Lögberg-Heimskringla - 24.04.1981, Blaðsíða 6

6-WINNIPEG, FÖSTUDAGUR 24. APRÍL 1981
Jane McCracken:
A tribute to Stephan G. Stephansson
(An address given at a recent
þorrablót in Edmonton)
Before I begin, I would like to
thank the Icelandic society for in-
viting me to speak tonight on
Stephan G. I have been working on
the Stephansson House project as a
Research Officer for Alberta
Culture, Historic Sites Service for
more than two years and during that
time have had the pleasure to work
with both the Stephansson House
Restoration Committee and the
Icelandic community at Markerville.
It has been an'd I am sure wjjl con-
tinue to be a rewarding experience
for me. I feel that, besides learning a
great deal about Icelandic-Canadian
culture, I have made some good
friends, learned some good recipes
etc.
Tonight, I shall be speaking to you
about the Poet Laureate of Iceland,
Stephan G. Stephansson, or to use
the Icelandic name he himself
preferred, Stephan G. He has also
been called "the greatest poet of the
western world," not just of Iceland,
but of the western hemisphere, and
was one of Canada's most prolific
poets. During the 74 years he was
alive, he produced enough poetry,
most of it of the highest quality, to
fill six volumes, which he entitled
Andvökur (Sleepless or Wakeful
Nights). Who,~then', was this man?
What were the passions which com-
pelled him at night, while others
slept, to rise from his bed to write
his beloved verses? Was he unique,
or was he representative of a
transplanted culture?
Stefán Guðmundsson was born at
the farm "Kirkjuhóll” in northern
Iceland in the sýsla of Skagafjörður
on 3 October 1853. His parents were
poor tenant farmers who could not
afford to give their son a formal
education, a fact that Stefán always
regretted. Nevertheless, his parents
taught him at home to read and
write and instilled in him a great
love and pride of his Icelandic
heritage and language. He read
every book in his family's small
library many times. And it was not
long before he developed an intense
appreciation for the effect and
power that words could have.
Fascinated with language, Stefán
worked diligently on his
vocabulary, so that by the time he
was an adult he had such a com-
mand of his mother tongue that he
was nearly unequalled by any of his
countrymen. Versifying, too, was
part of his upbringing. At night, his
family like all Icelanders gathered
around the fire to recite the ancient
sagas and poems and to make a
game of inventing new verses, or
rímur as they were called. When he
began to compose his fitst verses
even Stephansson could not
remember. One of the few poems to
survive from his adolescence ex-
pounded on the theme of boredom
created by laziness. His devotion to
self-improvement and hard work re-
mained with him throughout his
life.
His love for his country, though,
was not reciprocated. Iceland was a
harsh and difficult country to live in
at that time. So, in 1873, 165
Icelanders, including Stefán now
nearly twenty years of age and his
family, decided to emigrate to the
United States. Stefán, with fifty
other Icelanders, settled in a heavily
forested area of Wisconsin. Here he
had to learn to build with logs, and
to plow and seed land, concepts that
were entirely new to him. It was
here, too, five years after his arrival
that he and his first cousin, Helga
Jónsdóttir were married. Then, in
1880, the whole Wisconsin settle-
ment moved to North Dakota. The
first years there were learning ex-
periences, for farming the prairie
was different again from farming in
Wisconsin. But Stephan did learn to
adapt, and by the mid-1880s was
faring at least as well as his Icelan-
dic neighbours. But by then the land
boom had broken and Stephan was
forced, like many homesteaders, to
mortgage his farm to pay his debts.
Finally, in 1889, he decided to move
once again, this time northwest to
Canada. He took a homestead west
of the Red Deer River in the
Medicine River Valley near other
Icelanders who had settled there á
year earlier. He remain.ed here for
the next thirty-eight years of his life
until his death in 1927. He raised a
large family, built an attractive
home and took an active role in
community life. In Markerville, he
served on the Hóla school board,
was Justicé of the Peace for the
district, was instrumental in
establishing a library, and served a
number of years as secretary-
treasurer for the creamery associa-
tion.
