paper according to American custom; in his knapsack there was nothing but a shirt, a rye-loaf and a little candy for children. His pamphlets were all used up. His topboots were still in as good condition as they had ever been. It is said that on rugged mountain-tracks with razor-sharp stones, and also on the trackless lava wastes, over sands and through swamps, even when he waded across rivers, he always took off his topboots, tied them together by their laces, slung them over his shoulder and walked barefoot. This earned him respect in Iceland.