FATHER AND SON (1916)
TRANSLATED BY PETER FOOTE

GUÐMUNDUR G. HAGALIN
THE FOX SKIN (1923)
TRANSLATED BY MEKKIN SVEINSON PERKINS

HALLDÓR KILJAN LAXNESS
NEW ICELAND (1927)
TRANSLATED BY AXEL EYBERG AND JOHN WATKINS




INTRODUCTION

I


Of the seven Icelandic short stories which appear here, the first
was probably written early in the thirteenth century, while the rest
all date from the early twentieth century. It might therefore be
supposed that the earliest of these stories was written in a
language more or less unintelligible to modern Icelanders, and that
there was a gap of many centuries in the literary production of the
nation. This, however, is not the case.

The Norsemen who colonized Iceland in the last quarter of the ninth
century brought with than the language then spoken throughout the
whole of Scandinavia. This ancestor of the modern Scandinavian