Gudmundur Jónson Kamban

Born June 8, 1888, in Álftanes, Iceland; died May 5, 1945, in Copenhagen. Icelandic author, writing mostly in Danish. In 1931–33 he was director of the Royal Theater in Copenhagen.

Kamban’s first plays, including Hadda Padda (1914), center on a love intrigue. In the play Marble (1918) and the novel Ragnar Finnsson (1922; Russian translation, Without Principles, 1927), Kamban critically analyzed bourgeois legal procedure. He sharpy criticized bourgeois society in the plays We Murderers (1920), Arab Tents (\\92\\), and Ambassador From Jupiter (1927). The historical novels Skálholt (vols. 1–4, 1930–35) and I See a Wondrous Land (1936), written in the style of the heroic sagas, describe events from the history of Icelandic people.