Stephansson was not always a
popular man with other west
Icelanders. He had been attracted,
while living in the United States, to
the works of the anticlerical free
thought movement. His resulting
outspoken criticism of the Icelandic
Lutheran church, with its "ancient
doctrines" as Stephan called them,
lead him to reject the church and its
message of eternal damnation. In
February 1888, he and seven others
living in North Dakota formed the
Icelandic Cultural Society. In its
constitution, the Cultural Society
stated that its objectives were ''to
support and promote culture and'
ethics . . . Instead of church sec-
tarianism, it seeks to promote
humanitarianism and brotherhood;
instead of unquestioning creeds,
reasonable and unfettered research;
instead of blind beliefs, indepen-
dent conviction and instead of ig-
norance or prejudice, spiritual
freedom and progress." The church,
of course, was furious and charged
the Cultural Society as being a
"godless" society and Stephan G. as
At Close of Day
When sunny hills are draped in velvet shadows
By summer night
And Lady moon hangs out among the tree tops
Her crescent bright;
And when the welcome evening breeze is cooling
My fevered brow
And all who toil rejoice that blessed night time
Approaches now—
When out among the herds the bells are tinkling
Now clear, now faint,
As in the woods a lonely bird is voicing
His evening plaint;
The wandering breeze with drowsy accept whispers
Its melody,
And from the brook the joyous cries of children
Are borne to me;
When fields of grain have caught a gleam of moonlight
But dark the ground —
A pearl-grey mist has filled to over-flowing
The dells around;
Some golden stars are peeping forth to brighten
The eastern wood —
Then I am resting out upon my doorstep
In nature's mood.
My heart reflects the rest and sweet rejoicing
Around, above;
Where beauty is the universal language
And peace and love.
Where all things seem to join in benediction
And prayers for me;
Where at night's loving hear both earth and heaven
At rest I see.
And when the last of all my days is over,
The last page turned —
And, whatsoever shall be deemed in wages
That I have earned,
In such a mood I hope to be composing
My sweetest lay —
And then extend my hand to all the world
And pass away.
an anti-Christ. I do not believe,
though, that Stephan was an athiest.
It was just that his God was not the
God preached by the church of his
time. When listening to poems such
as "At Close of Day”, I find it dif-
ficult to imagine Stephan G. as be-
ing anything other than a religious
man.
Stephansson also managed to
rouse the ire of the Icelanders by his
pacifist stand that he took during
both the Boer and First World Wars.
While Icelandic-Canadians were
proudly cheering the war effort
Stephan G., in his hatred for this
legalized slaughter, penned lines
such as these:
In Europe's reeking slaughter pen
They mince the flesh of
murdered men.
While swinish merchants, snout
in trough,
Drink all the bloody profits off.
"Vígslóði," or "The Trail of War"
was a collection of his antiwar
poems which nearly landed Ste-
phansson in jail on the charge of
treason. However, this was averted
by a friend of his, Rögnvaldur
Pétursson, the Unitarian minister
from Winnipeg. Lifelong friends,
Stephan G. thought highly of
Pétursson and of the freer thinking
Unitarian church.
The First World War precipitated
the Bolshevik revolution in Russia
with its promise of a classless socie-
ty. Stephansson shocked, angered
and embarrassed the west Ice-
landers by condoning, in principle,
the Communist take-over. He was
accused of being a Communist, and
even call himself "a Red". But one
has to remember the times. By 1920,
the Red scare was in full swing in
North America and anyone with
any socialistic tendencies was
automatically considered a Com-
munist. Stephan G. was not a Com-
munist. He was a humanitarian. He
believed in —tfee goodness of
mankind and man's ability to
distinguish between right and
wrong. To him, it was man's respon-
sibility to progress so that others, in
the future, might benefit. He saw
the world and man as evolving
toward a time when:
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