Jærnet (The Iron) with the subtitle "Roman om Järnbäraland" (Novel about ironcarrier country) is a novel by Danish author

Harald Kidde Harald Henrik Sager Kidde (14 August 1878 in Vejle – 23 November 1918 in Copenhagen) was a Danish writer and brother of the politician Aage Kidde. He is best known for the novel '' Helten'' (The Hero), which is one of the key novels in Danish ...

published in 1918. It is considered a pioneering work because the author – as one of the first writers to do so – uses a

stream of consciousness In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator. The term was coined by Daniel Oliver in 1840 in ''First L ...

technique similar to the one

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...

used in Ulysses four years later. It takes place in three days around the Swedish town of

Filipstad Filipstad is a locality and the seat of Filipstad Municipality, Värmland County, Sweden, with 10,644 inhabitants in 2019. Filipstad was granted city privileges in 1611 by Charles IX of Sweden, who named it after his son Duke Carl Philip (1601&n ...

Värmland Värmland () also known as Wermeland, is a '' landskap'' (historical province) in west-central Sweden. It borders Västergötland, Dalsland, Dalarna, Västmanland, and Närke, and is bounded by Norway in the west. Latin name versions are '' ...

, but has very little genuine action. Instead it is full of strong images and dreamy tales about religion, philosophy, erotic pleasures and history. It was intended as the first of a suite of four novels: The Iron, The Gold, The Fire and The Word, which together would tell the entire intellectual, physical, economic and spiritual history of Värmland, but 10 days after the publication of Jærnet the author died from the

Spanish flu The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, commonly known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case wa ...

. Jærnet was translated into Swedish in 1921 with the title ''Järnbärarland''.

Literature

* Alfons Höger: Form und Gehalt der Romane und kleineren Erzählungen H. K.s, München (1969). * Niels Jeppesen: Harald Kidde og hans Digtning. * Ingeborg Kuke: Harald Kidde: Sein Leben und sein Werk, Jena (1942). * Villy Sørensen: Digtere og Dæmoner. Fortolkninger og Vurderinger. Novels by Harald Kidde 1918 novels 1918 in Denmark 20th-century Danish novels {{1910s-novel-stub