Ugla Falsdóttir, a young girl from the north, has gone to Reykjavík to work in service as a maid for a member of parliament and his wife, and also to learn the organ so that she can play in the country church that her father is building. But Ugla is soon drawn into the maelstrom of great events. Búi Árland, the member of parliament for the rural constituency she comes from, hosts secret meetings where, she gradually realises, influential figures discuss “selling Iceland” and stationing American troops in the country. Thus the story is a direct chronicle of the events of the day, even though Iceland did not join NATO until a year after Atom Station was published.
The return of the earthly remains of 19th-century poet Jónas Hallgrímsson (the leading figure of romantic nationalism) from Copenhagen to Iceland is satirised mercilessly in Atom Station, and many details of contemporary life in Reykjavík are woven into the text. In this novel Laxness also coined the term “atom poet”, which although originally used to mean “a poet who writes about atom bombs” was soon adopted in the sense “modernist” which it has retained ever since.
Available in English translation by Magnus Magnusson (Vintage Classics).