Bio
Páll Kristinn Pálsson was born on April 22, 1956 in Reykjavík, and was brought up in the neighbouring town of Hafnarfjörður. After completing a commercial diploma from The Commercial College of Iceland in 1975 he went to highschool in Hafnarfjörður, graduating in 1978. He studied sociology and comparative literature at The University of Iceland in 1978-1986 and after that he took film studies at the University of Copenhagen until 1993. Páll has worked as a journalist from 1977 and publised numerous articles in newspapers and magazines. He has furthermore been the editor of papers for various societies and worked in the advertising business. He has also done various educational films and documentaries for video, some of them with director Hilmar Oddsson. Three of these films were nominated for an award at an international festival for educational and promotional films in Budapest in 1996.
Together with writer Árni Þórarinsson Páll has manuscripted two fictional television films and they have also written two crime novels together, the latter one published in 2006. Páll Kristinn’s first novel, Hallærisplanið (Dead-End Square), was published in 1982. Since then he has published novels, short stories and interview books.
Páll Kristinn Pálsson lives in Reykjavík. He is married with four children.
Publisher: JPV-útgáfa.
From the Author
From Páll Kristinn Pálsson
The voice on the phone was deep and determined, but the short and thin high school student that walked back and forth on the front steps when I opened the door seemed uneasy. I have often had the pleasure of people contacting me in order to discuss one of my books, both because of papers they are writing and out of pure interest, but this was the first time the goal was strictly to learn why I write. He said he was working on a paper on the subject, and that he would interview other authors as well. I however suspected right away that the underlying reason was that he was searching for answers about matters concerning him, that he carried the dream of becoming an author. When we had talked for a while, my suspicion was confirmed.
I invited him to have a seat in my living room, served us some coffee and said: “Well, what do you want me to tell you?” He looked at me with a serious face: “Was there some one thing, something special, that made you start writing, writing fiction?”
Yes, this was the big question, and I said: “When I started writing, I was about your age, and the reasons I gave myself for writing were many and varied. I suppose you can list most of the clichés that go around about the work of a writer. There is no need to go into that well known list, but much of what it says is true and that will always be the case. As for myself, I would later realize certain things about … well we can call it my personal characteristics that explain why I became a writer and not something else. And thus we can say that some one thing, something special, was in control. In other words, I realized that if I get extremely interested in something, it isn’t enough for me to enjoy what others have done in that field. I have to do it myself. I am by nature more of a doer than a receiver. When I was a young boy my main interest was football. Instead of limiting my interest to watching others play, I joined the F.H. club and competed at matches in Reykjanes and national ones. When I was a teenager, music was my thing. Instead of making do with listening to others, I formed bands and performed at concerts and dances. Around twenty, fiction became my main interest, and instead of just reading books by other people, I started writing my own. For me, giving is better than receiving. For me, writing is better than reading.” He still looked at me with this serious face, so I added in a joking tone: “It’s a good thing I didn’t become interested in space travels. It’s not that easy getting into that travel business.” He didn’t even smile, but asked: “But how do you become a writer? What do you have to do, what do you have to know?”
There it was! I said: “You become a writer by writing and writing more. There is no other way. Even if people use different methods, the path is always the same: to write. Preferably, you would have to know everything about every single thing, which no one does, but apart from that this is about intuition and imagination. The latter in fact has no limit; the imagination can even make us into astronauts. And then I would like to emphasize the importance of the joy of creating. You cannot become a writer unless you enjoy creating.”
He nodded his head, as if the answer he wanted was there. We were silent for a while, and then I said: “What did you say your name is again?” “Borgar Sigurðsson.” “Yes, that’s right. Which reminds me about one other thing that pays off [in Icelandic pays off is “borgar sig”; transl. note] for those who want to become writers. Read as many good books as you can. And you of course know where to go for that.” “Where? Yes … or no?” “The city library!”
Páll Kristinn Pálsson.
Translated by Kristín Viðarsdóttir.
