Karitas, an Icelandic woman

@brittarnhild

The last page is read. The two books are closed and I am in a whirlwind between two different feelings. Emptiness because the two books about Karitas, the Icelandic artist are now finished. Richness because the books, and the woman in them, will continue to live in me. Give me strength, inspiration.

For several weeks now Karitas Jónsdottir has been part of my life. First as a young fatherless girl, in a family of her mother and her siblings in Iceland a hundred years ago. Then, though the many hundred pages of the tow books her life as it unfold. Her development as a woman, as a wife, a mother, grandmother, great grandmother. But most of all as an artist. The urge in her to paint, to create. The urge which turned her away from everything else.

 

The books about Karitas are written by the Icelandic writer Kristin Marja Baldursdottir, and for the first of the two books she was nominated to Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2006.

Iceland is a country with a rich, extensive litterature, from the first sagas written a thousand years ago, to today´s contemporary writing. Baldursdottir has elements from the whole line in her writing.

In the beginning of the first book we meet Karitas´mother, a widow since her husband drowned at sea while out fishing. She wants to give her children an education, packs all what she has and moves up to the north coast of Iceland. Karitas is the youngest of the girsl in the family, and while the others starts school and/or work to earn money, it becomes her job to look after her little brother, the house and the food.

Karitas is the only one of the siblings with artistic genes, and eventually this sends her to Copenhagen to study art. Back in Iceland after her education is finished, and with a strong urge to paint, she fells in love, she becomes pregnant, and from then on and until she dies as an old woman, her life as a woman and an artist, is a struggle to follow her instinct. To follow what is most important in her life. Her art.

 

The Karitas books are about women´s emancipation, but it is also so much more. A family Tale. A love story. A historical novel about Iceland in the last century.

Unfortunately Baldursdottir´s books are not translated into English. Fortunately several of them can be found in Norwegian. I will now hunt for them.