" But Bjartur wanted it to appear that his hospitality was a very minor issue. “The chief point,” he said, “and the point towards which I have always directed my course, is independence. And a man is always independent if the hut he lives in is his own. Whether he lives or dies is his concern, and his only. Otherwise, I maintain, one cannot be independent. This desire for freedom runs in a man’s blood, as anybody who has been servant to another understands. "

― Halldór Laxness , Independent People