with fertile creative powers and the ability to draw vivid sketches
of environment and character. At times, however, he lacks restraint,
especially in his longer novels. Still, his principal work, The
Mountain Cot (Heiðarbýlið)--one of the longest cycles in
Icelandic fiction--is his greatest. The little outlying mountain cot
becomes a separate world in its own right, a coign of vantage
affording a clear view of the surrounding countryside where we get
profound insight into human nature. Like the bulk of his best work,
this novel has a foundation in his own experiences. In reading the
story by him included in this volume, the reader may find it helpful
to bear in mind Trausti's early life as a fisherman. What he
attempts to show us there is a kind of inner reality--an offset to
reality. When I was on the Frigate (Þegar eg var á fregátunni)
first published in Skírnir for 1910.

Jón Trausti and Einar H. Kvaran--who between them form an
interesting contrast--were the most prolific novelists at the
beginning of the present century. By that time prose was becoming an
increasingly important part of Icelandic literature. It would be
more or less true to say that in the first thirty years of the
century it had gained an equal footing with poetry. For the last
thirty years, however, prose has taken first place, after poetry had
constituted the backbone of Icelandic literature for six hundred
years, or since the end of saga-writing.

But there were several writers who felt that the small reading
public at home in Iceland gave them too little scope. So they
emigrated, mostly to Denmark, and in the early decades of the
century began to write in foreign languages, though the majority
continued simultaneously to write in the vernacular. Pioneers in