Anne Carson becomes Iceland’s second Nobel literature laureate

Canadian poet and writer Anne Carson has won the Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first Icelander to receive the award since Halldór Laxness in 1955. Carson, who became an Icelandic citizen in 2022, told mbl.is she was surprised by the honour.

“I think they are crazy to have chosen me. They are great awards, but I do not deserve them,” she said at her home in Vesturbær.

Carson said she felt honoured to be in the same company as Laxness. She recalled hearing that Ernest Hemingway sent Laxness a telegram after his win, reading “Go Tiger!” Hemingway received the Nobel Prize in Literature the year before Laxness.

She has read some of Laxness’s books and plans to read more, saying she is impressed by the Icelandic Nobel laureate.

Carson said she has lived in Iceland on and off since 2008, when she took part in an art project in Stykkishólmur and stayed at Vatnasafnið to write. She and her husband, Robert Currie, later spent close to a year in Iceland during the coronavirus pandemic. They first applied for permanent residence permits before obtaining Icelandic citizenship.

“After we got to know the people here, we realised this was a much better place to live than anywhere else when it comes to ethics. The landscape here is also magnificent. But people’s outlook here is different from elsewhere,” she said.

Asked whether Iceland had inspired her writing, Carson said inspiration was difficult to pin down. During her first stay, she read the Icelandic sagas with others, though she found it hard to understand why the characters acted as they did. “I thought it was good to know this about Iceland and Icelanders. You never know exactly why they do what they do,” she said.

The Nobel Prize ceremony is scheduled for December 10 in Stockholm. Carson said she could not yet say whether she would attend. Currie joked that they were considering going so his brother, who has never left the United States, would travel abroad.