About the Author
The Stories of Páll Kristinn Pálsson
The books of Páll Kristinn Pálsson, who at first only used Páll Pálsson as his author name, follow the air of the time they are written in, and they also bear witness to Páll’s development as an author. He wrote his first published novel at the age of 26, and the newest one when this is written at 43. The first two novels, which were published only one year apart, are more youthful than the later ones, where the tone is more serious.
Hallærisplanið (Dead-End Square) from 1982 is Páll’s first book. The story takes place during a few winter days in Reykjavík. It is dark and cold, the Reykjavik Lake, Tjörnin, is frozen solid, but still the square where the teenagers hang out and the route they walk or drive around it, is full of people. This hangout is the only place where young people in Reykjavík can meet. A few boys get hold of liquor, throw a party, go to the Square, come on to girls, throw up and get into fights. They are too young to get into bars and girls do not even look at boys unless they are older than them, have a car, or preferably both:
He was quick to sit back down when he saw who had arrived: ELLI the matchstick. Elli – who was called Matchstick because he had put his grandmother’s wooden house on fire when he was only five years old, but also because he was small and skinny – was a thirty year old friend of Tóta and Magnea. He was one of the toughest guys on the route; always first to show up on the Square every night and the last one to leave. Elli however never drove himself. He always got some guys who had just been licensed, but had no car, to drive the Match-Box for him, and sat himself in the back surrounded by small chicks that did whatever it took to get a ride and some booze. Elli never dated girls older than sixteen. (Hallærisplanið, p. 63-64)
Elli is the boys’ rival when it comes to picking up girls. His age and the fact that he owns a car however put him in a far stronger position. The girls are in fact only using Elli to get hold of some alcohol, but the boys do not know that, and probably not Elli either.
The main character, Eiríkur, has parents who drink too much and he dreads the times when they “have a drink.” He tries to stay out as long as he can to avoid the situation:
He dreaded coming home. The bunch was without doubt looped. The place was probably upside down. The punch done and everyone drinking moonshine. (Hallærisplanið, p. 100)
The life at home is thus no better than the one downtown. Therefore, he may as well just stay there.
The life of the teenagers evolves around getting drunk, looks, the other sex, and being cool. They find school, their teachers and their parents, boring:
Don’t you think school sucks?
Yes.
The teachers are so boring.
Yes.
They never say anything that really matters.
No.
Don’t do anything but threat you and --.
No.
Still, recess is fine.
Yes.
Then you at least can chat with the bunch.
Yes.
And have some cola and candy.
Yes.
(Hallærisplanið, p. 71)
The conversations are empty, but they still confirm a common experience; it all sucks.
The book is written when punk and new wave, the Hallærisplanið square, and the singer Bubbi were popular:
He saw endless cars in parking spaces and waiting in lines, beeping and whistling blaring rock music through wound-down windows girls hanging half-way through the same windows kissing tough-guy drivers waving bottles of booze in one hand behind their backs arranging things for their friends the sprawling mass of kids normal kids abnormal kids big punks mini punks heavy metal rockers new wave rockers disco freaks and other freaks young kids old kids tramps cops ... (Hallærisplanið, p. 85)
This is a pretty good description of the Square and the route. One big mixture and the experience is made stronger by the number of people.
Páll’s second book is the novel Beðið eftir strætó (Waiting for the Bus). It came out a year later than Hallærisplanið and is in much way similar. The story takes place at the bus station Hlemmur in Reykjavík during the punk era. All kinds of young kids who are using drugs gather there, as well as the local drunks. The book gives an interesting, but harsh, social description:
He thought about being like “these ordinary” kids who got drunk in the scout movement while camping by a fire instead of being a punk and drug addict in some lousy bus stop. He had never meant to get this deep into drugs it just happened little by little first it was so exciting the pills the trips the needles and then before you knew it you couldn’t face the day unless you were high ... But he had never used glue only young kids trying things out did that he went straight to real drugs ... He had gotten used to this he didn’t want to be different, he wanted it like this, he didn’t want to be “ordinary”. – Still some day when he would feel he had had enough he would quit this bullshit and leave the place, this was a lousy place anyway...
