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L’Islanda noir di Helgason
By a.fognini | Settembre 9, 2010
di Luca Crovi
Come vi avrò frequentemente raccontato ai microfoni di RadioDue sono da anni un fan della cultura Islandese, e proprio nella Terra del Ghiaccio del Fuoco ho fatto anni fa il mio più avventuroso viaggio assieme a Seba Pezzani e alla Lillidy Blues Band rivestendo il ruolo inconsueto di road manager. E’ quindi naturale che da anni io mi sia innamorato della musica di artisti come Sigur Ros e Bjork della letteratura di autori come Idridradson e Helgason. Non mi sono così lasciato sfuggire l’occasione di intervistare in occasione del festival “Parolario” proprio l’autore di “Rekjavik 101” che ha da poco pubblicato un divertente noir intitolato “Toxic” (ISBN EDIZIONI). Eccovi quello che mi ha raccontato Halgrimur Helgason. Non potendo scegliere di usare né l’italiano né l’islandese come lingua per la chiacchierata, ovviamente abbiamo parlato in inglese.
1) Se dovesse descrivere a chi non la conosce l’Islanda come la dipingerebbe in poche parole?
Completely naked and very sexy.
2) Come si spiega il boom di musicisti e scrittori provenienti dal suo paese che negli ultimi anni hanno letteralmente conquistato le classifiche mondiali?
We were left alone for centuries. Nobody knew or cared about us. In the
latter half of the 20th Century we were finally heard, and we were so happy about it that we all started to scream. Iceland is also a very creative country on its own. We have volcanic eruptions every five years. Every five years we have a new mountain that we have to find a name for. The country keeps us creative. Today Iceland is a curious mix of a small isolated community in the middle of the Atlantic and a cosmopolitan meeting place. So we get the best of both worlds: International influence and isolated concentration.
3) Come ha vissuto nel tempo il rapporto forte con la natura presente nel vostro territorio?
We are close to nature but we are also cut away from it. Our houses are
all strong and isolated. The average temperature inside is 26C. So we are brought up in a tropical atmosphere. Still nature is outside the window, with all its rain and wind and polar blizzards. In Iceland we know how to fear nature. It’s a dangerous place. Every year a foreigner gets killed when he tries to walk across Iceland in the middle of winter. They don’t understand the dangers of our nature and weather. We are very much shake by this fact. I think we both love and loath our nature. Just like we both hate and love our country.
4) Quanto è cambiata la vita nella vostra capitale rispetto quanto da lei raccontato in “Rekjavik 101″?
I wrote it in 1995. In the following years it became the coolest
capital in the world, mostly thanks to Björk and Blur. Foreigners came
flocking in. Then came the boom years, when the coolness and hipness became more chic and luxurious. Then everything fell apart in the fall of 2008, when we had the big Bank-Crash. Since then things have evened out, we are back to good old Reykjavik, the cozy and charming town of 1995, but still it seems more mature than back then. You can see that it has been through a lot in the years between.
5) Si aspettava che quel libro la lanciasse in classifica in tutto il mondo?
No, not really. I wrote it in New York, I wanted it to have a
movie-like plot, and I was playing with the Hamlet theme, but still I
looked on it as a very local book. I was playing a lot with the Icelandic
language, using slang, as well as creating my own slang etc. So I thought it would be impossible to translate. And I guess it really was impossibile to translate. I always get a guilty feeling when I hear about the agonies of my translators. I think Silvia Cosimini, my Italian translator, almost got divorced because of it. It was like three people in the marriage, she said. The main character, Hlynur Björn, had almost moved in with her and her husband.
6) Com’è nato “Toxic”?
“Toxic” came to me in a hotel room in Berlin. I opened the door, and after spending ten minutes in the room I had the whole thing in my head: The main character, Toxic, the Croatian hitman, and his trip to Iceland disguised as a TV-priest. It was all there in ten minutes. I guess the last guy before me that slept in this hotel room must have been a hitman for the Croatian Mafia.
7) Sono di più i personaggi inventati o quelli reali che ha inserito nel libro?
Toxic is fictional, but the TV-preachers in Iceland are based on real life characters. Goodmoondoor and Sickreader are based on people who appear regularly on the Omega TV station in Iceland, even though they’re not a couple in real life. Their daughter Gunhildur is based on a lot of girls that I have seen and known in Iceland. And their friend Torture is based on the most famous preacher in Iceland, “Gunnar í Krossinum”.
Come ha costruito il personaggio di Toxic e perchè ha voluto che fosse di origini croate?
As I said, Toxic just came to me and he was Croatian. I don’t know why.
