Gyrðir Elíasson is an Icelandic novelist, poet, translator, and painter, born in 1961. He has won several literary prizes, including the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2011. The broad scope of Gyrðir’s oeuvre reflects the variety of his capacities as an overall artist and his dexterity and versatility as a storyteller. With great finesse, he frequently interweaves quotations, references, and narratives from other writers with his local Icelandic wellspring. As with many of his peers, Gyrðir makes good use of Icelandic folktales in his narratives, with the “afturgöngur” or the “undead” appearing, for example, in works such as
Bréfbátaringingin[Rain for paper boats] and
Svefnhjólið[The sleep wheel]. He works across various genres – novels, poetry, short stories,…
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Citation: Mendoza, Brynjarr Þór. "Gyrðir Elíasson". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 March 2024 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=14984, accessed 24 November 2024.]
