October 1843. Staðarsveit farmstead in Snæfellsnes, West Iceland.
It was early evening, and an odd yet highly entertaining young visitor had just finished regaling the appreciative farmhands with his witty remarks and amusing anecdotes. He clearly enjoyed telling them his tall tales as well as sharing his vivid descriptions of Iceland’s natural wonders and deadly pitfalls. Even decades after they had met him, farmhands around Iceland would state that an evening spent listening to this man was an unforgettable experience.
The farmer had welcomed the travelling 23-year-old man to his farm earlier, expecting to exchange room and board for some manual labour, after fulfilling his obligation to check that the visitor’s travel papers were in order. However, the impetuous rover turned out to be unusually well-spoken for a man of such a young age and a multi-talented artisan to boot. His fantastic tales of adventure and of overcoming incredible obstacles inspired wonder and joy in the simple country folk. The farmer, Þórður Jónsson, later stated that he had never before met such a wonderful storyteller, which may explain why he neglected to even ask for the visitor’s travel pass. According to the strictly enforced vistarband laws, similar to serfdom on the European continent, farmhands could not even leave the farm where they were employed without the landowner’s permission. In order to leave the locality, a farmhand would need to obtain written permission from a priest or secular authorities.
Sölvi’s soul
The young man had introduced himself as Sölvi Helgason; a painter, poet, and philosopher who had travelled nearly the whole of Iceland on foot with nothing more than a modest but cherished wooden backpack, which he referred to as “Sölvi’s soul.” The audience of farmhands was instantly enraptured. Sölvi’s life had been saved more than once by this vital backpack, he was fond of saying. For example, while crossing a dark mire in the west of the country when he suddenly found himself sinking in deadly quicksand, or the time when he had been washed overboard in a violent storm and had clung to the box for dear life!
Such entertaining guests were rare and highly regarded by farmhands for livening up their otherwise monotonous life in the countryside. Their appreciative laughter only grew when he scandalously joked about the stupidity of the superstitious priests and self-serving government officials he had dealt with on his many journeys. Remarkably, Sölvi seemed to have been everywhere and to know most everyone, at a time when only the elite were allowed to travel freely.
Sölvi was a tall young man; he was broad-shouldered, with fair hair, high cheekbones, and a prominent nose, all topped by a creased brow that suggested he was perpetually deep in thought. He was as charming as he was intriguing, and to the tittering local maidens’ delight, he was apparently very manly as well. His eyes were piercingly blue and deeply-set, giving him the look of a scholar, an artist, or perhaps even that of a madman.
Long legacy
Sölvi Helgason, artist and traveller, was born on Fjalli farmstead in Skagafjörður, on August 16, 1820. There is a well-visited monument to Sölvi Helgason in Lónkot, not far from where he was born.
His parents were poor tenant farmers. His father died when Sölvi was four, and his mother when he was 14. From the age of six, Sölvi lived as a foster child on various farms, often in miserable circumstances. It was rumoured that he suffered from neglect and probable abuse during his childhood. By the age of 19, Sölvi began his illicit wanderings around the Icelandic countryside, moving from farm to farm and gaining a reputation both as an entertaining guest and an unpredictable oddball. Many farmhands were envious of Sölvi’s freedom and spread nasty rumours about him. He managed to make some sums of money as a contracted labourer during the summers but would spend the winters hunched over his illustrations or writings in dim and musty turf cottages.
Curious documents
As Sölvi Helgason prepared to lie down for a rest that evening in 1843, the pounding hooves of a dozen horses could be heard approaching the Staðarsveit farmstead. Sölvi knew that so many horses had to mean an official visit: the long arm of the law had finally caught up with him. The vistarband laws expressly forbade travel without official permission from the county magistrate, in the form of a signed and sealed travel pass document. It was too late to run and hide.
Young Sölvi was apprehended at once by the sheriff’s posse, who demanded to see his travel papers. Sölvi stood his ground and produced the document. At first glance the papers, while technically correct, appeared to be somewhat suspicious, or at least highly unusual. For one thing, the graphic decorations were much more cheerfully styled than those of ordinary papers. Even more puzzling was that the papers contained an exhaustive list of Sölvi’s incredible, perhaps superhuman qualities. To make matters worse, the signature of the county magistrate was misspelt.
The prodigal young Sölvi, who had roamed the country unimpeded for two years, most of that time with his “supernatural travel pass,” as the county magistrate referred to it, would now be made to face justice.
Excerpts from Sölvi Helgason’s “Supernatural Travel Pass”
This pass is valid from the first of August 1843 to 30 June 1844, for Mr. (Goldsmith, Painter, and Hairdresser) S.H. Gudmundsen, as a travel pass, to go as far as he can, during the aforementioned period.
He has long since made a name for himself in the northern and eastern counties with his excellent talents in most varieties of construction and on all metals and woods; also for his inventions and various knowledge of the arts.
