Lögberg-Heimskringla - 03.06.1994, Blaðsíða 1

eimskringla
The icelandic Weekly
LögLierg Stofnaö 14. janúar 1888
Heimskringla Stofnað 9. september 1886
108. Árgangur
108th Year
Publications Mail Registration No. 1667
Föstudagur 3. júní 1994
Priday, 3 June 1994
Inside this week:
Premiers plant trees in Gimli........2
Einar's Anecdotes....................3
lcelandic Theme Cards..............4, 5
A National Outfit for Men......t.....6
• Help Children Go To lceland..........7
Númer 20
Number 20
lcelandic
News
Queens in Akureyrí:
■ The Ðanish Queen, Margret, and the
Norwegian Queen, Sonja had a stop-over in
Akureyri earlier this month en route from
Greenland where they had visited for about a
week. Queen Margáret said in an ínterview
with Morgunblaðið that the Greenland visit
had been very enjoyable. Among other
events they had seen a polar bear. The
Queens flew on the lcelandic Airlines and
had high praíse for the pilots.
Looking for treasures
in lce/and:
■ "The Treasure Island - try to win 10,000
pounds today," Thus reads a headline in the
British Daily Telegraph recently. The island ís
lceland, and along with the advertising is a
map of lceland. Sharp eyed readers can,
with the.help of the map, find a treasure
worth 10,000 pounds, or about $18,000
Canadian.
Four clues are given whereby the readers
can find four places on the map and then line
up the four first letters which give the name
of the place where the treasure is to be
found. Along with the map is a picture óf the
Blue Lagoon. The treasure hunt is good
advertising for lceland, as the Daily
Telegraph is the most widely read newspaper
in England:
A Limo Service:
■ A full length luxury van of Cadillac
Fleetwood make, with a gentleman's interior, .
will soon be running along the streets of
Réykjavík. Hjalti Garðarsson has establíshed
the company "Eðalvagnar" {luxury vans), and
plans to serve people who want to rent the
van for special occasions, such as weddings,
foreign visits, etc. A uníformed chauffeur will
dfive the van. The price for such an excur-
sion is $83.00 an hour. The van has capacity
for six passengers. The passenger space Ís
separated from the chauffeur's cabin wíth a
double glass window, whích can be opened.
The interior is leather and hazei wood. The
van is air conditioned, and equipped with ;
TV, VCR, stereo, telephone, a bar and a cir
cular window. Passengers and chauffeu
. communicate through an intercom.
GUNNUR ISFELO
Praise For A Poet
By Tom Oleson
There 'have been many fine
Western Icelandic poets that
have emerged since the first
Icelanders arrived in North America
but at the pinnacle that this poetry
forms is a triumvirate of names. Two of
them are known to almost evéryone;
the third is not nearly as well known as
it should be.,
Ask any Icelandic-Canadian or
Icelandic-American to name the best of
the Western Icelandic poets and they
will probably respond immediately with
two names — Stephan Geir
Stephansson and Guttormur
Guttormsson. Both of these men were
remarkabje poets. Stephan Geir was a
Western Icelandic poet by anybody’s
definition. Böm in Iceland, he lived in
North America for much of his life and
wrote most of his poetry here. A monu-
ment and a museum at Markerville,
Alberta, pay testimony to the stature
he claims in North America and a
monument in Iceland pays tribute to
the esteem in which he is held there.
Guttormur was born and lived in
Manitoba and wrote his poetry there.
He too is well known in Iceland and a
mönument to his memoiy is planned to
be erected in Riverton, hopefully this
summer. It, too, will be a well deserved
tribute to a great poet.
The third name of the triumvirate
comes less easily too mind. It is
Franklin Johnson who is not nearly as
well known as his remarkable poetry
deserves. Part of the reason for this is
that he does not seek out publicity. On
appearance, he is a dour and tacitum
man, with face of one who looks like
he would not suffer fools gladly. He
has seldom, if at all, submitted his poet-
ry for publication although if he is
asked he will consider the request after
first considering the source of the
request. I approached him at the
Icelandic Canadian Frón’s Þorrablót in
Winnipeg, the first time I had spoken
to him although I had seen him at
other events — he lives outside of
Arborg, Manitoba, but he regularly
attends Icelandic cultural events in
Winnipeg and nearby towns. I intro-
duced myself and asked him if he could
spare me a few minutes of his time. He
looked me over somewhat doubtfully,
but graciously consented and since he
did not seem to be the kind of man
who was fond of small talk, I got
straight to the point: I had only recent-
ly discovered his poetry and was
immensely impressed by its quality and
particularly one factor in it that I
believe is unique in Westem Icelandic
poetry.
