Lögberg-Heimskringla - 08.05.1987, Page 4

4-ALDARAFMÆLISÁR, FÖSTUDAGUR 8. MAÍ 1987
Ritstj órnargrein
Konur í aðalhlutverki
í síðustu alþingiskosningum vann
flokkur kvenna sætan sigur og bætti
við sig þremur sætum á Alþingi
íslendinga. Segja sérfræðingar í
stjórnmálum islands að þær standi
með pálmann í höndunum og munu
miklu geta ráðið í
stjórnarmyndunarumræðum þeim er
nú standa yfir. Helstu baráttumál
þeirra eru eðlilega kvenréttindi en á
þau skortir töluvert þó mikið hafi
unnist á síðustu árum.
Konur Islands hafa haft mikil
afskifti af stjórnmálum þó fjöldi
þeirra á þingi hafi ekki verið
umtalsverður fyrr en á síðustu
áratugum. Þær hafa barist fyrir
réttindum sínum og oft unnið mikla
sigra. Frægt er enn verkfall það er
þær stóðu fyrir árið 1976 en þá fyrst
kom virkilega í ljós ómetanlegur
þáttur þeirra í íslensku atvinnu- og
þjóðlífi. Verkfall þetta vakti að
vonum heimsathygli en óvíst er hvort
slík samstaða kvenna næðist í nokkru
öðru landi. Það er t.a.m. víst að í
löndum eins og Kanada og
Bandaríkjunum mætti mikið ganga á
þar til meir en 90% kvenna legðu
niður störf heilan dag og mættu á
útifundum til áherzlu baráttumála
sinna. Til þess eru áðurnefndar þjóðir
of sundurleitar.
Forseti íslands, Vigdís
Finnbogadóttir er fyrsta kona kjörinn
í slíkt embætti og listi kvenna er fyrst
bauð fram árið 1983 er fyrsta
kvenréttindahreifing er nær kjöri til
þings í veraldarsögunni. í eina tíð var
algengt að finna eina, kannski tvær
konur á listum stóru flokkanna og
sjaldan voru fleiri en tvær eða þrjár
konur á þingi. En þetta breittist á
árunum rétt fyrir 1970 og hafa raddir
kvenna stöðugt farið hækkandi síðan.
Til að byrja með bættu stóru
flokkarnir við konum á lista sína en
sjaldan voru þær hafðar í öruggum-
eða baráttusætum heldur hafðar til
skrauts.
Það gefur auga leið að baráttumál
kvenna voru gegn ríkjandi ástandi og
því áttu þær samleið með vinstri
flökkum Islands. En flokkar þessir
reyndust konum verr en þær ætluðu
og baráttumál þeirra oft lögð á hilluna
um leið og kosningar voru afstaðnar.
Þeim varð því ljóst að ef
fullnaðarsigur þtti að nást væri aðeins
um þá leið að ræða að mynda sinn
eigin flokk og berjast óháð öðrum á
þingi. Flokkur þeirra hefur nú sex
þingmenn eða helmingi fleiri en
1983. Er hann nú sagður hafa
lykilaðstöðu í stjórnarmyndun og því
mætti segja að tækifærið sé komið og
sætari sigrar bíði íslenskra kvenna á
næstu grösum. Kannski verður næsti
forsætisráðherra Islands kona og
verður það þá í fyrsta sinn á Islandi
að kona gegnið slíku embætti. Áfram
konur. J.Þ.
Sagas of the Icelanders
I have just spent a very pleasant
afternoon with Dr. John Tucker,
B.A., M.A., (Tor.) B. Litt. (Oxon).,
Ph.D. (Tor.). He is an Associate Pro-
fessor in the University of Victoria
English department.
Although he is not of Icelandic des-
cent, while he was at Oxford to study
Old English, he began to study Old
Icelandic. He was taught by Gabriel
Turville-Petre, a well-known scholar
of Icelandic. After working in Old
Icelandic as an adjunct to Old
English, he became fascinated with
Icelandic and did his B. Litt. in Old
Icelandic. His dissertation was an
edition of the Placitus Saga, the
name given to the Old Icelandic and
Old Norwegian translations of the
Latin life of St. Eustace. This saga is
important because it was translated
so early (about 1100 A.D.). More
generally he is also interested in
Sagas and Eddas because there was
nothing else like them in Medieval
Literature. In recent years, he has
taught sagas in translation. There are
always some students who are so in-
trigued by them that they want to
study Old Icelandic.
