Halldór Kiljan Laxness is one of the most successful and renowned authors
in all of Iceland. The Nobel Laureate has written many well-known works, one of which
is his early novel Salka Valka (1931-1932), a political romance that follows the life of a young girl in a remote
Icelandic fishing village from age ten to age twenty-five. An interesting feature
of Salka Valka is Laxness’s use of colours and colour symbolism. While Laxness employs a wide variety
of basic and non-basic colour terms throughout the novel to describe various people,
objects, and natural phenomena, most interesting is his use of grey as opposed to
other colours. Laxness uses grey to portray the dreary life and destitute people in
the desolate and remote Icelandic fishing village of Óseyri, which he juxtaposes against
colourful descriptions of the vibrant and flourishing lives of wealthy individuals
both within and outside the village. This article examines these and Laxness’s other
uses of grey as opposed to other colours in Salka Valka, particularly as they relate to the social and economic critique that, as scholars
have noted time and time again, define this novel.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.