Independent People by Halldor Laxness

MEALS in this family were eaten as a rule in silence and in an atmosphere of almost furtive solemnity, as though some dark impressive rite were being performed. Each and every one huddled intently over the plate on his knees and picked the bones from his fish with a precision worthy of a watchmaker, or, holding the bowl up under his chin, swallowed his porridge with undivided attention. It was marvellous how much porridge the boy's father could guzzle in a very short time. The old woman, her back turned on the others, would eat, without a knife, near the fire. For the morning meal there was always hot oatmeal porridge, black pudding, a slice of bread, the cold leavings of yesterday's salt fish, and coffee warmed up and served with a piece of sugar. The sugar was the object of most anticipation. The mother, who had not the appetite of a small bird, would raise herself with difficulty to a half-sitting position in bed and get herself some medicine from one of the eighty bottles supplied her by her Member of Parliament. Her face was grey and flaccid, her eyes large and fevered; she could not chew because of an infection of her mouth. Sometimes the youngest son felt that it was unkind of his father to sit right in front of her there and slop so much porridge into himself when she was nibbling at her bite of fish with such obvious distaste and swallowing the food with a pitiful shudder. Never did the children long so much for a nice juicy piece of meat or a thick slice of rye bread and dripping as when they had finished eating.

After the morning meal Bjartur would lie down on the bed, a childish habit, snore cruelly for a moment or two, then spring up with the eyes of a man dogged by incredible peril and disappear to look to his sheep. A hut, now full to capacity, had been built at one end of the croft for the ewes, but the lambs and the two-year-olds were still housed under the same roof as the family. The elder brothers swept the mangers, raked out the muck on the floor, and cleared pathways round the house, which the stubbornly falling snow filled up again. The sheep had to negotiate eighteen steps cut in the snow to climb out of the drift in front of the door, the folk after them, and a cleft had also to be cut in the drift over the window to admit daylight.