He is also recognised for his industriousness, powerful memory, passion, soulfulness, creativity, imagination, and good taste; but not least for his understanding and appreciation of all literature and all the sciences.
Also for his skill in wrestling, gymnastics, and hiking. As an expert swimmer, he has saved a total of 18 people who have fallen into various rivers, lakes, and the sea.
There are many more of his deeds and skills than can be listed here. While he excels at all the arts mentioned above, his character is gentle, kind, modest, and generous.
His virtues and skills in the arts he shares equally and generously with everyone, from all walks of life. He is loved by every man with a worthy voice.
Bonded man
During his arrest and interrogation, the county officials examined and took an inventory of Sölvi’s possessions, which consisted primarily of a walking stick and his handmade wooden backpack. Essentially a wooden box that he carried with leather straps, it served as a simple work surface, in addition to containing all his worldly goods, which struck the assembled men as anything but the possessions of a common straggler. The items included some dried roses, a few ink pens, brushes, and sheets of paper, dozens of sketches, ink, and watercolours for illustration, a pair of rimless spectacles, tobacco tins, a clay tobacco pipe, a worn folding knife, small scissors, and a couple of books of poetry.
Sölvi Helgason never failed to stand up to the authorities, bravely and intelligently demanding justice for his cause. More often than not, these protestations and pronouncements only made things worse for him. Recounting the interrogation before his conviction for vagrancy, he wrote in his journal: This is what I told them when they asked me, “What exactly were you getting up to during these wanderings of yours around Iceland?” I answered the officials with pride, drawing their ire: “I decided to go to those lands… to see how God had created them, how the landscape changes over time and distance… and that the whole purpose of my life was to explore the world in a spiritual as well as in a physical way.”
The county officials had little sympathy for the wandering artist, reasoning that it would “bring bad luck” to allow someone such as Sölvi to go free. Specifically, it would set a bad example for the farmhands in bonded servitude. They commented dismissively in their notes that Sölvi was worthless and deluded.
For the fake passport, Sölvi was sentenced to 27 lashes and eight months in protective custody. The whipping was bad enough to leave him bedridden for the better part of a week. Notwithstanding the severe torture he repeatedly had to endure, Sölvi refused to live under the rules of the time. He continued to wander, to discover, to create. Over the next few years, he was sentenced several times for vagrancy and often punished by lashings. When he reached his early 30s, he received an even harsher punishment: he was forced to spend three years in penal servitude in Copenhagen for vagrancy and book theft.
Prison was especially hard for the intellectual Sölvi as he had nothing to read and little opportunity to express himself. He was severely punished for drawing on the cell walls or for speaking or writing in Icelandic, which the prison guards banned. Despite all these obstacles, Sölvi wrote long letters in Danish to fellow Icelander Jón Sigurðsson, the brilliant politician, writer, and leader of the Icelandic independence movement, who was so impressed with Sölvi’s writing style that Jón frequently sent all manner of books on politics and history to him.
When he returned home, Sölvi’s pride would not permit him to suffer humiliation. He pretended that he had been abroad in Denmark as a free man to paint and study the arts and sciences, and that he was well connected, claiming to even have met the Danish king himself.
The incident is reminiscent of a verse Sölvi wrote about himself:
I am gold and treasure, like a beloved gem.
I am beautiful and precious, like the Lord himself.
Vistarband: Iceland’s historical system of bond servitude
The end of the mediaeval period was marked by numerous changes to the cultures, economies, and laws in the various kingdoms of Western Europe. A nascent market economy with fast-growing cities populated by an emerging burgher class was producing greater wealth, while modest reforms granted a modicum of freedom to the impoverished masses of semi-enslaved peasants.
Landowners perceived these reforms as an existential threat to their power and status. In total, landlords numbered fewer than 5,000 individuals, or less than 15% of the Icelandic population. Icelandic society was built on a specific hierarchy of reciprocal relations which, over time, gradually increased the power of the elite at the peasants’ expense. Predictably, the landlords resisted liberal reforms aggressively, arguing that the bond servitude arrangement, vistarband, benefitted both labourers and landowners by guaranteeing universal employment and keeping order by oppressing the wayward poor.
In 1490, the Icelandic elite took legal steps to cement their hold on power, passing a law in Alþingi (the Icelandic Parliament) infamously known as Píningsdómur (The Pining Judgment, named after Didrik Pining, a German naval commander and representative of the Danish king in Iceland). This law formalised the landowners’ status as lords and the status of the landless as bond servants. The law stated that a farm had to be equal to a minimum value of three milking cows, roughly the equivalent of half a year’s wages for a modern worker.