I guess my subconscious didn’t want an Italian Mafia guy because there
already have been written 6000 novels about this. The Russian Mafia is fast becoming a cliché as well. So I wanted something else. But still I didn’t know anything about Croatia, but I was really lucky to be invited there for a literature festival in the spring of 2007. I was there for a week and I tried to use it really well, asking and asking endless questions.
9) Cosa la diverte di più del raccontare le gesta di un assassino?
I liked it the most when he was remembering things, when he was talking
about his job as a hitman, how he killed this one and that one, and also
when he was reminiscing about his days in the Balkan war. I have never been
at war myself, so this was a great challenge. I was proudest of the war
chapters in this book.
10) Come ha cercato di mettere alla berlina il provincialismo del suo paese in questa storia?
It was a good opportunity to take a good look at my country form the
outside. This was one of the amusing things about writing this book. I had to write it as if I had never been to Iceland before. Mostly I was struck by the stillness and silence, how clean and prefect everything is, how there were no people walking in the streets, and how everybody pretended to be a millionaire and this silly belief that everything about Iceland is “the best in the world”. The book was written before the Crash. It came out the week before everything fell apart.
11) Perchè ha voluto inserire delle scene esilaranti ambientati fra le mura di una tv evangelica, che rapporto ha lei personalmente con la religione e i predicatori?
I mostly think they are funny. To watch them on TV is absolutely
hilarious. Still I like them. Toxic thinks they’re redicilous in the
beginning of the book, but he later has to admit that they are GOOD, and that this fact has a big influence on him. This is a book asking the
question. “Can a really bad person become good?” I am not a big religion fan. I believe that God is bigger than religion. So I must believe in some kind of a God. He has done so many good things for me, so I must show some respect. But I think man should not belittle himself by comparing himself to God or all his people. Man can only become godlike by being the most human he can.
12) Ma anche lei si commuove sentendo le canzoni dell’Eurofestival come il suo protagonista o invece si lascia emozionare più facilmente dalle musiche dei Sigur Ros e delle Amina?
I do not cry during Eurovision Song Contest, but I have always liked it. It’s always nice to get a break from American and British pop music. And I like very much this feeling of all of Europe coming together for one night. My musical taste are very strange and not to brag about. It varies from teenage pop to classical operas. I’m not a big fan of the Icelandic arty music as it has been for the past decade. Too quiet and peaceful. Not exciting enough. It’s impossible to move your feet to this music. But these day things are getting more interesting and more crazy.
13) In Italia hanno successo i noir del suo conterraneo Arnaldur Indridason, com’è la scena del noir islandese attualmente?
It is very strong, of course, as in all the Nordic countries. I must
admit that I would never have written about a killer without having this
new crime-novel trend. I am influenced by it. But my book “Toxic” is a
thriller inside out, since it tells the story of the killer trying to
escape the cops instead of the cops trying to capture the killer.
14) Il suo “Toxic” è stato paragonato a un mix fra Tarantino e Kaurismaki, trova calzante il paragone?
I guess so. I like them both. And I’m still waiting to hear from them,
about the film rights.
15) Nel suo paese sono ancora così popolari le saghe nordiche.
Always. They’re in our blood. You hardly need to read them. They’re
just in the air, babies get them through their mother’s breast. The Sagas
are our Renaissance. But yet we are not burdened by them, as I sometimes have the feeling here in Italy, that artists are burdened by the great heritage of Michelangelo and da Vinci. It’s not so in Iceland, maybe because no one knows who wrote those books, plus it’s a long time ago, over 800 years.
16) Che rapporto hanno gli islandesi con la lettura?
We read a lot, or at least we tend to think we do. My impression is
that we don’t read as much as we did. It’s all Facebook now. And I have
been thinking about this problem. How can a writer get people to read more of his books. For me “Toxic” is a different kind of book. I tried to write an entertaining story, fastmoving and exciting, with short chapters and witty dialogue. I wanted it to be an easy read, to read like a film.
17) E con la scrittura?
Iceland is a writer’s paradise. Every other Icelander wants to be a
writer and the other half wants to be written about. Every time you go to a bar in Iceland someone comes up to you, wants to offer you a drink, and starts telling you stories about himself and his crazy uncle that he wants you to put in your next book. Everybody is trying to help you out. Iceland is like one big literary work-shop, with free drinks for the writer.
18) Da piccolo cosa leggeva? E cosa la spaventava di più?
I did not read much, I was mostly daydreaming. Picasso said he never
drew like a child, and somehow I never got into children’s literature. Not
until now, when I have young kids on my own. I published a children’s book last year. What was I afraid of, as a boy? That I would fail to get an A+. I guess I’m still there.
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