Halldór Kiljan Laxness was born in 1902 in Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, but spent his youth in the country. From the age of seventeen on, he traveled and lived abroad, chiefly on the European continent. He was influenced by expressionism and other modern currents in Germany and France. In the mid-twenties he converted to Catholicism, but Laxness's religious period did not last long; during a visit to America he became attracted to socialism, which would later on get him into trouble with the Icelandic authorities and eventually blacklisted in the U.S regardless of excellent sales and good reviews.