of Realism, but before moral preaching and the belief in the life
hereafter had become the leading elements in his stories. He had
then, for a few years, been living in the north-country town of
Akureyri, which obviously provides the model for the setting of the
story. It was first printed in the 1905 issue of the periodical
Skírnir.

In addition to the travelled, academic realists, there appeared a
group of self-educated popular writers, some of whom had come into
direct contact with this foreign school. They were farmers, even in
the more remote country districts, who had read the latest
Scandinavian literature in the original, and who wrote stories
containing radical social satire. Guðmundur Friðjónsson, for
instance, had begun his career in this way. In many of these
authors, however, we find rather a sort of native realism, where
there is not necessarily a question of the influence of any
particular literary tendency. Their works sprang out of the native
environment of the authors, whose vision, despite a limited horizon,
was often vivid. They convey true impressions of real life.

Of this kind are most of the works of Guðmundur Friðjónsson
(1869-1944), a radical who later turned to conservatism--and the
best works of Jón Trausti (1873-1918). These, who had their debut as
writers about the turn of the century, are the authors of the next
two stories in our collection. Both were North-countrymen. The
former, a farmer's son from a district enjoying a high standard of
culture, himself settled down as a farmer in his native locality in
order to earn a living for his large family. In his youth he had
attended a secondary school in the neighbourhood for a couple of
winters, but he never had his experiences enriched by foreign travel