The common peasants who lacked property had no choice but to become farm labourers under the aegis of a wealthy landlord, most often for life. Fully a quarter of the population, at least 10,000 peasants, suffered generation after generation in this harsh system. Those who were lucky enough to possess assets valued at more than three cows were considered freemen; they could rent land from the landlords and would often ally with them in times of conflict. Those who owned substantial property, usually inherited wealth, became landlord-chieftains and belonged to the ruling class.
Vistarband unquestionably bolstered the landowning farmers’ power and wealth by securing them plenty of cheap labour. In addition, this oppressive system effectively prevented the formation of urban areas and kept Iceland one of Europe’s poorest and least developed countries for over four centuries. It was not until 1863 that the vistarband laws were relaxed, but strict conditions remained. It was during this period that Iceland also gained partial independence from the Danish crown. But significant change only really began when the rapid growth of Iceland’s fishing industry in the late 19th century created an enormous demand for labour. Former bond servants left the farms in droves, emptying the countryside and creating new seaside towns that thrived from fishing in small, open boats. It was the economic pressure of this seafood-export potential that finally ended vistarband, enabling the few poor villages to grow into bustling fishing towns before evolving into what we would recognise today as a prosperous, modern Iceland.
Lone traveller
Sölvi was a prodigious writer of poetry and journaler, pondering subjects such as wisdom and virtue in his writings. The reverse side of Sölvi’s illustrations are often covered in his minuscule handwriting to the very margins, all in an effort to save valuable paper. As one art review commented: “The spontaneous, persistent, and passionate creativity of this destitute wanderer is truly remarkable; the artistic value and quality of his work indisputable.”
Sölvi wrote scholarly works throughout his life, from political treatises and lengthy historical accounts to translations of the works of foreign masters, chiefly from Danish and German, but even from some Latin sources as well. These texts were all the more remarkable considering he had never gone to school.
Rich and colourful flower compositions characterise Sölvi’s illustrated works and he repeatedly used the same floral patterns either as the main subject of the image or as background for portraits. Paper and pigment were rare commodities and hard to obtain in Sölvi’s time. His resourcefulness in acquiring necessary materials and painting his images in poor conditions, although he received little support or sympathy from his contemporaries, is meritorious and inspiring.
His imagination and admiration for his intellectual heroes was most clearly evident throughout his many writings and illustrations. Sölvi often added famous names to his own, including those of Socrates, Sölvi the Wise, Spinoza, Goethe, Hegel, Newton, Beethoven, and Shakespeare.
Sölvi had to struggle his entire life for his fundamental and most sacred right: the artist’s freedom to express himself. His whole life, Sölvi was an outcast in Icelandic agrarian society; he was a refugee from the cruelty he endured. He longed for a stable place to call home and a gentler lifestyle, but his goal of living the life of a respected artist and intellectual meant that he felt compelled to keep moving. Nineteenth-century Iceland was not ready for such a talented intellectual misfit.
It is clear from Sölvi’s writings that he likely suffered from mental illness. He had difficulties in relating to most women and children, who he assumed were always trying to tease, trick, and slander him. He was also particularly hateful of the entire ruling class.
Sölvi’s exotic claims about his abilities and talents seem to indicate delusions of grandeur, but at the same time, he clearly had the ability to think deeper and speak clearer than most of his contemporaries, even those who had received a proper education. Although we cannot know whether Sölvi had mental health issues from birth, it is clear that inhumane treatment most likely exacerbated any pre-existing emotional problems. And although there is much we cannot know about the cause of his eccentric ways, his life could be said to resemble those of other significant creatives with mental illnesses, such as Vincent van Gogh, Ezra Pound, or Robert Schumann.
Love, and love of the road
Later in life, Sölvi continued to wander around the country, always finding time to sketch, compose, and write. In his middle age, after decades of loneliness, he finally met a woman with whom he felt comfortable: Júlíana Sveinbjörnsdóttir, who was considered physically and mentally disabled. Sölvi and Júliana travelled for some time together. Her disability made it difficult for her to walk and Sölvi is said to have carried her on his back when necessary. They lived happily together for a few years, but Sölvi’s longing for the road eventually drew them apart. They had a daughter, Stefanía Kristín, who was by all accounts able-bodied and healthy; she would become the mother of four children whose descendants survive both in Iceland and in America to this day.
Sölvi died on November 27, 1895 at the age of 75 after a long illness. The largest collection of his works is preserved at the National Museum of Iceland, and includes some 150 paintings and a large number of written manuscripts in Sölvi’s shorthand. Exhibitions of his remarkable works have been frequent and well-attended in recent years, a sign that Sölvi will not be forgotten anytime soon.
Sölvi is remembered fondly by many Icelanders, some of whom regard him as a folk hero. In 1977, the folk-rock outfit Mannakorn released a song about his story that captures his peculiar and misunderstood existence. Its chorus asks:
Were you a holy man, or just a lazy stray dog?
Were you sent to raise new hope?
What was it, my dear fellow, that you wanted to tell us?
You illustrious eccentric, Sölvi Helgason.
