Reykjavík Grapevine - 17.06.2011, Blaðsíða 16

16
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 8 — 2011
Iceland | History
You know, if you're reading this issue on the day we started distrib-
uting it, you'll be happy to know that today is a day off in Iceland.
Indeed, it is our 'Independence Day'. Fancy that!
On June 17, Jón Sigurðs-
son will be the man of
the day. This is Iceland’s
‘Independence Day’ with
festivities all around the country,
parades and the waving of flags, but
this day also marks 200 years since
the birth of Jón Sigurðsson—for our
national celebrations take place on
his birthday. Jón Sigurðsson is Ice-
land’s number one independence
hero—however, he is all the same a
strangely remote person.
FACING PARLIAMENT
The statue of the stern man standing tall
opposite the parliament on Austurvöllur
square in downtown Reykjavík, look-
ing at the doings of Alþingi with stern,
perhaps indignant eyes—that’s Jón Sig-
urðsson. The sculpture was made by the
artist Einar Jónsson—who did much
to fashion the nationalistic imagery of
early 20th century Iceland—and it also
includes a relief where a muscular, pro-
phetic looking man is moving boulders
of rock from a mountain road, with a
group of people coming behind him,
not really helping, just gazing at him in
wonder.
But reality is not so dramatic. Jón
Sigurðsson worked in an office his
whole life. He never lifted a stone in
his struggle or wielded a sword—even
if his obituary remarked that he was
Iceland’s pride, sword and shield. It is
often said that the pen was his weapon.
This can be a bit problematic, for as a
national hero he seems distant, difficult
to relate to, and most people have a very
vague idea about who he was and what
he really did. It could even be said that
most Icelanders are not particularly in-
terested. His 200 years birthday is not
an event that garners much excitement.
PURGING ICELAND OF DANISH IN-
FLUENCE
Most European nations that were under
the rule of other countries—Iceland was
under Denmark for many centuries,
until 1944—have their 19th century na-
tionalist heroes, coming in the wake of
the romantic nationalist awakening in
the beginning of that century. Iceland
basically has two. One of them is very
typical; he has his equivalents in many
countries: This is Jónas Hallgrímsson,
the national poet, a romantic idealist
who dreamed of resurrecting the old
Alþingi and waking the people and the
language from a long period of apathy.
There is a statue of Jónas Hallgríms-
son, also by sculptor Einar Jónsson, in
the Hljómskálagarður park, just by the
pond—statues of such poets exist in cit-
ies all around Europe.
Jónas wrote poems, pub-
lished a magazine called Fjöl-
nir with his friends and he was
also a naturalist—creating Ice-
landic names for many natural
phenomena. Jónas wanted to
revive pride in the nation’s cul-
tural heritage and expunge the
language of Danish influence.
Danish was then becoming the
language of towns like Reyk-
javík and Akureyri. In this he
was very much the child of the
romantic nationalistic ideals of
that period.
THE FAVORITE CHILD OF
MISFORTUNE
Jónas, like Jón Sigurðsson,
lived in Copenhagen for most
of his life—at the time, the city
was the real capital of Iceland.
Born in a beautiful valley in the
north of Iceland in 1807, he had
a short, unhappy life. His father
drowned when he was a young
boy, and even if he wrote many
beautiful love poems, he never
found love himself. In Copenhagen he
became an alcoholic like many of the
Icelanders who went there to study, and
in 1845, when he was just 37 years of age,
he fell down the stairs when drunkenly
returning to his home and broke his leg.
A few days later he died, presumably
from blood poisoning, in a Copenhagen
hospital. It is rumoured that his body
was in terrible shape when he died—
that he had pneumonia, liver damage
and perhaps Delirium Tremens. In his
last years Jónas had occasionally started
to disguise himself as a Danish labourer
to be able to move about the city without
meeting fellow Icelanders.
Jónas is still a greatly beloved nation-
al hero. Many of his poems are extraordi-
narily pure and beautiful. He always fas-
cinates. He is a poet who wrote beautiful
things and then poured beer all over the
words. He has been referred to as the
favourite child of misfortune, the good
poet, the darling of the nation. In 1946,
his bones were even disinterred and
moved to Iceland to be buried in a Na-
tional Graveyard for the greats of Iceland
that was being planned in Þingvellir, the
site of the old Alþingi. Sadly the National
Graveyard soon became a butt of jokes,
not least because the presumed bodily
remains of Jónas were rumoured to be
those of a Danish butcher. But the grave-
yard is still there and it is well worth a
visit—the only other grave is that of poet
Einar Benediktsson (1864–1940).
"WE ALL PROTEST!"
