Young Icelandic comic artist draws on local surroundings and sagas

Young comic artist Bjarni Pálsson draws inspiration from familiar places in his surroundings and the Icelandic sagas, mbl.is reports. He has been creating comics for years and has developed the character Jólaljósamaðurinn, or the Christmas Light Man, who first appeared in a story he read aloud at a talent competition in 2019.

The competition, Hæfileikunum, brought together young people from Reykjavík’s community centres. Bjarni read his first story about the character and displayed accompanying illustrations. The Christmas Light Man has remained part of his work ever since.

Bjarni has completed a diploma at the Reykjavík School of Visual Arts, where he now works part-time as an assistant teacher. Comics are his main focus. His website, jolaljosamadurinn.com, features several of his comics and projects from the school, while his Instagram account, @jolaljos_comics, includes additional work.

“I think everyone draws as a child,” Bjarni says when asked when his interest in drawing began. He believes the difference between professional artists and others is often whether they continue drawing after becoming adults.

“Adults have all kinds of expectations and often feel that they need to be good at something in order to do it,” he says.

Bjarni says he has always been creative and continued developing his ability while many of his peers turned to activities other than art. His parents also read many Belgian comics at home, including Sval and Val, Lucky Luke and Tintin. He says his own drawing style has similarities with those works.

He frequently uses his local surroundings in his drawings, including familiar places such as Hallgrímskirkja church and Hólavallagarður.

“There is a great deal in my surroundings that I find interesting. I think some artists want to enter a fantasy world through their drawings and use them to escape reality. I am more interested in trying to interpret reality and taking something people consider ordinary and showing them how interesting and extraordinary it can be.”

Bjarni has taken part in the Siglufjörður Comics Festival in recent years, where comic artists gather to display and sell their work. At this year’s festival, he plans to sell bookmarks featuring illustrations of Erik the Red, including one showing him travelling towards Greenland.

Bjarni believes there should be more visual material about the Icelandic sagas. He was inspired by comics based on Njáls saga that were published by Mál og menning around the turn of the century and created by Ingólfur Örn Björgvinsson and Embla Ýr Bárudóttir.

He says those comics helped him get through reading Njáls saga in secondary school. The saga is one of the most complex Icelandic sagas, he says, and having a general understanding of the story, along with visual references for its characters and settings, made it easier to read.