Lögberg-Heimskringla - 21.06.1985, Blaðsíða 1

99. ÁRGANGUR
Benedik Blöndal
Toast to
Canada 1985
Benedikt Blöndal is born in Reyk-
javík on January 11, 1935. He
graduated in law from University of
Iceland in January 1960. At first he
was employed with the Reykjavík
Municipal Trawler Company but
soon started a law practise of his own
and has been a partner in the law of-
fice of Fjeldsted, Blöndal & Árnason
since 1966. He was accepted as an
advocate to the Supreme Court of
Iceland in 1966. He was chairman of
the Icelandic Bar Association from
1971 to 1973, vice president of the
Arbitration Court in wages-disputes
for governmental and municipal
employees since 1971 and president
since 1977, on the board of the
Icelandic Red Cross since 1973, vice
president 1977 and president since
1983. He has taken part in several
scandinavian and international con-
ferences, i.a. in the legal profession
and the Red Cross. His wife is
Goðrún Karlsdóttir, born in Reyk-
javík on September 14, 1936. They
have three children, Karl, b. 1961, a
student of architecture in Germany,
Lárus b. 1964 and Anna b. 1968.
Goðrún and Benedikt both took part
in the celebrations in Hekla Island
and íslendingadagurinn 1975.
Lögberg
Heimskringla
l.OGBKRG Stofnað 14. januar 1888
Hbi.VISKRINGI.A Stofnað 9. september 1886
WINNIPEG, FÖSTUDAGUR 21. JÚNÍ 1985 NÚMER 24
Magnus Magnusson on Vikings
Vikings just folk with flair for trade
by Doug Whiteway
The Viking as entrepreneur?
Sounds like revisionism for the
'80s, the Reagan-Thatcher-Mulroney
decade of celebration for the enter-
prising small businessman.
But British writer and broadcaster
Magnus Magnusson is serious.
He says the Vikings, those Scan-
dinavians popularly imagined as
fierce pirates and warriors, were
more like ordinary folks who had an
uncommon flair for trade.
"They were bothered about the
mortgage — they had mortgages —
they were worried about a roof over
their heads; they were bothered
about their savings — exactly the
same preoccupations in every period
of history,” says Magnusson, here to
talk to local Icelandic societies and to
consult curators of the Viking collec-
tion at the Manitoba Museum of Man
and Nature.
Usually farmers
With the exception of a later im-
perial stage, Vikings, he says, were
usually farmers, or sons of farmers
seeking new, largely unoccupied
land. The urge to emigrate was link-
ed to a population explosion in Scan-
dinavia between 700 and 110, itself
linked to the discovery of iron
resources which allowed for greater
trade, better farm implements and
weapons, and a better-fed, healthier
population.
Magnusson, 55, who has joined the
ranks of the great postwar
popularizers of history and ar-
cheology through such TV programs
as The Vikings and The Archeology
of the Bible (both on PBS) says Vik-
ings have simply suffered from a bad
press.
"In an age that was turbulent and
violent, they were better at it than
most. Their victims tended to be
literate, which they themselves
weren't, so history was written by
the victims who tended to be in posi-
tions of authority.”
Icelandic-born Magnusson, best
known in Britain as the host of the
game show Mastermind, says the
Vikings had the initiative to move
beyond the limits of the known
world to set up a mind of "multina-
Magnus Magnusson
tional”. So they were in fact, in-
troducing new concepts of en-
trepreneurial commercialism. Only
they just called it ‘trade' then."
Making history live
Using contemporary words such as
entrepreneur is a way of making
history alive and relevant to au-
diences, Magnusson indicates.
An editor at the Scotdsh Daily Ex-
press and The Scotsman before mov-
ing to TV, he has spent most of his
professional life popularizing things
usually considered stuffy.
The Vikings have tended to be ig-
nored in Britain, he says, because the
English have long been occupied ar-
cheologically with the Mediterranean
world.
"With the loss of the empire and
with the women's lib movement,
patriarchs are out. So they're looking
for a new era as a model and that
model now is the Viking en-
trepreneurialism. That's my theory."
He says the rediscovery of a major
Viking settlement in the city of York
and its restoration have renewed in-
terest in Europe's Viking past.
"Over the last 20 years, we've
discovered so much about the Viking
as a real man, not as a myth, not the
guy with the horned helmet which
never existed, but as a trader, as well
as a raider.”
June 17th celebration in Reykjavík