Dr. Tucker is involved with a
number of Icelandic projects.
He is putting together an essay col-
lection with the tentative title of
Sagas of the Icelanders. He has
received contributions from Iceland,
Denmark, Great Britain, Canada, the
U.S.A., New Zealand and Australia.
He is also translating a book, Saga
og Samfund (Saga and Society)
from Danish to English. This book
looks at the society which gave rise
to the sagas.
A third project is based on his Ox-
ford dissertation. During the late 17th
and early 18th centuries, saga manu-
scripts were collected and taken to
Denmark by Arni Magnusson. Over
the past 15 years, many have been
returned to Iceland. As a result, there
are now two Arnamagnaean Insti-
tutes — in Denmark and Iceland. The
Institute in Denmark is publishing
Dr. Tucker's dissertation. It will have
an introduction in English, a transla-
tion, and the text in Old Icelandic,
Old Norwegian and Latin.
He is presently involved in no less
than two dictionary projects.
The first is an English translation
and revision of Hans Kuhn's German
Glossary to the Poetic Edda. At the
present, the only way of studying the
poetic Edda is by working through
another language to English. The
only exceptions are the four poems
whch have been issued in a dual
language text: The Poetic Edda,
Vol. I Heroic Poems, by Ursula
Dronke. His object is to make study
of the Edda possible directly to
English speakers. It is to be published
W.D. Valgardson
by Carl Winter Verlag in Heidelberg.
Much of this work goes very slow-
ly because of a lack of funds. The ma-
jority of the work must be done by
students who are paid through a
variety of different government pro-
grams. These programs pay rather
badly (often only minimum wage) for
expert work, and students are al-
lowed to work only a limited number
of hours. That means that just as
students are getting adept at the work
they must stop and have someone
else replace them. Some programs re-
quire that no students who do not
qualify for government grants may
be hired. At one point, the gov-
ernment insisted that if a student
even went home to visit his parents,
he had to be fired because his parents
were supporting him.
Data entry is also difficult because
of the special characters in the Icelan-
dic language. As well, the entries are
difficult to translate because they are
so terse. Unlike translating a novel,
there is no context. Programming the
computer to get proper formatting is
also tricky. At this point, the dic-
tionary has been translated and all
the text is on the university
mainframe.
The second dictionary is a new
modern Icelandic-English dictionary.
At present, the only good bilingual
Icelandic dictionaries are into other
languages — Swedish, Danish, Ger-
man, etc. The only Enlgish dictionary
previously available was done by an
engineer but it is not adeq'uate for
non-technical. purposes.
What Dr. Tucker is doing is pro-
viding a data base which will be
reworked by two people: Christopher
Sanders, English language consultant
to the Arnamagnaean Dictionary
of Old Norse Prose and Sverrir
Holmarsson, Instructor at the Menn-
taskolinn við Sund. They are his co-
editors. One of the difficulties this
project faces is that although the
Canadian part of the project has
received funding through the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research
program, the expenses of his co-
editors can't be covered because they
are not Canadian.
There is a new dictionary recently
published in Iceland but it is English
to Icelandic. The market for this book
is very restricted because of its high
price. (Its cost is roughly equivalent
to that of an encyclopedia.) Dr.
Tucker’s dictionary will be about
400-500 pages with 20,000 entries
and, hopefully, will only cost $20 to
$30 dollars.
Dr. Tucker has also been very ac-
tive with the Beck Collection. He per-
sonally went through all the books.
Rare and particularly valuable books
he sent to Special Collections. The
others he sent to the general collec-
tion. Duplicates he arranged to be
traded with the Manitoba Collection
or with Arnamagnaean Institute in
Iceland. There is still about two per-
cent of the collection not catalogued.
These modern Icelandic books are
being processed when time permits.
W. Valgardson
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