Woman in Pants

Salka Valka and Halldór Laxness’s Queer Modernism

Abstract

This article explores queer threads in works by Icelandic writer Halldór Laxness, the novel Salka Valka (1931–1932) and its precursor, a film script Halldór wrote for Hollywood in 1928. The protagonist, Salka, renounces female gender roles by wearing pants, cutting her hair short and repeatedly claiming she is ‘no woman’. There are no apparent signs of homosexual desire in Salka, but heterosexual desire and its consequences – marriage and children – terrify her, and she eventually chooses to be single and autonomous. The article outlines how Salka is rural, solitary and ‘typically’ Icelandic, yet at the same time, she represents modernist discourses and transnational connections, combining, for example, Freudian psychoanalytic theory, Marxist feminism, cinematic art and the local cultural history of seawomen in Iceland. Paying particular attention to gender, sexuality and the meaning of place, the article suggests that Salka’s character integrates two figures and their queerness: the cosmopolitan modern woman and the fisherwoman, a local figure deeply rooted in Icelandic culture and history. The novel’s setting, the small fishing village of Óseyri, serves as an intersection and medium between the extremes of transatlantic modernisation – local and global, tradition and transformation.