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Book Review, Don Bartlett (Translator), Don Shaw (Translator), Man Booker International Shortlist, Norway, Norwegian Author, Roy Jacobsen, The Unseen
Stoicism and endurance in Lofoten’s archipelago
Roy Jacobsen’s novel The Unseen, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw, set early in the 20th century, is as bleak, spare and without frills, and as far from the shifting, rootless lives of modern cities as its chilly, austere setting suggests.
This is a book which moves slowly, inexorably, and at times cataclysmically : nothing happens except by natural, seasonal rhythms. The most expressive and dominant character is the landscape itself, particularly a tiny island homestead, Barrøy, settled and named by and for the family who fished and subsistence farmed it for a handful of generations.
Patriarch Martin Barrøy is reaching the end of his rule, lacking the physical strength to wrest fish from the icy waters, or repair a house constantly pounded by gales, torrential rain and driving ice and snow. His son Hans, married to Marie is the real head of the family Their toddler daughter Ingrid, barely 3, and Hans’ unmarried sister, Barbro are the only other residents on the island.
Covering a timespan of barely a couple of decades, the high dramas of human existence – birth and death, flowering and fading, are dealt with as they must be. These are lives of struggle, visceral and competent, intensely practical.
It took me some time to settle into fascination and absorption with the recounting of the minutiae of day to day existence – the fashioning of a jetty, for the better housing of the small fishing boats, the repeated destruction of the building by storms, the repeated rebuilding, the challenges of catching fish, drying, salting. Trading between the small islands and how the weather might make that impossible.
This is not a book which takes the reader into deeply expressive interior journeys of character. There is a taciturnity about almost all the characters, they do not discuss their feelings. They are do-ers, not describers. When they do speak, their language is archaic, a dialect, and they are given at times words to say which show some relationship to Northumbrian dialect. These are Norsemen and women, for sure:
“My word, hvur bitty it is. A can scarce see th’houses.” Hans Barrøy says:“Oh, A can see ‘em aright.”
“Tha’s better eyesight than mysel’ then,” the priest says, staring over at the community her has worked in for the last thirty years, but has never seen before from such a novel vantage point.
“Well, tha’s never been hier afore.”
“It’s a good two hours rowin’.”
“Has tha no sails?” Hans Barrøy says.
So, right away, the reader begins to think about an isolation beyond isolation. The Barrøys must travel this long route to be able to trade their produce. Children need educating, and Ingrid, when she reaches school age, will need to make this journey to the larger island, and stay there, two weeks on, two weeks off, for the length of her schooldays. These are hardy people, daily battling with survival.
Winter, Lofotens, Commons, Pixabay
This is a strange book, in the end, alluring, seductive, alien. The Barrøys, all of them, have great dignity and authenticity. It’s strange, in some ways, to read a book where all the characters are in some ways so ordinary, so undysfunctional, so sturdy.
For those disinclined to read representations of dialect, the fact that these islanders are taciturn will no doubt be a relief. For me, the dialogue worked, the short, pithy rhythms of speech have a music, and I was taken by the way the characters met their real life challenges with fortitude and grit. In a strange, bleak way the book has a kind of life affirming quality – mainly because there is little sense of the kind of malevolence, deviousness and treachery in these lives, instead a community unsentimental, borne out of the necessity of struggle, daily, with environment. People must trust, and must be able to trust each other. Treachery comes from wind and water, but that too is respected, viscerally loved and sensibly feared
These Lofotens are clearly a wealth away from the tourist destinations they have become a scant 100 years later
I received this as a digital copy for review, from the publishers, via NetGalley. And I recommend it
The Unseen is one of the short-listed titles for the Man Booker International Prize
Lady Fancifull 
Lovely review Lady F, and I reckon I could handle the dialect in small doses and if it was entirely necessary to the book… 😉
It is, I didn’t think he was doing it in an arty way – I suspect that in the original Norwegian there was something similar, and the translators cleverly managed a way of translating that into English – I gues what he was trying to show was that, possibly in these inaccessible, cut off communities, ‘Old Norse’ or something like it, was being used. It did remind me very much of meeting someone who had made a life’s work out of recording Northumbrian, as spoken in rural communities,. The advent of TV was bringing rapid change and dialect words dying out. I don’t know how I would have got on with a book with a load of very chatty people speaking in dialect, but here, with these measured, more taciturn, don’t do idle chit chat types, it worked very well
Another reader suggested this book to me the other day so it’s good to see that it comes with your seal of approval too. It does sound very compelling, in a slow-burning sort of way.