(Beðið eftir strætó, p. 63)
This calls to mind the film Trainspotting by Danny Boyle (1996), which describes the life of drug addicts in Scotland. The life offered is so empty that is better just to dope. But the drugs and the bus stop are only supposed to be an in-between thing, until all of a sudden some ordinary life takes over, only much better.
Characters from Hallærisplanið come into this story a little bit, mostly to make life more difficult for the punk kids. Everyone hates them anyway.
Sometimes people, mostly housewives from the west part though, came and told them off.
Bitching:
Why don’t you get off your feet and do something useful you good for nothing bums! You are a black stain on society!
Like one girl who was begging for bus money and one woman just lost it and said:
Ha, Icelandic children begging!
Sometimes they pretended not to hear this but if they were in a bad mood they bumped into the women and pushed them around, – and for some time it was cool to spit at people, people walked by and they spit at them...
(Beðið eftir strætó, p. 16)
From time to time, the police shows up and busts the place, sometimes because there has been a stream of complaints about the teenagers at Hlemmur, or because they are suspected of taking part in some petty crime. No one trusts these teenagers, and they trust no one.
Páll’s third book is quite different from his first two. The novel Á hjólum (On Wheels) from 1991 is a coming of age story in the best sense.
The story tells of Jón, a 24 year old man who lived the high life, but is paralyzed after an accident. His mental turmoil, when he finds out how radically his life has changed, is very convincing. Various things in his surroundings do make life easier for him, close friends and very rich parents, and thus it cannot be said that the story tries to represent the conditions of handicapped people at large. But within the story, things add up, the main emphasize is on Jón’s inner life, his desperation, denial, frustration and dreams. Jón is a very realistic and convincing character.
Jón’s dreams often focus on manly activities, such as steering a ship or cleaning cement from boards that have been used when building houses in cold and harsh conditions. They are also nightmarish at times, where innocent golf balls turn into a threat. All that which before was positive and taken for granted, is now sublime or dangerous:
I am cleaning out nails and cement from boards with force, without gloves and only wearing a green tank top. But even if the timber stack is bigger and higher than reaches the eye, it offers little or no shelter. The snow keeps coming down and in between the big and wet flakes, orange colored golf balls fly around, following me as if I am a practice target for a flock of invisible golfers...
(Á hjólum, p. 44)
At the start of the story, Jón is in fact playing golf, and his goal becomes being able to do so again. He nevertheless slowly starts to realize that golfing, as well as his other hobbies, were his way of avoiding taking part in the ordinary life of his peers:
It wasn’t only being paralyzed and the fear of probably never standing on my feet again that bothered me, but the growing and gnawing feeling that I had thrown my life away. I was becoming twenty five years old and I had always been under my parent’s wing, always lived with them, always worked for my dad – and even if I had the chance to do whatever I wanted, I had never truly made use of it. I had never seriously thought about what I wanted to become, what I wanted to do with my life.
(Á hjólum, p. 108-9)
From then on, he sets himself some goals, which are now limited by his physical condition rather than his lack of interest as before. The path is however not straight and narrow and he falls back into his former careless way of life.
The story is told from a very personal first person point of view. Often, the narrator corrects what he has already said or mentions that he has forgotten to talk about events that are important in connection with what comes next. This makes the narrative more like an oral one, and thus the style rather special:
- And Ægir rolled in in his wheelchair. (Yes, I realize now that I haven’t mentioned the name of the sailor from the Westman Islands before, but his name is actually Ægir, Ægir Guðlaugsson.)
(Á hjólum, p. 64)
The author seems to have made himself pretty familiar with conditions in Icelandic hospitals and one can almost smell these places when reading the book.
Vesturfarinn (Going West) from 1994 is yet another novel different from Páll’s previous ones. The story takes place in modern Copenhagen, and the Prague Spring is also in focus, since the protagonist and his wife are immigrants from Czechoslovakia.
Stephan is an older man who lives with his disabled wife and makes up stories about what happens to the beer bottles after they leave the factory he works in. His dreams, or imaginations, seem to materialize in Rosa, who lives downstairs, but she is a closed book for him, however much he tries to approach her.
