Heimskringla - 13.09.1950, Síða 2

2. SlÐA
HEIMSKRINGLA
WINNIPEG, 13. SEPT. 1950
PROFESSOR SKULI JOHNSON:
Our Heritage
An address given at Gimli, August 7th, on tlic
75th Anniversary of the Icelandic settlcments
Mr. Chairman, Guests of Honor, Maid of the Mountain,
Venerable Pioneers, Ladies and Gentlemen:
IDEEM IT A GREAT HONOR to be asked to speak here once
again. It was my good fortune to have a share in the 50th
Anniversary and indeed I have been appearing here for over forty
years. I still recall my first address in this place; it was the toast
to Canada given then for the first time in English. I was much
pleased with my performance on that occasion, until I heard a
dear old Icelandic lady praise me for having delivered a wonderful
poem!
It so happened that on the day
on which our Chairman honored
me with the invitation to par-
ticipate in this program, I had
been translating an Icelandic
Celebration poem by Stephan G.
Stephansson. The closing lines
of this piece, I shall make the
point from which to commence.
If to any of you, my treatment
may seem to be lengthy, allow
me to suggest at least three
good grounds for verbosity:
(1) Professors normally lec-
ture nearly an hour at a stretch;
so, here with me, habit may
prevail.
(2) Speakers are moved to
words by a large and goodly
audience; I have never faced' a
more numerous or a more dis-
tinguished one.
(3) Orators also are aroused
by the excellence of their
themes; I have never had a
better subject than our Icelandic
heritage.
I.
You recall how it went, with
antiquity flown,
And the Anses’ world burnt
and the Flame-fiend o’er-
thrown,
And our earth laid in ruins, —
the heavens nine too —
So the world and the sun had
to wax up anew:
Yet saved there was some-
thing on which not the fire
Could make any headway:
gold tablets entire.
—Here, Canada, lapped in the
sheltering lea
Of summer, on sward warmed
by sunlight, sit we,
With similar gain: each re-
membrance we hold
Of Iceland is for us a tablet
of gold.
—St. G. St. I. 162.
The first part of this stanza
alludes to the most famous of
the Eddic poems, The Sibyl’s
Prophecy (Völuspá). It is the
Vikings’ version of Creation, of
dissension and doom, and the
destruction of the Universe and
the Powers, ending with a fore-
cast of a new heaven and a new
earth. In it is imbedded the
name of Gimli, our Icelandic
metropolis:
A hall she sees stand,
Than the sun fairer,
With gold covered,
On Gimli;
There shall duteous
Hosts inhabit,
And through life’s days
Enjoy delight.
It is tempting to see in this
poem a parallel to the historical
experience of Iceland. The
organizing and the energizing of
the Anses in early days might
thus seem symbolically to rep-
resent the early years of the
Icelandic state. The later and
evil days of dissension, as set
forth by the Sibyl, would then
be equated with the age of the
Sturlungs, in which the early
republic ended:
Brothers will fight
And slay each other,
Sisters’ sons
Their kinship sully;
’Twill be hard in the world,
Whoredom great,
Axe-age, sword-age,
Shields will be cleft,
Wind-age, wolf-age,
Till the world down falls.
No man to man
Will mercy show.
Moreover, the dire disasters
that overtook Iceland in its ser-
vitude down the centuries; the
sufferings of Icelandic men
from earthquakes, volcanic fires,
ice-floes, and recurring epidem-
ics; the injustices and atrocities
perpetrated on them by alien
powers, whether they were
kings or politicians or prelates,
— all these could have their
equivalents in the details of the
Gölterdammerung of the pagan
poem. Finally, in its new heaven
and its new earth, our fancy
could discern the reawakening
of Iceland and the restoration of
its republic, when such a thing,
in view of the past, seemed
beyond hope.
But this was probably not the
direction in which the poet in-
tended to turn our thoughts: he
had, I take it, another purpose.