Franklln Johnson.
I asked him if I could come out to
his farm to interview him about his life
and his work. His reply was typically
Franklin Johnson. “Why would you
want to interview me? All I’ve done all
my life is shovel s—t for a living,” I
replied that that might be true — I
didn’t know — but whatever it was he
had shovelled all his life had provided
fertilizer for some very beautiful blos-
soms in his poetry. Some more conver-
sation followed until he finally allowed
that I could come if the dog — a rather
large dog named Lucy who is devoted
to Franklin — would let me in. This
posed a problem for me, because I am
rather nervous around large dogs who
do not know me and may nót like me,
so it was finally agreed that he would at
least attempt to control Lucy when I
arrived.
o it was with some trepidation
that I arrived at Franklin’s several
weeks later, but the poet emerged,
secured the.dog and invited me in to a
comfortable well-kept farmhouse. As
Icelanders often do to break the ice, we
talked first about family. Franklin has,
in fact, been a farmer all his life, His
father, Guðmundur Magnús Jónsson,
and mother, María Einarsdóttir, home-
steaded in the East Geysir district on
the same farm that Franklin has lived
all his life. Franklih Johnson was bom
there in 1919, and he and his brother
Einar lived and worked there until
Einar’s death in 1990. One of Franklin’s
most moving poems, wntten ímmediacy
after his brother’s death, was published
recently in Lögberg-Heimskringla. It is
the only poem he has written in
rhyming couplets, which give it a driven
quality that reveals the intense emotion
and sense of loss that he felt at his
bróther’s loss.
Today, at age 75, his face is lined and
leathered, the legacy of a life of hard
work in the bams and on the fields, but
his eyes are still bright and expressive,
his words measured and chosen careful-
ly. He gives an impression of strength,
not so much physically — he has had a
life-long battle with illness — as spiritu-
ally, although he is not a religious man.
riting about him in an editorial
in the Icelandic Canadian,
Kirsten Wolf and Carol.
Mowat describe Franklin Johnson as
belonging to the “farmer-poet tradi:
tion”, a member of what Nobel-prize
winning novelist Halldór .Kiljan
Laxness had named ‘The Icelandic
Academy’ and to which he acknowl-
edged his indebtedness as a writer.” It
is an apt description but lacks in
English the descriptive potency and dig-
nity that it has in Icelandic.
Franklin Johnson is both a farmer
and a poet. Indeed, it was while he was
working on the farm that he wrote
much of his poetry, in bits and pieces as
they came to him. Sitting across the
kitchen table from his visitor, he holds
up a small cellophane bag that appears
to contain nothing but little scraps of
paper. On closer examination — not
too close, because the poet is reluctant
to let them out of his hands, the scraps
of paper tum out to be old matchbook
covers with words scribbled on them.
That cellophane bag is one of the lit-
eraiy treasureS of English and Icelandic
literature because the scribbling it con-
tains are lines of poetry written by
Franklin Johnson, one of our finest
poets. As he worked; and a line or a
verse of poetry came to him, he would
write it down on whatever was handy
and later would craft them into com-
plete poems. That cellophane bag
belongs in a museum or an archive one
day.
What makes Franklin Johnson’s
poetry so outstandingly diffecent is that
it follows, in the words of Kirsten Wolf
and Carol Mowat, “the conventions of
traditional Icelandic poetry, marked, as
it is, by particular mles of metre, stress
and alliteration.” What is remarkable
about this is that he does it all while
writing in English, a task many poets,
particularly those who have attempted
to translate traditional Icelandic poetry
into English while preserving the stmc-
ture and maintaining the sense, might
regard as next to impossible. In this
regard, Franklin Johnson is in a class by
himself.
In recent weeks, Lögberg-Heims-
kringla has published several of
Franklin’s poems. They speak so much
• for themselves that I need to say little
about them. In the weeks and months
to come we hope, with his kind per-
mission, to bring ýou more. We had
planned in this issue to print a previ-
ously unpublished poem, but because
there was some typographical errors in
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