The White Falcon - 04.10.1985, Blaðsíða 7

Hosts
irdic
Festiual
'...There's a strong sense
of domestic life being lived
in this culture...'
to the rest of the world is a complex one, and
the theme seemed fitting. Not until 1966 did
Iceland initiate its own television network. Be-
fore that the only television available was the
programming beamed in from Los Angeles for the US
Naval and Air Force personnel stationed at the
NATO Base in Keflavik, the site of the interna-
tional airport, maintained by the American mili-
tary, where all visitors to Iceland must land.
The lack of mass media, some feel, had helped to
preserve the purity of the language and the im-
portance of literary expression. Now, the Ameri-
can military television system (AFRTS) broadcasts
closed-circuit exclusively on the Base, leaving
Icelanders to their two Reyjavik stations, which
oddly enough, broadcast everyday except Thursdays.
At eight-forty on the evening of September 18
the only thing one could watch was Thor Vi 1 hjalms-
son 1s poems being visualized by Orn Thorsteins-
son's painting. This type of programming is more
the norm than the exception.
This land of dramatic lava formations, thermal
geysers, snow-capped volcanoes, ghost stories,
trolls and witches is steeped in rich literary
traditions are keenly aware of the importance
the world powers have placed on their island.
Knut Odegard, Director of the Nordic House,
interested in inviting Soviet poets, as well, to
the Festival, approached the Soviet Ambassador.
"He was friendly; he gave me coffee, but he said,
'you know, we have a tremendous bureaucracy in my
country."1 No Soviets attended. The former US
Ambassador to Iceland, Marshall Brement, and his
wife, Pamela Sanders, participated widely in the
Icelandic culture. As a result they were vastly
accepted and embraced by the Icelandic Intellec-
tual community, somewhat a rarity in modern di-
plomacy. Brement, a linguist and student of
world literature who speaks, among others, Russian
and Chinese, learned Icelandic in his four years
in Reykjavik. This year, the Iceland Review, pub-
lisher of the glossy Iceland Review Magazine, News
from Iceland, and the Iceland Review Library Ser-
ies, published a handsome book of Brement's trans-
lations of Icelandic poets, Steinn Steinarr, Jon
Ur Vor, and Mathias Johannessen, three major poets
of this century. Johannessen, also the editor-in-
chief of Iceland's leading daily newspaper, the
Morganbladid read from his work on the closing
night of the Festival. Brement, who returned to
Washington earlier this year for reassignment,
was hailed by locals for appearing on the radio
to sing Icelandic folk ballads with Soviet Am-
bassador, Eugen Iyakosarev.
The undulations from this meeting of remarkable
men and women will be felt for months to come and
in perhaps more concrete ways. Much lies in the
hands of the Scandanavians who often read but
don't speak other Nordic languages, and are
often forced to translate their own work in the
absence of translators. Even Thor Vilhjalmsson
is barely translated into English, and his novel
Quick, Quick, Said the Bird, a work sometimes
hailed as the first nouveau roman, translated
masterfully by American John O'Kane, has remain-
ed unpublished for many years. Such is the
plight of the Nordic writer. But things are
changing.
Fine reading performances by Danish poets Uffe
Harder and Marianne Larsen, Sigurdur Palsson, who
is the youngest poet to head the Icelandic Writers
Union, and James Tate, whose blissfully ironic
verse laced the sometimes stiff audience with
humor, all deserve praise. "One of the things I
enjoy most is listening to poets being enthusias-
tic about poetry," stated Seamus Heaney.
He couldn't have come to a better place than
Reykjavik for just that.
Thor Vilhjalmsson, right, Knut Odegard, far left,
and another poet pose for a picture in front of
the Nordic House.
The White Falcon October 4, 1985
7