Seven Days' Darkness
The Spanish Flu looms over the inhabitants of Reykjavík and, in the distance, a menacing plume rises to the sky. A 90 year old work which speaks directly to the present times' preoccupation with swine flu and cataclysmic eruptions.
The Spanish Flu looms over the inhabitants of Reykjavík and, in the distance, a menacing plume rises to the sky as Katla – a major volcano – rumbles to life. Life and death vie for dominance. Kindness wrestles with catastrophe. Nature's turmoil is mirrored in the hearts and souls of ordinary people in Gunnar Gunnarsson's Seven Days' Darkness – a major work by an Icelandic literary giant. The action, which takes place over the course of seven days in 1918 Reykjavík, unfolds in the manner of an inverted Genesis story, and the 90 year old work speaks directly to the present times' preoccupation with swine flu and cataclysmic eruptions.
Gunnarsson composed the work in the shadow of World War I, and the book's dark and pessimistic atmosphere reflects this. Seven Days' Darkness is part of a three book series which, conceived between 1915 and 1920, was referred to as the author's “war books”. The series heralded a paradigm shift in Gunnarsson's vision. The idyllic countryside of his previous works is abandoned in favor of contemporary urban gloom, and the work grapples with existential dilemmas faced by individuals who must come to terms with the presence of evil in the world.
Seven Days' Darkness was first published in Danish in 1920 and marked the apex of Gunnarsson's popularity, running through eleven printings in its first year. A German translation appeared a year later – first under the title Der Hass Pall Einarsson, but renamed Sieben Tage Finsternis in a 1927 edition. The English version was published in 1930. Critics on both sides of the Atlantic showered the book with praise, proclaiming it a “Nordic masterpiece” deserving of a place among the world's classics.
Gunnar Gunnarsson, one of Iceland's leading authors, left his home country at a young age to study in Denmark. Writing in Danish, he soon won renown as an author with the bestselling Borgslægtens historie / Guest the One-Eyed. Famous for his writing in both Europe and America, he was four times nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was a prolific writer whose oeuvre comprises dozens of novels, along with many short stories and poems.