Long Fiction:
Af Borgslægtens Historie, 1912-1914 (4 volumes, including Ormarr Øelyfaaon, 1912, Den danske frue paa Hof, 1913, Gaest den enøjede, 1913, and Den unge ørn, 1914; partial translation as Guest the One-Eyed, 1920)
Livets Strand, 1915
Varg i Veum, 1916
Edbrødre, 1918 (The Sworn Brothers, 1920)
Salige er de Enfoldige, 1920 (Seven Days’ Darkness, 1930)
Kirken paa Bjerget, 1923-1928 (5 volumes, including Leg med Straa, 1923; Skiba paa Himlen, 1925; Natten og Drømmen, 1926; Den uefarne Rejsende, 1927; Hugleik den Haardtsejlende, 1928; first 2 volumes translated as Ships in the Sky, 1925; third volume translated as The Night and the Dream, 1938)
Svartfugl, 1929 (The Black Cliffs, 1967)
Jón Arason, 1930
Hvide-Krist, 1934
Graamand, 1936
Advent, 1937 (English translation, 1939; also known as The Good Shepherd, 1940)
Heioaharmur, 1940
Sálumessa, 1952
Brimhenda, 1954
Short Fiction:
Smaa Historier, 1916
Trylle og andet smaakram, 1939 (Trylla and Other Small Fry, 1947)
Drama:
Drengen, pb. 1917
Smaa Skuespil, pb. 1917
Dyret med Glorien, pb. 1922
Rævepelsene eller ælighed varer længst, pb. 1930
Poetry:
Digte, 1911
Gunnar Gunnarsson (GUHN-nahr-suhn), who wrote in both Icelandic and Danish, settled in Copenhagen after receiving his high school education in his native Iceland. At first he joined a number of Icelanders who hoped to reach a large audience by writing in Danish, but he soon reacted against their cosmopolitan views to describe the lives of his ancestors and the fixed ways of his homeland in two notable series of novels. The four-volume “Borg” novels, about three generations of Icelandic farmers, first brought him fame in his adopted language. The most popular of these has been translated as Guest the One-Eyed. Gunnarsson’s autobiographical five-volume series titled Kirken paa Bjerget are marked by a gloomy concentration on the rocky terrain of Iceland and a forceful portrayal of rugged heroes living close to the soil.
Livets Strand, a story about the failure of a country priest and the enervating weakness of the people around him, is considered by many to be Gunnarsson’s finest work. He was concerned with intense moral struggles; especially powerful is his account of the destruction of a mind through villainy in Seven Days’ Darkness. As an interpreter of northern European life, he has been compared to Knut Hamsun and Johannes V. Jensen. Primarily a novelist, he also wrote several plays, a volume of poetry. and nine volumes of short stories.
Throughout his life, Gunnarsson worked on a series of twelve novels designed to dramatize the history of Iceland from the age of the Vikings to the present. Among the volumes translated into English are the first of the series, The Sworn Brothers, and the one most critically applauded, a novel set in the eighteenth century, The Black Cliffs. Throughout this series, as in all his work, Gunnarsson helped bring Icelandic culture to the rest of the world.
He returned to Iceland in 1938, and in his later writing he continued to explore fundamental issues of life and death, good and evil, which he saw echoed in the struggle between human beings and nature.