Fevers in a Reykjavík Graveyard: A COVID Novella in Modernist Iceland

• Main Author: Brendan John Kiernan 1994-
• Other Authors: Háskóli Íslands
• Format: Master Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: Bókmenntir; menning og miðlun; Iceland; Reykjavík
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1946/41030

Even in a nation like Iceland, where its public health efforts were celebrated as international examples of sound epidemiological planning, COVID-19 brought about widespread cultural uncertainty, economic inflation, and demographic upheaval. With the economic sphere of tourism stalled, cross-cultural encounters between Icelanders and foreigners took place in more unconventional and domestic spheres. Fevers in a Reykjavík Graveyard portrays these unconventional encounters not only as opportunities for solidarity and intimacy but also as chokepoints that trigger reckonings with Iceland’s colonial history. This work explores the complicated, filial, exploitative, and intimate relationship between the United States and Iceland. With economic uncertainty, cultural exploitation, and national policies still shaping Reykjavík as an increasingly diverse metropolis, romantic tensions still linger between Americans and Icelanders. Moreover, this novella utilizes the distinct traditions, forms, and themes of literary modernism to reimagine how to write a love story during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fevers in a Reykjavík Graveyard resists more conventional formal classifications, yet it can be considered a novella in three parts, each of which also stand alone as independent narratives. The final section of this work offers more comprehensive theoretical considerations in how literary modernism can be applied to contemporary literature, especially during the era of COVID-19. This exposition utilizes the work of writers and theorists like Ástráður Eysteinsson, Alfred Döblin, Sarah Cole, Halldór Laxness, Elizabeth Outka, Franz Kafka, and many other modernist figures.