He would have us, in our con-
genial conditions in Canada,
contemplate our Icelandic heri-
tage and to be certified of its
enduring value. Its importance
for America and its permanence,
the poet asserts, in a forthright
manner, in another celebration-
piece:
Though so it prove that
silenced be our lay
’Bout burg and steadings, and
though no one may
Our tongue remember, to
oblivion swept,
Yet something there will
evermore be kept
And cherished in your bosom’s
fost’ring care,
Which will of mind Icelandic
witness bear.
So much you need to earn
you excellence,
So many Ihings too, of a com-
petence
To match the profits of pros-
perity
And men’s aggressive urge of
energy.
Though granted be that gold
have worth indeed,
And that a people numbers
large may need,
Of assets for a nation to
acquire
The fairest are: the saga and
the lyre.
—St. G. St. I. 160.
Celts and Celtic influences.. Be-
ing Germanic, these Norse
settlers were men of action; in
the main, reticent, who gave
their feelings little scope; they
were extremely practical, and
possessed a clear insight intc the
importance of a law-abiding
society. What this Norse nature
could achieve, when Norsemen
combined with the Celts of the
continent, is evidenced in
Normandy, and since the Nor-
man Conquest, is writ large on
the political and social history
of England, and indeed on the
English-speaking world.
III.
Whether the early settlers of
Iceland from the Western Isles
contributed to the Icelandic
character what are essentially
Celtic characteristics (among
which the aptitude for poetry
is an outstanding one) is still
under discussion among the
experts. It is however, natural
to surmise that such indeed is
the case. The Celts of Ireland
and Scotlandr' were affluent in
feelings and ideals, they readily
ran to extremes, and exercised
little control over their passions;
they lived much in the realm of
fancy and day-dreaming. At all
events, the idealism of the Celts
and the realism of the Norse-
men are readily seen in the
Sagas and poetry of Iceland.
Nowhere, however, is the
merging of these two natures
better illustrated than in the
political organization of the Ice-
landic commonwealth: in it was
achieved an equipoise between
the contending claims of in-
dividual freedom and organized
society. While the success of the
Norman achievements mighty
and world-wide was in the
massive Roman tradition, the
doings of the Icelandic state
were on so tiny a scale that their
value must be justified before
the world much in the same
way as the significance of the
little democracies of the ancient
Greeks. Indeed such societies as
those of early Iceland and of
ancient Athens make their con-
tribution to the world’s assets in
precious imponderables. In a
world of violence where might
is right, such communities, living
by reason unsupported by force,
survive precariously for a short
span. Iceland’s early republic
j was one of those rare adventures
j of the human spirit to live by
j intelligence and law in a free
í society. This it did when the
; heroic age of untrammeled Vik-
j ing individualism was ending,
j and much of the European
j world was falling under tyranny
and taking on the tight fetters
of feudalism.
Iceland’s political experiment
i failed in the opinion of the
II.
The Sagas of Iceland ana
Iceland’s poetry are inextricably
joined, and the entire history of world- but its failure in no sense
the country is permeated with
the people’s irrepressible passion
for its language and literature.
invalidates it. It succumbed, like
that of Athens of old, from
causes both internal and exter-
Indeed until quite recently it|nal: these commonwealths fell
has been the Icelandic Sagas,1 because of faults in their own
the epic poetry of the Edda, and
to a less degree, the other
ancient verse that have been j Possible by Fifth Columnists.
citizens and by reason of mach
inations from abroad, made
known in the outside world.!
Even for some foreign scholars,
these constitute their only first-
hand acquaintance with Iceland-
ic culture.
Many anthropologically-in-
clined people readily see in
Iceland two main racial types:
the Norse and Celtic. This has
an obvious basis in historical
facts. Though the population of
early Iceland was bound to be
a mixed one, being made up of
settlers from Norway and the
Western Isles, togethet with
their freedmen and slaves,
whose racial origins cannot be
verified, the Norsemen who
went to Iceland by the direct
route, imposed their language
on the land and predominated
in a general way, but assuredly
not without the complete accord
of their kinsmen, who came by
way of the Western Isles with
Indeed the overthrow of these
two democracies may be com-
pared with the catastrophe in
the classical tragedies of the
Greeks: in these, essential flaws
in the characters of the leading
personages, lead inevitably to
the dread dénouemenis of the
dramas. For centuries the tragic
failure of Iceland’s ideal polity
seemed complete, but fortunate-
ly the Icelandic people was
enabled, in a war-torp world, to
achieve a recovery of what
appeared to be irretrievably
lost.
