[2.] The English translation combines features of the original edition and a revised version printed in 1913. The play appeared also in Icelandic (Fjalla-Eyvindur) in 1912.
[ EYVIND OF THE HILLS]
[BJÆRG-EJVIND OG HANS HUSTRU]
A DRAMA IN FOUR ACTS
1911
Halla (pronounced Hadla),a well-to-do widow. | |
Kari (pronounced Kowri),overseer on Halla's farm. | |
Bjørn, Halla's brother-in-law,farmer and bailiff. | |
Arnes, a vagrantlaborer. | |
Gudfinna, an elderly, unmarriedrelative of the family. | |
| Magnus | Halla's servants. |
| Oddny | |
| Sigrid | |
| A Shepherd Boy | |
Arngrim, a leper. | |
A District Judge. | |
Tota, a child of threeyears. | |
Peasants, peasant women, and farm-hands. | |
The action takes place in Iceland in the middle of the eighteenth century. The story of the two principal characters is founded an historical events. Halla's nature is moulded on a Danish woman's soul.
[ ACT I]
A "badstofa" or servants' hall. Along each side-wall, a row of bedsteads with bright coverlets of knitted wool. Between the bedsteads, a narrow passageway. On the right, the entrance, which is reached by a staircase. On the left, opposite the entrance, a dormer-window with panes of bladder. On the right, over the bedsteads, a similar window. Long green blades of grass are visible through the panes. In the centre back a door opens into Halla's bed-chamber, which is separated from the "badstofa" by a thin board partition. A small table-leaf is attached by hinges to the partition. A copper train-oil lamp is fastened in the doorcase. Over the nearest bedsteads a cross-beam runs at a man's height from the floor; from this to the roof-tree is half of a man's height. Under the window stands a painted chest. Carved wooden boxes are pushed in under the bedsteads. The "badstofa" is old, the woodwork blackened by age and soot.