Lögberg-Heimskringla - 12.09.1980, Qupperneq 6

Page 6
The Magician's Voice
by W.D. VALGARDSON
Settlement Poems I, Turnstone
Press, Winnipeg One-Eyed Moon
Maps, Press Porcepic, Victoria.
Many people write verse but seldom,
perhaps only once or twice in a
generation, does a poet arise who has
the power, like a magician, to create
illusions which demand our attention.
Kristjana Gunnars is one of those
magicians.
Born in Reykjavik in 1948, she
immigrated, at the age of sixteön, to
the United States. Eater, she moved to
Canada and has lived in British
Columbia, Ontario, Manitoba and
Saskatchewan. She has a M.A. in
literature from the University of
Regina.
Many authors are content to publish
a book every five or ten years. Gun-
nars will have, within a period of two
years, four bocks of poems published
by three different publishers.
In her first book, Settlement Poems 1,
she has accomphshed what so long has
needed to be done. She has reached
back info the past and recreated, as art,
the lives of the early Icelandic im-
migrants. In doing this she has both
made the settlers more human and
understandablc while also raising their
lives to a mythic level.
The book makes clear the depth of
the suffering and, thus, the height of
the settlers' victory. To reach into the
lives of the settlers, Gunnars has
reached back, through her research
and translations, to what the settlers
were like in the 1800’s. In doing this,
she avoids the common mistake of
assuming that people in the 1800's
were similar to us.
In "From Memory I” the speaker
says
400 of us leave on the verona
wednesdayjuly 12
from seydisfjordur, gudridur
pregnant with a son
to cut trees in canada
"From Memory II' draws us into the
superstition of the 1800's, the un-
certainty of travelling to a distant land,
the everpresent and real danger to be
faced.
dont't air your guilt
on sundays, don't give each other
a sharp tool
eat the heart of a ptarmigan
put two tongues under your
tongue and kiss
hang a raven's heart around your
neck
hang a crow's heart around your
neck
Conditions in Iceland were difficult
but conditions on the boats which
carried the immigrants were
desperate. Sickness was everywhere,
death was common and medicine was
still so primitive that it often did more
harm than good. In ''From Memory
III", the speaker tells us
Groa is dying
wife of jon asmundsson from
faskrudsfjordur
just before docking
july 31, she's made it to quebec
and groa is dying
don't send me back
where the veinman bleeds me
In the latter part of the book,
Gunnars has a series of poems spoken
by Johann Briem and Stefan Eyjolf-
sson. In these poems, she carefully
builds the characters of the men so that
each poem expands the portrait of both
the speaker and his community.
"Johann Briem V" says
waited 5 conspicuous
days in winnipeg, at 3
august 13 we disappear again
on 6 boxes up red river
wasn't so bad, i'm normal
lie with humans
in crags & knolls, grateful
for a good deed
and draws us along on the journey
from Selkirk to Gimli. Simultaneously,
she draws into the internal world of
íear and superstition.
While reading these powerful
poems, I thought that there are always
those in a community who try to deal
with the past by denying it. Rather
than acknowledge the poverty, the
hardships, the sorrow, the incredible
cost their ancestors paid, these people
refuse to hear about it. Such people do
not realize what a terrible disservice
they do to their people. They steal
from them the honour that is rightly
theirs. If a man came to America
already a millionaire, with everything
at his disposal, and he succeeded, how
much honour is due him for his ac-
complishment? Not much, I think.
However, if an immigrant family from
Iceland came to Canada with seven
dollars per person, knowing little or no
English, having few, if any, friends
already here, if they suffered terrible
privation, AND STILL SUCCEEDED,
then how much honour is due them?
All we can give.
This book of peoms will help to give
to those Icelandic settlers what is due
them and guarantee that their
sacrifices will be both recognized and
honoured.
