Burial Rites

Just finished reading Burial Rites by Hannah Kent.

One of the lit bloggers I read recommended it. (I’m afraid I don’t remember who. Must keep better track next time.)

Anyway, there’s apparently been a fair amount of interest in the book, and a cursory search of the web finds numerous blog reviews, but I wasn’t aware of all this when I started reading it. (The things you don’t know when you don’t pay attention to mainstream/traditional media…)

I’d love to know what Icelandic readers think of the book. Hannah Kent conducted extensive research to create her work, and from the author’s notes and acknowledgements in the book, it is clear that she had a lot of support and assistance from people in Iceland during the research and writing process. The blurb states:

In northern Iceland, 1829, Agnes Magnúsdóttir is condemned to death for her part in the brutal murder of two men. Agnes is sent to wait out the months leading up to her execution on the farm of district officer Jón Jónsson, his wife and their two daughters. Horrified to have a convicted murderess in their midst, the family avoid contact with Agnes. Only Tóti, the young assistant priest appointed her spiritual guardian, will listen to Agnes’s side of the story. As the year progresses and the hardships of rural life force everyone to work side by side, the family’s attitude to Agnes starts to change, until one winter night, she begins her whispered confession to them, and they realize that all is not as they had assumed.

Based on a true story, Burial Rites is an astonishing and moving novel about the truths we claim to know and the ways in which we interpret what we’re told. In beautiful, cut-glass prose, Hannah Kent portrays Iceland’s formidable landscape, in which every day is a battle for survival, and asks, how can one woman hope to endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others?

Hannah Kent’s writing is simple and stark, and very effective. She painted a very clear picture of what life might have been like in that part of the world. I enjoyed her descriptions of the homes (made of earth and turf I believe), the country, and of course the weather.

From what I’ve read, not much is known of the life of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, but I think Hannah Kent depicted Agnes very sensitively. Agnes, once the date for her execution had been announced:

Those who are not being dragged to their deaths cannot understand how the heart grows hard and sharp, until it is a nest of rocks with only an empty egg in it. I am barren; nothing will grow from me any more. I am the dead fish drying in the cold air. I am the dead bird on the shore. I am dry, I am not certain I will bleed when they drag me out to meet the axe. No, I am still warm, my blood still howls in my veins like the wind itself, and it shakes the empty nest and asks where all the birds have gone, where have they gone?

I hadn’t thought much about pre-industrial Iceland prior to reading this book. It introduced to me the baðstofa, which according to Wikipedia, is a “heated sauna room” which also served as sleeping quarters. (It has some similarities to the Chinese kang, I think.) I can imagine how cold Northern winters must be! The turf homes were also intriguing – I hadn’t thought about the lack of timber in parts of Iceland, necessitating the use of other building materials.

I loved the descriptions of the turf houses, even if actually living in some of them might have been somewhat unappealing:

Once the men from Stóra-Borg had eaten and retired to their tents for the night, Margrét picked up the dirty wooden bowls and returned inside. She smoothed the blankets over her sleeping daughters, and walked slowly around the small room, bending down to pick up the strands of dry grass that had fallen from the turf layered between the rafters. She despaired at the dust in the room. The walls had once been panelled with Norwegian wood, but Jón had removed the boards to pay a debt owed to a farmer across the valley. Now the bare walls of turf collapsed their dirt and grass onto the beds in summer, and grew dank in winter, issuing moulds that dripped onto the woollen blankets and infested the lungs of the household. The home had begun to disintegrate, a hovel that had spread its own state of collapse to its inhabitants. Last year two servants had died from diseases wrought by the damp.

I also loved the Icelandic names, even if I’m sure my reading pronunciation is mangling them beyond all recognition.

People:
Natan
Sigrídur
Thorvardur
Steinvör
Sigurlaug

Place names:
Illugastadir
Breidabólstadur
Vesturhóp
Húnavatn

Scandinavia is a region of the world I have never visited, but I seem to have read quite a few books by Scandinavian authors over the years, and as a result I have many vivid images of the countries in that part of the world. I’d dearly love to visit in the Northern summer.

Highly recommended. One of the best books I’ve read this year.