Independent People by Halldor Laxness

FREQUENT visits were paid to Summerhouses that autumn, for the road to town from up-country lay through the valley. Daily, long processions of pack-horses plodded along the river banks, heading for the uplands on their way to Fjord, while the landed farmers who owned them rode there and back at their ease, leaving their farmhands in charge of the train. Sometimes these farmers, returning from town in a drunken condition, would wake up Bjartur and his wife in the middle of the night and, noisy and garrulous, would talk of poetry and wenching. They chanted lampoons in full-throated tones, sang patriotic songs, bawdy rhymes, and comic hymns, keeping up the merriment all night long till they spewed on the floor and went to sleep in the couple's own bed. Some of the farmers' wives would also leave the main road to pay a visit, threading their way carefully over the marshes on their gentle-paced amblers just to kiss their darling little Rosa of Summerhouses. One of these ladies was Madam Myri herself. She also was on her way to town, riding her horse Soti, and clad in a habit with a skirt that seemed wide enough to accommodate half the parish. She had an embroidered covering under her saddie, and a riding hat, and a veil; she lifted her veil half-way up her nose and kissed her little darling. Madam did Rosa the honor of drinking four cups of her coffee, and on being allowed to examine her provisions declared that the salt codfish would last till Christmas, and the rye meal till the New Year if economically used. She said that the settling of new land, a movement now popular in the country, was a charming movement. It was the spirit of the colonists. She said that on this movement depended the prosperity of the country in the future no less than it had done in the past This movement was called private enterprise and it alone could overcome various unwholesome political tendencies, now unfortunately growing more popular in the coastal towns, which aimed at dragging man down to the level of the dogs, both physically and spiritually. She said she considered those who forsook the land for the towns as lost souls; nothing but corruption awaited them. "How can anyone of healthy mind think of forsaking the dear flowers or the blue mountains that lift the heart of man to heaven? " she asked. "They, on the other hand, that take themselves a holding are true ministers of God; they foster and further life itself, the good and the beautiful. On the farmer in his valley rests the increase and the advancement of the Icelandic nation in the past, the present, and the future."

"Yes," said Rosa, "it is good to be independent. Freedom comes before everything."