IV.
Our forefathers were the heirs
of the Vikings; indeed they were
themselves the Vikings of the
remotest north. They alone
handed down the main ideas and
the ideals of the entire Viking
race. These are imbedded in the
Hence this body of epic verse, in
many ways the antithesis of
Homer’s, and meagre in bulk, is
the greatest antiquarian
treasure-trove of all Germanic
peoples, and is indispensable
for comparative studies in re-
ligion and ethics.
The attitude of the pagan
settlers of Iceland towards their
deities emanated from their
notion of their dual nature. Their
gods were superior beings, the
lords of the universe and the
protagonists of the noble and the
good. But they were not omni-
potent, and they were, like men,
subject to change and death. It
was a matter of duty and ex-
pediency to do them honor by
sacrifices, but not in abject
servile fashion. The gods were
their associates, friends and
allies, and for gods and men to
exchange benefits and gifts was
therefore the most natural and
fitting thing to do.
Their views of the gods gave
to the Vikings their canons of
conduct. From their beliefs they
derived their ethics. The basic
idea was that they would enjoy
a warriors’ after-life with
Woden, in the Hall of the Slain
(Valhöll). This suggests that life,
both here and hereafter, is an
unremitting struggle, and that
fighting per se is essentially the
only sure way of worship. It is
to the great credit of Icelandic
men that they abandoned this
kind of Woden-worship, which
could only satisfy savages, and
accepted the gods of sea-faring
(Njörð), fertility (Frey) and
strength (Þór) and did homage
to Woden only in his capacity
as the god of intelligence and
poetry. And they maintained
many of the manly tenets of the
best Vikings. Man must show
no fear, whatever may befall,
one must face fate unbowed, and
never give way before great
odds. Excessive show of feeling
is unmanly. It is the duty of a
man not to do dastardly deeds,
he must not employ subterfuge
nor fail his friends, he must re-
pay benefits, avenge insults, and
have in all matters, a proper
respect for his own person and
his worth. As the lines in The
High One’s Lessons (Hávamál)
phrase it, nothing is to be more
zealously sought than a good
reputation:
Flocks die,
die kinsmen,
dies a man himself also,
but the repute
never dies
for him who has earned him
a fair one.
Flocks die,
die kinsmen,
dies a man himself also,
but one I know
never dies:
the judgment of eách one
dead.
Such religious and ethical
ideas deriving from Viking
sources are found, in unending
examples, in the Saga-literature
as well, especially in those parts
that are commonly referred to
as the Icelandic Family Sagas
and the Lives of the Kings of
Norway. The former go back to
the earliest settlement of the
country. The earliest law-code
of the Icelandic commonwealth
Graygoose (Grágás), embodies
also many of them. So too, does
the Scaldic poetry.
V.
Among the earliest settlers of
Iceland, only a few poets are
known, but presently there
sprang up in the island a mighty
crop og bards who all kept up
the Eddic tradition. These soon
became the favoured and indeed
the only bards of sovereigns
in Norway, Denmark and
the Orkneys. The chief
Norwegian work of the 13th
Century, the Speculum Regis
(Konungsskuggsjá) asserted
that three causes account for I
Eddic poetry of gods and heroes. faring abroad: “emulation and
Þetta Nútíma Ffóthefandi
Dry Yeast, þarf
Engrar Kælingar Með
Verkar fljótt!
Hér er um að ræða undrunarvert, nýtt ger, sem verkar eins
fljótt og ferskar gerkökur, og á sama tíma heldur fersk-
leika og fullum krafti á búrhillunni. Þér getið pantað mán-
aðarforða hjá kaupmanninum yðar, í einu.
