«Il mostro di cemento a fauci spalancate». Halldór Laxness e l’impatto della steinsteypa nelle campagne islandesi

In the first decades of the twentieth century, prosperity in Iceland prompted the use of concrete to replace peat as the most common building material for farmhouses. Thanks to a technical office sponsored by the Rural Bank, the construction of concrete country houses was gradually standardised. The article analyses these new policies as described in Halldór Laxness’s novel Sjálfstætt fólk (1934-35; Independent People), in which Bjartur, a farmer living in the Icelandic highlands, decides to build himself a concrete house: his ambitious project clashes with the country’s merciless environmental conditions and the incompetence of some local workers. Between nostalgia for the past and hopes for a better future, concrete farmhouses herald modernity but, according to Laxness, look like the ruins of a shelled building.