Independent People by Halldor Laxness

WAS it surprising if most people considered that Bjartur of Summerhouses would have been much better off without the house he had built? Then what about the Fell King and his house? Did he fare any better, may I ask? No; the truth was that Bjartur's house, though innocent of furniture and so far uninhabitable, was a veritable fount of happiness compared with the house that the Fell King had built and fitted out at such expense. For whereas Bjartur's house continued to stand there by virtue of the loan he had raised in the savings bank, and his sheep to pay off the interest stipulated, the supports that sustained the Fell King's house collapsed completely, engulfing the owner in sudden ruin. It was a fine house, this of the Fell King's, so fine, in fact, and so well furnished that it might be designated, along with the mansion at Rauthsmyri itself, as a dwelling such as civilized human beings need not be ashamed of living in; but the lamentable outcome was that no sooner had the Fell King brought it to such a desirable pitch than he was thrown out neck and crop and forced to flee. People simply can't afford to live like civilized human beings, as has been so often demonstrated before and will be again; even middle-class farmers can't afford it, and in a boom year at that. The only sensible course for ordinary folk, the only one that pays, is to live in a little hut on the same cultural level as the Negroes of central Africa and to let the merchant keep a flicker of life going in them, as the Icelandic nation has been doing for a thousand years now. People take more upon themselves than they can manage if they aim higher. True, it had been quite usual in the old days for people to owe the merchant money and to be refused credit when the debt had grown too big. It had likewise been nothing uncommon for people thus denied sustenance to die of starvation, but such a fate, surely, was infinitely preferable to being ensnared by the banks, as people are nowadays, for at least they had lived like independent men, at least they had died of hunger like free people. The mistake lies in assuming that the helping hand proffered by the banks is as reliable as it is seductive, when in actual fact the banks may be relied upon only by those few exceptionally great men who can afford to owe anything from one to five millions. So about the same time as Bjartur sold his better cow to raise money for wages and paid a thousand crowns off the loan and six hundred as interest by making inroads on his stock of sheep, the Fell King sold his farm to a speculator for the amount of the mortgages with which it was encumbered and fled to live in a hovel in the town, yes, and thought himself lucky to escape. The National Bank had passed into Ingolfur Arnarson's control and had become a State bank on the basis of a huge government loan from England; remissions of and concessions on loans were out of the question now, unless it was a matter of millions, and the farmers' produce had fallen disastrously in price.

Yes, the bottom fell out of everything, the autumn that Bjartur's house was one year old. The war's blessings were no longer operative as far as trade and prices were concerned, for the foreigners had begun rearing sheep of their own again instead of killing men, worse luck. Icelandic mutton was once more one of the world's superfluous commodities. No one was asking for wool these days, the foreigners' sheep had started growing wool of their own again. Bjartur had to stand by and watch a hundred of these unwelcome Icelandic sheep melt away simply to pay the interest and the part payment of his loan. But this loss he took with the same unflinching fortitude as he had previously shown in the face of famine, spectres, and merchants, complaining to no one. The walls of his prison of debt were no doubt growing the thicker the lower his produce sank in price, but he was determined to keep on running his head against those walls as long as there was a drop of blood or a particle of brain left in it. This was a new phase in the crofter's eternal struggle for independence, this fight against the normal economic conditions that must of necessity return when the abnormal prosperity of war has passed away; when the unnatural optimism that has betrayed the hut-dwelling peasant into an act of folly so imbecile as to propose living in a house has evaporated and left not a trace behind. He returned to his senses, now that the boom years were over, to find himself stuck in the bog that, with infinite labour, he had managed to avoid in the hard years; the free man of the famine years had become the interest-slave of the boom years. It seemed after all that in their freedom from debt, their dead children, their dirt, their hunger, the lean years had been more dependable than the boom years with all their coquettish lending establishments, their house.