Svanurinn (2017)

Nine-year-old Sól is sent to spend the summer on a remote farm in the mountains, belonging to her mother’s cousin and her husband. Her parents live in a large city on the coast of Iceland. Sól had stolen something from a shop, and this change of scenery was prescribed as a remedy. She suffers from homesickness, and everything about the farm seems old-fashioned and unfamiliar to her. She soon has to share a room with Jón, a young seasonal worker who has spent every summer at the farm for the past seven years. She often wakes up at night and sees Jón writing in his diary. The farm’s furnishings are not the only thing that is austere; the mood at mealtimes is sparse, too. The landscape, with its mountains and meadows dotted with pools of water, is not without danger. But there are wonderful moments as well: the birth of a calf, to which Sól feels drawn, also because she is a dreamy, withdrawn child who does not seek out the company of other children her age. Instead, she feels close to Jón, who, like her, enjoys making up stories. To everyone’s surprise, the daughter of the household, Ásta, returns from her studies. She had not taken her exams, but she was pregnant, and her relationship with the possible father had fallen apart. Her parents know him; he runs a riding school nearby. Ásta’s mother takes her to have an abortion. Ásta suffers greatly from this and from her situation. She tells Sól an old legend about a monster said to live on a mountain. It often appears as a swan in the lake there. When it encounters you, it wants to look into your eyes so it can tell you who you are. But in reality, it wants to pull you into the lake. Then something terrible happens to Sól: Jón slaughters the calf. No one spares Sól’s feelings. She has to get used to it. This damages her trust in Jón. Yet once, he had read aloud to her from his diary, in which she played a part in his life. When she asks him why he does not want to live with Ásta, he says that she would first have to read his diaries. Then Sól comes upon the two of them after they have had sex in the hay. Sól steals the diaries so she can read them. She is not mentioned in them, but Ásta and the aborted child are. Losing the diaries is a severe blow to Jón, as they had been his anchor in an otherwise unsuccessful life. He suspects Sól, but she says nothing. Jón gets drunk at the fair in a neighboring village. Sól feels drawn to Jón, who is blind drunk, and lies down beside him. Ásta pulls her away, and they ride home. In her imagination, Sól sees Jón lying on a horse in his drunken stupor. Sól advises Ásta to look after Jón. But Ásta replies that no one ever looked after her, either. Then she gives Jón a shove, and he rolls off the horse’s back into a pool of water. The next morning, when Sól wakes up, he really has not returned. Ásta finds his diaries in her bed. Later, Ásta rekindles her former relationship with the man who had left her, but she cannot find anything in it, because she hears Jón’s diary quotations in her mind. Sól sets off with a riding group for the swan’s lake on the mountain. In her imagination, she runs ahead to the lake alone. There she meets the swan. She faces its gaze. But instead of pulling her into the lake, it takes off into the open sky. Freed, Sól runs down into the valley with her arms raised.