When Iceland became a sovereign state in 1918, two poets emerged who are generally considered to have marked a turning point in the literary history of the country--Davíd Stefánsson and Stefán frá Hvítadal. They were the poetic heirs of the turn-of-the-century New Romantics--Jóhann Sigurjónsson, Jónas Gudlaugsson, Hulda, and Jóhann Gunnar Sigurdsson--but they developed this heritage in their own way, emphasizing the yearning for freer life and the right of every human being to realize his or her aspirations. Their poems, especially in the first volumes they published, were poems for a new century and for a young nation eager to assert itself and enjoy its newly found freedom to the fullest.

Stefán frá Hvítadal was the more personal of the two. While Davíd Stefá...