Independent People by Halldor Laxness

And now little Gvendur had grown up.

He was a promising young fellow, not unlike his father in build and carriage, but of a milder disposition, and yet, strangely enough, devoid of any great feeling for poetry or skill in its composition. That, however, was not considered a serious drawback, for by this time poetry had been written about most subjects worthy of a poem, some of it reasonably well, and then again the years of his adolescence had been less noted for poetry than for general prosperity on land and sea and all the manifold blessings of a heaven-sent World War. He was thickset, even a trifle clumsy, had fair hair seldom dipped or combed, and he was ruddy in the face, with eyes that, though good-natured and not over-sharp, were by no means void of resolution; but what is resolution? He was very strong. He was known as the freeholder of Summerhouses' only son, and such a title carried no small dignity in these days, when the price of lambs had risen as high as thirty or forty crowns, or even higher; when there was a cow being kept on the farm, and then another, and their presence was provoking no displays of temper, no sharpening of knives, but was apparently being accepted almost as a natural phenomenon; when, too, the former lone worker had become an employer of labour, of strangers who arrived spring and autumn from near and far and who, though demanding high wages and working only fourteen hours a day, were nevertheless placed much lower in the social scale than the crofter's son. One fine day he would inherit this little kingdom in the valley. From childhood upwards his interests, waking and sleeping, had been centred on the welfare of the farm; he loved the soil, as people say, though mostly without being conscious of it, and he was ready and willing to fight hardship and adversity, without wanting to overcome them by ideals. He had never asked for any other joy than the joy of knowing that the sheep were breeding with good result in their regular season, and of seeing them weather the winter strong enough to struggle out of the bogs in spring. Possibly that is the true joy. Though the loft might be growing a little distorted in shape, and the floor sagging deeply beneath the foot, he never considered it any special problem. Bjartur thought nothing more natural than that he should have such a son; what did puzzle him was why he shouldn't have had half a dozen of the same type, but why complain? The boy was now seventeen years old and the owner of six sheep, a pair of patent-leather shoes, a blue Sunday suit, and a watch and chain. Very few Icelanders are as rich as that when they are only seventeen. In his case it was the result of keeping on doing something, instead of sitting gabbing a lot of pointless rubbish on the flags outside, or of surrendering oneself to the power of nonsensical dreams, or even ghosts, as his brothers had done. And now of course they were both dead, each in his own fashion, whereas he was alive and the owner of six sheep.