Bjartur of Summerhouses Summerhouses (Sumarhús)
Book One
After eighteen years as a hired hand, Bjartur buys a poor croft on the heath and renames it Summerhouses, staking everything on owing no man anything. Local belief holds the ground cursed by an old witch. The farm is invented; Laxness drew its moor from the sheep-farming dales of the Icelandic interior he grew up among.
Book One
inspired by Summerhouses is a fictional croft on an unnamed moor, so no real coordinate exists for it. This sites it on the moorland at the head of Mosfellsdalur, the highland countryside Laxness knew from boyhood, as a representative point near Helgufoss.
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Bjartur of Summerhouses Mosfell church, Mosfellsdalur
Book One
Below the heath lies the settled parish, with its church, its better farms and the neighbours whose good opinion Bjartur refuses to court. The green Mosfellsdalur valley, with its old church at Mosfell, is the lived-in dale Laxness knew; his boyhood farm Laxnes lay a few hundred metres off, and he is buried in the churchyard.
Book One
inferred The novel's parish and dale are unnamed and fictional. This marks Mosfellskirkja in Mosfellsdalur, the real valley where Laxness spent his childhood and is buried, as the countryside behind the book's settled farms.
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