Anne Carson calls Nobel honour alongside Laxness a privilege

Canadian poet and writer Anne Carson said she was surprised to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, calling it an honour to be in the company of Icelandic writer Halldór Laxness. She spoke to mbl.is at her home in Vesturbær after the award was announced on Thursday.

“I think they’re crazy to have chosen me. It’s a great prize, but I don’t deserve it,” Carson said. She became an Icelandic citizen in 2022, making her the first Icelander to win the literature prize since Laxness in 1955.

Carson said she had read some of Laxness’s books and wanted to read more. She recalled hearing that Ernest Hemingway sent Laxness a telegram after his win saying, “Go Tiger!” Hemingway won the prize the year before Laxness.

Carson said she had lived in Iceland on and off since 2008. That year, she took part in an art project in Stykkishólmur and stayed at Vatnasafnið to write. She later spent about a year in Iceland. During the coronavirus pandemic, she and her husband, Robert Currie, became stranded in the country and stayed for nearly a year. They first applied for permanent residence and ultimately received Icelandic citizenship.

Carson said she and her husband found Iceland a better place to live than anywhere else in terms of ethics, and praised its landscape and the different outlook of its people. She added that Iceland may have influenced her writing, though inspiration can be difficult to identify. When she first lived in the country, she read the Icelandic sagas with others and found the characters’ actions hard to understand.

The Nobel Prize ceremony will be held in Stockholm on December 10. Carson said it was too soon to know whether she would attend. Her husband joked that they were considering going so his brother, who had never left the United States, would travel abroad. Carson plans to give away the prize money, which is 11 million Swedish kronor, equivalent to more than 134 million Icelandic kronor.