Engum nýjum forskriftum eða fyrirsögnum þarf að fara
eftir. Notið Fleischmann’s Royal Fast Rising Dry Yeast
nákvæmlega eins og ferskar gerkökur. Einn pakki jafngildir
einni ferskri gerköku í öllum forskriftum.
1 pakki jafngildir 1 köku af Fresh Yeast!
fame, curiosity, and the acqui-
sition of wealth.” Icelandic men,
especially in their younger days,
would go abroad to seek “fame
and furtherance.” The easiest
way for a gifted Icelander to
attain this was to compose on
the exploits and the qualities of
the king or earl he intended to
visit, a poem of praise, and to
recite it to him in his hall before
his assembled court.
This is no place to enter upon
a survey of the prolific writings
of these Scalds, with whom
indeed, it has been remarked,
the making of poetry became
as it were a national industry.
Much of this kind of verse is
so intricate in its metaphorical
periphrases that it is not fully
understood even by Icelanders
themselves. Yet it has in its
corpus some of the masterpieces
of the literature which are en-
tirely admirable in matter and
form. For history, linguistics
and for the culture of Iceland
these difficult poems have an
immense importance. It is signi-
ficant that they left a deep mark
on the religious poetry down to
the Reformation in Iceland. The
poetry of the last Catholic
Bishop of Iceland Jón Arason,
(the fourth centenary of whose
martyrdom falls on November 7
of this year) is not uninfluenced
by these ancient forms. The
ballad-poetry of Iceland (rímur)
and the Icelandic quatrains (so
common that it is believed that
every Icelander can correctly
fashion them) owe much too, to
these antique metres.
VI.
The men of Iceland maintain-
ed the Viking tradition of sea-
faring. They regularly, during
the entire period of the com-
monwealth, travelled the sea-
lanes that. led to Scandinavia,
Denmark and Britain. Their dis-
covery of Greenland, which they
colonized, and of America
(Vínland), which they failed to
hold, are outstanding evidence
of their intrepid navigation.
That they succeeded in doing
this is really astonishing, when
we realize that they had neither
compass nor charts, and when
we consider the nature of their
ships. These were tiny, normally
about 50' in length, 16'-17' wide
manned by 20—30 men, and cap-
able of carrying 40 tons. Each of
them had a single mast and a
single sail, and its helm was an
oar curiously attached to the
right side of the vessel at the
back. Grágas has some interest-
ing points pertaining to marine
law, dealing with such matters
as: the removal of gaping figures
on the prows of ships approach-
ing Iceland, harbor-toll for the
owner of the shore land, rental
for mooring ships, and assistance
to be given merchantmen, and
last but not least, the schedule
of prices an overseas merchant
could charge for his wares in
the district; (the local assembly
was to settle these).
VII.
Adam of Bremen (ca. 1075) in
amazement wrote of the govern-
ment of Iceland, the familiar
expression: Apud illos non est
rex, nisi tantum lex (“Among
them, there is no king save only
the law”) In their fear of cen-
tralization and their ardour for
independence, the men of Ice-
land set up no executive with
physical power to enforce its
administrative authority. Instead
they relied on agreement, on
laws, on personal participation
in functions of government, on
harmony between the priest-
chieftains (Goðar) and their
voluntary liegemen (þingmenn).
These ends they obtained
through assemblies, meeting
in various districts in the
spring and fall, and in the
annual meeting of Alþing for
two weeks in the summer.
For certain minor business,
they availed themselves of
smaller county or municipal
units. There is much in all these
arrangements that reminds one
of the Athenian democracy with
its assemblies, courts and demes,
and much in the significance of
Alþing that is paralleled by the
great national festivals of the
Greeks, especially those at
Olympia.
Iceland was discovered by the
Norsemen in 874 but as early as
825 (according to writings of the
Irish monk Dicuil) it was visited
by Irish ascetics. Within sixty
years of settlement the popula-
tion of the country grew to be
50—70,000 and in 930, Alþing,
the national assembly at the
Plains of Parliament (Þingvellir)
was inaugurated and the laws of
Ulfljótur (based on those of
Gulaþing in Western Norway)
ratified. After the political ex-