One of Iceland’s best-known writers, Andri Snær Magnason, is one of the few who can claim to have won the country’s main literary prize in all three of its categories. His fiction, non-fiction, and children’s writing have all been lauded, but above all, he is known for his passion for the environment and dedication to addressing the world’s man-made climate change, such as by penning an obituary for the first glacier from his homeland to be claimed by global warming.
Speaking to Al Majalla, he describes one of his novels as “crazy”, laments that so much climate literature today reads as if it has been written by an AI algorithm, and identifies what he thinks is his greatest achievement.
When did you become interested in writing about the environment, climate change, and their connection to Icelandic literature?
Around the year 2000, many important places in Iceland were threatened by development. For example, the largest nesting ground globally for a species of geese was set to be flooded.
I felt that many of these places that were at stake were more important than anything I could write or create and that if I had managed to defend or save them, I would have contributed more to the world than with a new book.
These thoughts then became a book, when I found a way to weave my thoughts with the issue. Sometimes directly in the form of non-fiction, but sometimes with poetry, fantasy, or parables for children.
How do you perceive the relationship between technology and freedom in the world of your novel LoveStar?
LoveStar is, in hindsight, kind of a crazy novel. I wanted to explore the world of progress, technology vs our current ideologies, the mythology of our times, the essence of our current tragic gods, the serial entrepreneur—like Elon Musk or Steve Jobs—that revolutionises the world but destroys themself at the same time.
I wanted to explore how they seem to be merely hosts to ideas that enter the world by taking over their bodies or souls and to explore the power of ideas, almost like they were parasites, taking over our lives.
LoveStar was written in 2000-02, before Twitter and Facebook etc, so to say Jobs and Musk were inspirations is perhaps wrong—it was written before they took their journeys. I wanted to explore the promises of the upcoming internet age, the age of interconnection and data, and the consequences of this.
Fake news, information bubbles, and personal ratings were in the book but were not as frequent then. I was thinking of 1984, of Vonnegut and Huxley—how they responded to their realities and how I imagine they might respond to ours.
The ethics of today’s big technology companies seem to be summed by the phrase: ‘If we don’t do it, someone else will, so we should just as well do it.’
What inspired you to critique modern capitalism and its impact on society in this novel?
I see it more as an investigation, a parody, an experiment. I felt like more and more natural spaces, human interactions, and culture were becoming commoditised. I wanted to explore how new technology utilises—and capitalises on—human relationships, in ways that were not possible before.
The inspiration came from seeing how nothing can be left alone, how we tend to exploit every possibility to the end degree, and how the last things to exploit to the extreme were love, death, and God. The corporation in LoveStar finds ways to fully exploit those ‘resources’.
Could you elaborate on the process of writing On Time and Water? How did the idea for this work come about, and how did you approach it?
The idea is that as a writer here and now, this was the most important issue to write about. I found most climate literature uninteresting and very predictable, almost like it was written by ChatGTP. I could foretell arguments and issues and how things would be put into words.
Science communication is important—to explain science to the average person—but I felt a need to go beyond that. It needed a deeper approach. It is larger than language. It is a paradigm shift, and in a paradigm shift, language and norms start collapsing. How can we understand that we don’t understand the times we live in?
The book is about family—my grandparents were glacier explorers in the 1950s—but it is also about time. What does 2100 really mean? How do we understand that? And what do the words mean? Will it still be called ‘climate change’ in 1,000 or 2,000 years?
Do you agree that educating children and young people about the environment and time-related issues early on can help achieve important goals?
I think it is vital for all education to make children and young generations aware that they are studying in a paradigm shift. The ways of design, habits, and industry of the last 100 years are obsolete.
They have to reinvent so many things: how we farm, how we build, how we travel... When they reach my age, the whole world needs to be powered with clean energy. That is a huge shift and challenge. A child born today will reach pension age around 2100. Our world is not likely to be climactically stable by then. Long-term thinking is more vital than ever.
What challenges did you encounter in merging modern-day stories with ancient sagas in your young adult novel The Casket of Time?
The challenge when writing a book is to decide its frame. Should it be a series? Three books, five books? It could easily have become so long.
But I like short, concentrated forms more than long books, so it was a challenge to weave together stories of future and past, and make them make sense and surprise and entertain the audience. I hope I made it.
How have the writings of Chomsky and Lewis Carroll influenced your work?
I studied Chomsky’s linguistic theories, and Carroll, of course, influenced me with his wild and playful imagination. Those things have stuck with me—their interest in words and language and seeing how far you can stretch your imagination.
As your book Dreamland was adapted into a documentary, how do you view the importance of transforming literature into visual formats?
I am always interested in how the same story can be told in different media. I have had stories told orally, in a book, in a musical, and in a film. I learn a lot from different formats. Each has its own rules and charm. A picture can say more than a thousand words, but a word can also say more than a thousand pictures!
What motivated you to run for president in Iceland in 2016, and how successful do you believe a poet and novelist can be in that position?
The president of Iceland is a representative. He does not have direct power but rather influence. My agenda was to influence our understanding of the importance of preserving the Icelandic language and use Iceland as an example globally of the effects of climate change.
A presidency is very much about words, concepts, and vision. That is something I felt I might be able to bring to the table.
How has your work as a documentary filmmaker influenced your writing?
I see my career as a type of crop rotation in farming. In crop rotation, you have potatoes one year, barley the next, and then maybe let the field grow wild with grazing animals for a year. Each nourishes the other.
My book On Time and Water started as a documentary film. I interviewed scientists, my grandparents, the Dalai Lama, etc. But then I found out that the material was so vast that I thought it should be a book. Now, it is also becoming a film.
In what ways does your documentary The Hero’s Journey to the Third Pole: a Bipolar Musical Documentary with Elephants aim to raise awareness about mental health issues, and how effective is it in conveying the “superpowers” associated with bipolar disorder?
Mental health issues are difficult and sensitive subjects. In my film, we let the two protagonists—who both have bipolar disorder—speak for themselves.
We see two very likeable people, just like any of us, but they happen to have dealt with this at some point in their lives.
They are normal, not crazy, and not very different from us, but they have seen more darkness in the depression phases of the disease, and then they have touched the stars in the mania stage. They come back with a range and understanding of the human condition that we can all learn from in some way.
Finally, of all your achievements, which are you most proud of and why?
Probably my children! I have four. But I am also proud to have managed to make very different types of art that have reached people in many countries. To write in Icelandic but speak to someone in Arabic-speaking countries (through translation) and to see that the book still works, I am quite proud of that.
