Lögberg-Heimskringla - 21.10.1994, Blaðsíða 1

neimsKrmgia
The lcelandic Weekly
Lögberg Stofnaö 14. janúar 1888
Heimskringla Stofnaö 9. september 1886
108. Árgangur Föstudagur 21. október 1994
108th Year Publications Mail Registration No. 1667 Friday, 21 October 1994
Inside this week:
Viking beer on the move..................2
l've done enough killing...............2, 3
Grímkell's Story, fourth installment...4, 5
Einar's Anecdotes........................6
Upcoming events..........................7
Númer 36
Number 36
A
lcelandic
News
Reading On The
Increase:
■ Reading is on the increase again
in lceland following a slump in book
lending at the libraries in the years
1979-1988. According to Annual
Reports from 1991 and 1992 the
libraries lent out 6.3 copies per cap-
tia in 1991 and 6.3 in 1992.
Inhabitants of the West Fjords own
most books per capita and inhabi-
tants of north western lceland bor-
row most books. More books are
borrowed in rural libraries with 2,500
to 5,000 citizens and these same
counties support their libraries best.
The reasons for the decrease in bor-
rowing was thought to be connect-
ed to increased VCR and tape use
among the public. The increase now
is probably related to unemploy-
ment and more spare time. There
are now 197 public libraries in
lceland, which together own
1,850,000 books, or seven books
per person.
Honoured in
Cleveland:
m Ásg eir Theodórs, specialist in
internal medicine, was honoured
for his work as vice-president of
the Student Federation of
Cleveland Clinic, the University
Hospital in Ohio, USA, at a meet-
ing of the Student Federation
recently. Ásgeir has been vice-
President for four years and has
had a seat on the council of
Cleveland Clinic Foundation.
Ásgeir received his training at
Cleveland Clinic and returned to
lceland in 1981. He has served as
Head of the Department for inter-
nal medicine at the City Hospital in
Reykjavík. He has been working for
Cleveland Clinic Foundation for the
last few months.
V GUNNUR ISFELD .
LOOKING BACK, LOOKING FORWARD — I
Whither í slendin^ada^urínn
If a stranger who knew nothing of Iceland or
Icelanders, let alone New Iceland and Western
Icelanders, were to drop into Gimli on the
August long weekend, he might well wonder
what was going on.
He would know, of course that this was a party but he
would have a hard time knowing what it was about.
Unless he happened on the formal function at the park
on the Monday, he might be hard-pressed to figure out
what it was that all these people were celebrating.
We, of course, know what they are celebrating —
Islendingadagurinn, or as it is called with the increasing
frequency these days, the Icelandic Festival. The festival
attracts thousands of people every year and in that sense
it is a great success. The question that needs to be asked
is how successful is it in its primary function of preserv-
ing and promoting the Icelandic culture and heritage?
If our hypothetical stranger can be used as an exam-
ple, the answer would be not very succesful at all.
Islendingadagurinn is the day when we should reaffirm
our roots. The Icelandic festival in Gimli is the largest
and most important in North America and the greatest
single opportunity for us to do that. Increasingly, howev-
er, it is taking on the atmosphere of simply another small
town fair, and, besides that, a small town fair that is
often not a lot of fun. The pedlars who fill the park and
line the streets have a lot of interesting wares to sell but
few of them have much to do with being Icelandic.
Icelandic flags are in evidence and Icelandic can occa-
sionally be heard in the streets but it is only at the formal
ceremony in the park that the true nature of the event
becomes apparent. This year the Fjallkona, Dilla
Narfason, made a particularly eloquent and appropriate
speech — when she could be heard over the noise of the
bumper cars in the background (another Icelandic tradi-
tion?) She drew on the past and she looked to future,
pegging her talk to a contemporary event, the United
Nations Year of the Family. Family in both its traditional
Invitation from University of
Manitoba’s Department of
lcelandic
Language and
Literature
We would like to extend an invitation for every-
one to attend a lecture by Einar Gunnar
Pétursson, cand. mag., Stofnun Árna
Magnússonar á íslandi, on the topic About Icelandic
Books and Manuscripts in North America, on Thursday,
October 27, 1994, at 7:30 p.m. in the Senior Common
Room, University College at the University of Manitoba.
In addition, the College Provost is pleased to host, on
behalf of the Department of Icelandic, a reception in the
College Senior Common Room. There is free admission
and free parking in the B-Lot.
This event is sponsored by the Department of
Icelandic Language and Literature. We hope you will call
474-9551 by October 24 if you wish to attend.
and symbolic sense is a subject of vital interest to people
of Icelandic descent and she helped to save this year’s
íslendingadagurinn.
The diminishing Icelandic nature of the Gimli celebra-
tion may be inevitable. With each passing year we move
further away from our roots. The roots remain strong,
however, as the interest in celebration of Iceland’s 50th
anniversary of independence among Western Icelanders
and in the number of them who travelled to Iceland for
that and for Icelandic International League’s conference
this summer demonstrates.
Last year, Lögberg-Heimskringla was able to attend
the annual Scandinavian celebrations in Fargo and
Minot in North Dakota. These are fairly large events and
they are a lot of fun. The Icelandic element in them is
small, but its presence is both strong and obvious,
stronger and more obvious in some ways than it is in
Gimli on the weekend of the Icelandic Festival.
To ask why this should be so is not to criticize the
hard work of the volunteers who make the Gimli cele-
bration work each year. It is simply to ask if there are
ways that it could be made better, more fun and focused
more clearly on its purpose of reaffirming and celebrating
our identity.
Lögberg-Heimskringla would like to hear your views
on this subject. In the weeks to come we will be inviting
debate on all the institutions that are charged with main-
taining our heritage, including this newspaper — indeed
we always are interested in hearing your opinions at any
time. At the moment, however, we would like you to
look back at the tradition of islendingadagurinn, exam-
ine its present and think about its future. That future,
after all is closely tied and may even be symbolic of our
own fate as a people.
— Tom Oleson