Lögberg-Heimskringla - 04.06.1970, Qupperneq 1

TH JODMINJASAFN ID,
REYKJAVIK,
I C £ L A N D .
lö gbet g - ^eimskr tngla
StofnaS 14. jan. 1888 Stofnað 9. sept. 1886
84. ÁRGANGUR
WINNIPEG, FIMMTUDAGINN 4. JÚNÍ 1970
NÚMER 22
ANNUAL LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
lceland's Early Settlers
A few glimpses from a forthcoming English translation by
Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards of the early 12th cen-
tury Landnámabók (Book of Selllements).
RICHARD BECK:
Vilhjalmur Stefansson's
Writings On lcelandic Subjects
1. Early references to Iceland
In his book On Times1 the
Venerable Priest Bede men
tions ain island called Thule,2
said in other books to lie six
days’ sailing to the north of
Britain. He says there’s neith-
er daylight there in winter,
nor darkness in summer when
the day is at its longest. This
is why the leamed reckon
that Thule must really be Ice-
land, for in mainy places there
the sun shines at night when
the days are longeist, and isn’t
to be seen during the day,
when nights are longest. Ac-
cording to written sources,
Bede the Priest died 735 years
after the Incarnation of our
Lord, and more than 120 years
before Iceland was settled by
the Norwegians. But before
Iceland was settled from Nor-
way there were other people
there, called Papar by the
Norwegians. They were
Christians and were thought
to have come overseas from
the west, because people
found Irish books, bells, cro-
ziers, and lots of other things,
so it was clear they must have
been Irish3. It is also said in
English sources that sailings
were made between these
countries at the time.4
2. Time and Place
At the time Iceland was
discovered and s e 111 e d by
Norwegians, P o p e Adrian,
and after him, Pope John the
Fifth, occupied the Apostolic
Seat in Rome. Louis son of
Louis was Emperor over Ger
many, and Leo and his son
Alexander ruled in Byzan-
tium. Harald Fine-Hair was
King of Norway, Eirik Ey-
mundsson and his son ruled
over Sweden, and Gorm the
Old over Denmark. Alfred the
Great and his son Edward
ruled in England, King Kjar-
val in Dublin and Earl Sigurd
the Mighty over the Orkneys5.
According to learned men
it takes seven days to sail
from Stad in Norway west-
wards to Horn on the east
coast of Iceland, and from
Snaefellsness four days west
across the ocean to Green
land by the shortest route.
People say that if you sail
from Bergen due west to Cape
Farewell in Greenland, you
pass twelve leagues south of
Iceland. From Reykjaness in
South Iceland it takes five
days to Slyne Head6 in Ire-
land, four days from Langa-
ness in North Iceland north-
wards to Spitzbergen7 in the
Arctic Sea, and a day’s sail
to the wild regions in Green-
land north from Kolbein’s
Isle.
3. Snowland
The story goes that some
people wanted to sail from
Norway to the Faroes — a
viking called Naddodd, to
name one of them. They were
driven out to sea westwards,
and carne to a vast country.
They went ashore in the East-
fjords, climbed a high moun-
tain, and scanned the country
in all directions looking for
smoke or any other sign that
the land was inhabited, but
they saw nothing. In the sum-
mer they went back to the
Faroes, and as they were
sailing away from the coast
a lot of snow fell on the
mountains, so they called the
country Snowland. They were
full of praise for it. Accord-
ing to Saemund the Learned8
the place in the Eastfjords
where they landed is the one
now called Reydarfell.
Continued on page 8.
THERE exist several books
and a Vast number of news-
paper and periodical articles
in many languages concern-
ing Vilhjalmur Stefansson’s
remarkable life and far-
reaching achievements, as
well as his own basic works
on his explorations and re-
lated subjects, including his
memorable autobiography,
Discovery (1964). This article,
perhaps in the nature of a
mere footnote to the literary
career of the great explorer,
deals with a phase of his ex-
tensive authorship which has
not been surveyed continu-
ously or in detail before: his
writings on Iceiandic subjects.
I
Vilhjalmur Stefansson was
the son of Icelandic pio-
neers in Manitoba, who had
emigrated from Iceland in
1876. In 1881, when the fu-
ture explorer was not yet
two years of age, his family
moved to the newly estab-
lished settlement in what was
then Dakota Territory, home-
steading near M o u n t a i n ,
North Dakota, where he spent
his formative years and grew
to m a n h o o d. Stefansson,
therefore, had deep roots in
Icelandic ancestral soil, and
throughout his life was ap-
preciative of his Icelandic
family background and of his
rich literary and cultural Ice-
landic heritage.
As his books reveal, he also
recognized the impact which
the Dakota prairie and the
rigors of pioneer life during
his early yeans had left upon
him, and he felt a deep attach-
ment to these haunts of his
youth. He expressed this
memorably in a letter writ-
ten in 1928 at the time of the
Golden Jubilee of the Iceland-
ic settlement in North Dakota
to his boyhood friend, Gud-
mundur Grimson, later Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court
of the State, saying in part:
‘Nothing but the most serious
obligations far away could
have prevented my joining
you in this celebration. For
I think back fondly to the
childhood days at Mountain
and long to renew friendship
both with the people and the
land itself. . . . You are cele-
brating a colonization that
has been powerful in its re-
sults upon the lives of all of
us. Those results have been
to our advantage, in most
cases. I for one am grateful
that my most formative years
were spent near Mountain,
under just those pioneer con-
ditions.’ (The letter is pub-
lished in full in the special
volume commemorating the
Anniversary, Minningarril,
Winnipeg, 1929).
The same note is echoed in
his Introduction ( in both
English and Icelandic) to Miss
Thorstina Jackson’s (later
Mrs. Walters) history of the
Icelanders in North Dakota
(Saga íslendinga í Norður-
Dakola, Winnipeg, 1926) when
he wrote: ‘In writing the his-
tory of the Icelandic colonies
in North Dakota, Miss Jack-
son has done an interesting
and important work. Its first
interest is for people like me
who were ourselves part of
that earlist movement, but it
should be of almost equal
concem for the younger gen-
eration who have heard the
stories of pioneer days from
their parents. Next it should
appeal to the loosely feder-
ated sister colonies scattered
through the Western World,
and lastly to the people of
Iceland themselves, who have
in us the interest of parents
for children.’
As Stefansson acknowl-
edged in detail in his autobio-
graphy, he came under last-
ing literary and cultural in-
fluences in his patemal home
in the Icelandic settlement in
North Dakota. ‘A background
for aill my recollections is
reading and being read to,’ he
says and this one sentence
tells volumes. In short, a
deep-rooted literary interest
ran strong in Stefansson’s
blood, an interest nursed for
generations by his Icelandic
forbears, brought up on one
of the greatest literatures of
the world. It was not long
after he entered the Prepara-
tory Department of the Uni-
versity of North Dakota in
1896 that his creative literary
talent expressed itself in hls
extensive writing of poetry.
In his address ‘The Univer-
sity and the Scandinavian
Americans,’ delivered at the
75th Anniversary commemor-
Continued on page 2.