The Language of Halldór Laxness’ Gerpla

Abstract

This article offers a primarily linguistic analysis of the language used by Halldór Laxness in his novel Gerpla (1952), compairing that language with Old Icelandic. This linguistic description has multiple prongs, as it examines the novel’s orthography and phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon. It compares the novel’s language to the linguistic model followed by Laxness, Old Icelandic, and for what concerns the lexicon, Fóstbræðra saga, the novel’s primary literary model. No attempt was made to provide a detailed analysis of the literary models for this novel, since such a venture is clearly beyond the scope of this investigation. The results of the linguistic inquiry may be summarized by saying that the novel’s language is a variant of Modern Icelandic from the phonological standpoint but it remarkably adheres to 14th-century Old Icelandic for what concerns morphology (with a few exceptions) and syntax. The lexicon is overall richer than that of the sagas of the Icelanders. Even the longest of them, Njáls saga, has a significantly smaller lexicon. Finally, based upon a close inspection of the corrections Jón Helgason (1899–1986) made on the proofs of the novel, a philological appraisal of his contribution to the shaping of the language in Gerpla is offered, concluding that Jón Helgason had a crucial influence on the final form of the novel’s language.