One of the main Icelandic avant-garde poets whose work led to the development of modernism in Icelandic literature is Jón úr Vör, although he himself was not a modernist. In his most famous book, Þorpid (The Village, 1946), he took poetic realism to its logical conclusion by dropping all such classical structure as rhyme and alliteration from his poetry. In what was no easy task in Iceland, with its thousand-year unbroken tradition of alliterative verse, Jón úr Vör demonstrated that Icelandic poetry could go forward from its traditions and still be poetry; thus, he paved the way for those who wanted to go farther.

Jón Jónsson, who later took up the pen name "úr Vör" (from Vör), was born at Vatneyri, a fishing village in Patreksfjördur in...