In "One-Eyed Moon Maps", her
second, soon-to-be published, book of
poems, Guannars proves her ver-
satility. Not only is she able to write
about the past, as in "Settlement
Poems I" but to constantly synthesize
the past and present. In "stone” she
compares the moon upön which Arm-
strong and Aldrin walked to the
mythic moon that hung above the tree
yggdrasill. In "woman reading in
moon" she turns more personal
reykjavik is a quiet place
my grandfather is buried
opposite my house
in the sundurgata cemetary
he should have had a banquet
burial, likf the wagon
graves of celts
buried with a joint of pork
a horn of mead
in his right hand
Again and again, she links present
facts with the sagas, personal
memories with history. The result is a
group of tightly controlled poems
which cannot help but move the
reader with their emotion. Often, she
catches beauty in images so forceful
they might be paintings. She concludes
"rain" by saying
hard rain
thrown by women
with eagles' heads
together in a band of cloud
The sureness of each image, the
cadence, the careful and inventive
diction, the strength of the controlling
imagination, combine to make these
books necessary reading for every
North American of Icelandic descent.
‘In a year's time, not to have read them
will be tantamount to not knowing
who your grandfather was or your
families farmstead in Iceland.
Home to Saskatchewan
by CAROLINE GUNNARSSON
This is the year Saskatchewan marks
its 75th birthday. Throughout the
province cities, towns and villages are
celebraling Homecoming Days, with
expatriates from coast to coast to mak-
ing sentimental journeys to the old
home town.
Churchbridge, Saskatchewan, chose
the last three days of June and during
the peak of the festivities the town's
main drag resembled a busy city street,
what with a sudden population growth
of an estimated 3,000. The permanent
population of about 1,000, sup-
plemented by a very supportive rurai
population, proved equal to the
challenge. Hontes were open to
visiting friends, motor homes stood
parked in convenient places and the
old hotel was booked to capacity.
With a fine community hall, a
closed-in curling rink a drop-in centre,
a skating rink and swimming pool, the
town seemed well equipped to take
large scale entertaining in it.s stride and
it rose to the occasion. Hot and cold
meals were served three times each
day, and over the good food friend
sought friend and the years of
separation fell away in the magic of
shared remembrance. Young and old
took part in progranrs of varied en-
tertainment staged in the town hall.
There were class reunions of old
schoolmates and a big ball one
evening.
And Heaven drenched the
proceedings in the first good rain of the
season. "Good for the pastures, might
even save some of the crops," said the
people. Their classic reaction to any
break in a dry spell. Saskatchewan is
good to come home to.
Dcdication of a Cairn
The festivities ended on Sunday,
June 30, with the dedication of a carin
on the .original site of .Concordia
Icelandic Lutheran Church, built in the
year Saskatchewan joined Con-
federation. By 1905 the Icelandic
community had grown in a nor-
thwesterly direction, leaving the old
Thingvalla Church no longer the
centre of the settlement. That church
still stands as a cherished landmark, at
life's end and some descendants of the
first pioneers still join their ancestors
in the old cemetery.
Concordia Lutheran Church has now
been moved from its rural site into
twon, where it serves a Lutheran
congregation of several national
origins. But on the steps that once led
to the church, surrounded by the
cemetery, stands the new cairn. Its
inscription tells the story:
This cairn is erected on the site of
the Concordia Icelandic Lutheran
Church in commemoration of the
first settlers in this area, who
formed a congregation on
November 5, 1905, where they
could gather to worship
In 1963 /Thingvalla Icelandic
Lutheran Church joined in
membership with Concordia. In
1964 Peace German Lutheran
Congregation merged with
Concordia and worship con-
tinued in the church on this site.
From pioneer days the church
with its lofty spire and cross on
top was recognized by many a
traveller. In 1967 the building
was moved to Churchbridge,
where its spire and cross con-
tinue to show the way and the
original bell chimes its call to
come and worship.
Preceding the dedication ceremony
Pastor Johann Fredrikson of Regina,
who served the congregation for some
years, held a worship service in the
church and Gisli Markusson briefly
outlined its history.
Mrs. Vilborg Hinrikson unveiled the
cairn, with her small great-
granddaughter, Kathryn Davis, by her
side. Vilborg was born in the com-
munity and both she and her late
husband, Bjorn Hinrikson, were raised
as members of the congregation.
Vilborg's parents, Magnus and Gudrun
Magnusson, and Bjorn's parents,
Eyjolfur and Ingibjorg Hinrikson were
founding members, as were their two
grandfathers, Magnus Magnusson and
Hinrik Gislason.
A short distance from the new
memorial stands another cairn. Its
dedication 45 years ago, was attended
by eleborate festivities com-
memorating the 50th anniversary of
Thingvalla Icelandic settlement, dating
back to 1885.
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