Yes, I particularly liked drama that felt authentic rather than operatic and overdramatic
I’ve also found reading ‘The Unseen’ a very thought provoking experience (my review is on the way). I’m afraid I found the dialect a bit more off-putting than you did – not enough to stop me from enjoying the book, but it did sometimes jerk me out of the moment when reading. I really wanted an essay from the translators (like Lisa Dillman provided in ‘Signs Preceding the End of the World’) to explain some of the choices they made…
I have of course made an assumption that in the original Norwegian the dialogue is for the most part, with regional born and bred characters, archaic, as happens or happened in isolated communities before technology brought how the world speaks into our living room.
I think part of my enjoyment of this language also comes down to some time spent in Northumberland, and also a bit of study at that point into local dialect, so I could easily hear the rhythms and the music in my head. I don’t always do so well with dialect which I’m less familiar with where I have to work harder to wrest meaning. I suspect, also, that the translators may have (rightly in my opinion) veered away from a too literal juxtaposition of ‘archaic patterns’ in the original, into a faithful rendition of a specific regional pattern from somewhere in Scotland or Northern England. I liked the fact this book made me think so much about what it was obviously saying, and what it might be more widely saying – including, the challenges of translation!
This one is on my summer reading list so I’m glad to hear you enjoyed it. I’m quite happy with dialect if it’s done convincingly and isn’t too hard to understand – from your sample I think I’ll get on fine with the dialect in this one. It was the only book on the International List that really appealed to me.
I also have the Amos Oz in download. Not quite convinced that The Unseen is a prize winner – partly because it doesn’t ‘trail-blaze’. It’s not a BIG book. In many ways it is quite old-fashioned. It’s strength to me is its focus on the minutiae of physical labour. Too few books really detail that kind of graft. I suspect that probably most obsessive readers are more likely to be engaged in head work, rather than physical labour. Which is why I rather like books that engage with that detail. But as you happily (ish) got closely acquainted with the mysteries of truck maintenance in The Grapes Of Wrath and glove manufacturing in American Pastoral I’m sure you’ll surrender to the challenges of construction and fishing in the far North. Don’t expect much chocolate though, the diet is kind of fish, fish and more fish. Not to mention lucky if you get it. And porridge and potatoes. Plus carrots. But absolutely no mange-tout.
I have been to the Lofoten Islands in the summertime. And yes, I was a tourist. My husband is a sailor, and we were in Oslo for a regatta and then took the train across to Bergen before heading up the western coast to Lofoten. When we headed south, we took the car ferry back. Stunning place. I’m sure it’s quite different in winter and for that matter, winter a hundred years ago. For some reason, your description of the lifestyle of the people in this book reminded me of the small town folk who inhabit the world of Babette’s Feast. Do you recall that film?
Oh indeed, a wonderful film. I think few places achieve the isolation and hardship now that they once had – which is both good and bad, depending on where you are assessing from!
So true. We’re all so much more connected. I was thinking about how when I first went traveling, my mother only heard from me every few weeks, and it was so much trouble to make a phonecall. Between that and receiving mail poste restante sporadically, which is so much more often than those who sailed the seas in the 1800s or earlier. You have to go out of your way to feel isolated these days.
Lovely review. I find these books which focus on the daily, ordinary lives of people living isolated existences truly fascinating. I hadn’t heard of this book before, but I’ll be looking it up. Thanks. In some respects it sounds reminiscent of Halldor Laxness’s Independent People – have you read that and, if so, how does it compare?
Ooh, now that is a completely new one to me, so thank you bookbii, I shall need to investigate!
This sounds fascinating, I can really feel fro your review how the reader gets drawn in. Interesting to have 2 translators – as Shoshi says, it would have been good to know how this worked and how they took the decisions they did.
It’s possible that a non-‘review copy’ might have this information – or not, but you are quite right, it would be interesting to know how this worked