There is a strange quality that seems inseparable from Scandinavian writings—somber, pitched in a minor key, harsh, and, at first glance, cold and colorless as the light of an Arctic false dawn…. Yet this seeming drabness is deceptive. The lowering tones of false dawn slowly vanish to reveal a rich, warm life that is none the less real for all its neutral tints.

Now out of Iceland comes a strange story, vibrant and alive under its sinister overtones…. [Independent People] tells of the struggle of an Iceland crofter to achieve self-sufficiency, of his obsession for independence, a craving so deep that in his pursuit of it he becomes a slave to his ideal….

Every step of [Bjartur's] long fight, every success, every failure, flows through these pages with bitter relentlessness, a dour inevitability. It is the age-old story of the peasant against the world, and through the...