Jón Sigurðsson was just a few years
younger than Jónas Hallgrímsson. He
was born in the Westfjords of Iceland
on June 17, 1811. He was a philologist
by education, working in the Arnamag-
naean Foundation, which housed and
preserved the manuscripts of the old Ice-
landic Sagas—the most precious things
to come from Iceland. These old books
were kept in Denmark for many centu-
ries, but in 1971 the Danes started giving
them back. Soon, Jón was devoting more
time to political and economical matters
and he became the undisputed leader of
the nascent independence movement.
It was he who fashioned its arguments,
even if he didn’t go further than calling
for a sovereign country under the Dan-
ish king.
But momentous or dramatic events
were few in Jón Sigurðsson's life—and
thus it is rather difficult to explain his
importance to schoolchildren. The most
famous was in the summer of 1851, dur-
ing a conference with the Danish au-
thorities in the large timber house of the
Reykjavík Gymnasium on Lækjargata.
The Danes proposed that the Icelanders
would become citizens of the
Danish state with six repre-
sentatives in the Parliament
in Copenhagen—Jón and
his followers staged a minor
revolt, shouting "we all pro-
test!" and leaving the room.
This is a mile-
stone in the independence
movement, and there is a
large painting depicting
these events in the hallway of
Alþingi, but they cannot be
construed as being terribly
dramatic. Rumours that the
Danes planned to murder
Jón Sigurðsson also proved to
be without foundation—the
truth is that as colonial mas-
ters go the Danes were rather
lenient towards Iceland.
JÓN AGAINST AND FOR
THE EU
Jón Sigurðsson's grave is to
be found in the old Reykja-
vík cemetery, just up the hill
from the pond. This is well
worth a visit, for the garden
is old and mysterious, full of history and
quite beautiful in its Nordic way. Jón
died in 1879. His body was moved from
Copenhagen with the remains of his
wife, Ingibjörg Einarsdóttir, who passed
away only nine days after his death.
Their story is a bit strange. Ingibjörg
was Jón’s cousin, seven years his senior.
They met when he was a shop assistant
and a scribe in Reykjavik. Then Jón went
to Copenhagen to attend university.
She waited for many long years, during
which time it is said that she lost her
teeth, but they finally married in 1845
and set up a rather bourgeois household
in Copenhagen. There has been much
speculation about this, but in later years
it has been discussed openly that Jón
probably had syphilis. The couple had no
children.
Long before Iceland became a repub-
lic people had started celebrating 17th
of June as a day of national festivities.
The University of Iceland was founded
in 1911 on Jón Sigurðsson’s 100th birth-
day. When Iceland severed its ties with
Denmark during World War II—under
the auspices of the US military—the
date of independence was set on June
17, 1944. Jón Sigurðsson was celebrated
as a national icon, his pictures were ev-
erywhere, on platters, paper bills and
mass-produced prints that were found
in many homes. Today antique shops
are full of this merchandise, while Jón is
still on the 500 ISK bill.
Jón is often referred to as Jón forse-
ti—“President Jón”—but he never was a
real president. In fact, he just was a pres-
ident of the Copenhagen branch of the
Icelandic Literary Society, admittedly a
very prestigious association, founded in
1816. But in the political debate he gets
mentioned a lot, especially when matters
of sovereignty and the relationships of
Iceland with the world are on the agen-
da. Those who are against Iceland join-
ing the European Union quote him as
their ally as do those who want Iceland
to join. Of course this is pure fantasy—
simply Jón can be said to have been a fol-
lower of 19th century bourgeois ideas of
free trade.
THE DOG DAYS KING
It might be said that Jón Sigurðsson is
a rather boring independence hero. Ba-
sically he was just a well-educated man
with an astute legal mind. But then, Ice-
land has been said to be one of the most
peaceful countries in the world. The last
real battle fought here was in the 13th
century. There have been no Viking he-
roes here since the time of the sagas. So
maybe Jón is the right man. But then we
have another, mostly unsung indepen-
dence hero. This is the Danish rogue
and adventurer Jörgen Jörgensen, who
occupied the country for a few months
in 1809, during the Napoleonic wars.
Jörgen, “the Dog Days King”, came
here with a handful of men, originally
to buy fat for soap making, but he took
charge of the country with his handful
of men and declared it to be free of Den-
mark. He even designed a new Icelandic
f lag—it was blue with three dried and
f lattened codfish in the corner.
However Jörgensen’s reign didn’t
last long, and after he was driven away
he ended up in the penal colony in Tas-
mania where he died in 1840. There is
still no statue of Jörgensen in Iceland.
Words
Egill Helgason
Illustration
Lóa Hjálmtýsdóttir
THE PEN WIELDER, THE POET AND THE ROGUE
Jón Sigurðsson and other Icelandic ‘heroes of independence’
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