Just a Gwai Lo fun within prescribed limits [?]

Bruce Rutledge on a book about sheep I recently read: “Independent People is an incredibly moving and humorous book that puts you deep into the Icelandic landscape and culture from beginning to end, mining the rich details of the country to find the universal. If you've never read Laxness, you're in for a treat. The main character of this novel, Bjartur of Summerhouses, is one of the most frustrating characters you'll ever meet on the printed page. I wanted to throttle him repeatedly for being so stubborn, but I also found myself slowly drawn into his world.”

Halldór Laxness, as translated from the Icelandic by J.A. Thompson, describing how Asta Sollilja saw her father, Bjartur of Summerhouses: “She peeped out from under the blanket, and there he was, still sitting on the edge of his bed, when all the others had gone to sleep, mending some implement or other. No one stirred any longer, the living-room fast asleep; he alone was awake, alone was chanting, sitting there in his shirt, thickset and high-shouldered, with strong arms and tangled hair. His eyebrows were shaggy, steep and beetling like the crags in the mountain, but on his thick throat there was a soft place under the roots of his beard. She watched him awhile without his knowing: the strongest man in the world and the greatest poet, knew the answer to everything, understood all ballads, was afraid of nothing and nobody, fought all of them on a distant strand, independent and free, one against all.”