laxness

The horrifying finds have underscored the laxness of state funeral home regulations and pressed lawmakers to try to strengthen the laws.

You will perhaps have heard of Laxness’s best known novel, “Independent People,” which was originally published in the early 1930s and became one of the first Icelandic novels to be released in the United States, in 1946.

Laxness inspired but he also cast a shadow, and if you had been an aspiring writer in Iceland in the ’40s or ’50s, or even the ’60s, you would probably have felt both.

Gunnarsson wrote mostly in Danish and was translated into Icelandic by Laxness.

Later, he translated some of his novels himself, but Laxness turned out to be a better Gunnarsson in Icelandic than Gunnarsson himself.