In this book, the author tackles sorrow, anxiety and desperation. And not least how these feelings are repressed. Historical issues as well, like the Prague Spring, and social ones, such as prostitution, old age, and even death. And always the Promised Land; the reunion of the family. Stephan’s sister, Teresa, lives in New York, and his thoughts are often with her and he longs for them to see each other more frequently:
On the wall above the table, a big photograph from the Carl Bridge hangs, connecting the banks of the Moldow River in the heart of Prague. They had won the picture at a lottery held by Danish supporters of Czech refuges and at the same time they came in possession of the icon of the holy mother with the infant that hung at the head of Maria’s bed. In between the glass and the frame, all around the bridge, they had put family photos, mostly old brownish or black-and-white ones – and in the right top corner Stephan has now put the postcard from Teresa.
(Vesturfarinn, p. 33)
Maria, Stephan’s wife, on the other hand always aimed at moving back home, but then decided to stay when the opportunity to leave finally came, knowing that they would probably no longer feel at home in the old country. At that time, her health has started to fail, also making it difficult to move to another continent. This is a disappointment for Stephan, who longs to unite the family. Still, he says nothing to Maria. He doesn’t want to show her anger, because of her illness and their common grief. Instead, he directs all his repressed feelings towards their neighbor, Mrs. Zachariasen.
Without meaning to, he has started to grumble – to argue within himself with Mrs. Zachariasen, shoots at her all the poisonous comments that have piled up for twenty years and even if she regrets everything in his imagination and hangs her head in shame, he shows no mercy and relentlessly goes over the times when she has been too much for him
(Vesturfarinn, p. 77)
The neighbor has without doubt not done anything to cause Stephan’s fantasy, but he needs an outlet for his frustration, even if only by imagining things – for his frustration caused by Maria’s endless complaints, negative comments and distrust. He bends to her controlling nature, but suffers deeply, even if he is so closed off emotionally that he hardly realizes it himself. He tries to control the situation, but his effort seems to bear more witness of his anxiety than reason:
Maria’s complaints, that followed him down the steps every morning when he went to work, echoed in his mind somewhere on the way home and often got him into trouble, especially if he was not supposed to run any errand but felt like there was something he had forgotten.
(Vesturfarinn, p. 18)
He tries to win the trust of the prostitute Rosa, but she doesn’t trust him and disregards his friendship. After this tiny effort to get close to another human being, he has become so bottled up with feelings that he finally opens up to complete strangers on an airplane:
And when Stephan falls silent for a moment and turns his face to the window, Jón calls a flight attendant and orders another round, but Margrét Stella encourages him to go on. The years in Copenhagen and Bent and the work at the brewery and the neighbors and Teresa and Bill and Maria’s illness – and when the flight attendants start preparing for the landing in Keflavík, he is so light hearted that he thinks to himself that now he knows how religious people feel after confession. (Vesturfarinn, 103)
Later, he becomes full of shame. He feels ashamed for having let go of himself in this way, for he evaluates his feelings from other people’s points of view and thinks they are worthless:
There he had been, going on and on about himself and his sorrows and.... What must they have thought?
(Vesturfarinn, p. 104)
He is in the same position as before, first and foremost thinks about others and doesn’t feel worthy of being in control of his life, his expression or his emotions.
Burðargjald greitt (Postage Paid) from 1999 is a collection of short stories. It contains interesting thoughts about cause and effect, supernatural things and premonitions. Does a made up story become reality or is it a suspicion that comes true? Is the story an omen? Or does it make things happen? In “Bruni” (Fire), these musings take place in a story about a writer who hears a story about a Danish writer. The Danish one had written a story, which he had been told, where a child suffers a terrible death. Shortly after this, his own child dies in exactly the same way as the child in his story:
“I am wondering how these events are connected”, he finally said a little hesitantly... “I mean, did the writer’s decision to use the former event in his novel have anything to do with the other taking place?”
(Burðargjald greitt, p. 80)
These are haunting questions. The questions about fait are interesting and it is clear that the author has come a long way from the exhaust-smell at the Square’s parking lot.
Bára Magnúsdóttir 2002.
Translated by Kristín Viðarsdóttir.
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