Wayward Heroes (Gerpla, 1952), previously published as The Happy Warriors
This was the last novel by Laxness that split the nation into two camps, for and against. In it he chose to continue the work which, he said, had been begun by the author of The Saga of the Sworn Brothers: to expose hero worship and its combination of the absurd and the tragic. The Saga of the Sworn Brothers relates not only the adventures of Þorgeir Hávarsson and Þormóður Kolbrún’s-Poet, but also their admiration for King Olaf the Stout, St. Olaf of Norway. Þormóður puts his faith in the holy king and wants to render him the utmost service, but later realises he has believed in a false god. The character of Þormóður is very much a self-portrait, and St. Olaf on one level represents Joseph Stalin, even before his official denunciation by Khrushchev in 1956.
However, it was widely thought that Laxness was parodying the Sagas of Icelanders in this novel. One farmer is even said to have burned The Happy Warriors page by page (books burn badly!). Be that as it may, it demanded an enormous amount of background research into language, style and cultural history. At this stage in his career Laxness’s knowledge of medieval Icelandic literature was on a par with that of the leading scholars.
Available in English translation by Philip Roughton (Archipelago).