Orð og tunga - 26.04.2018, Page 71

60 Orð og tunga
ture as represented by modern poetry, independent of the cultural
politics of the original atómskáld.
9 From atoms to guano
In Iceland, the jazz and atom age was succeeded by the age of rock and
roll and guano. Parallel to the atóm- compounds, a set of compounds
in gúanó- ‘guano’ emerged, such as gúanóljóð ‘guano poem’, gúanórokk
‘guano rock’, and gúanótextar ‘guano texts’.
(15) Þorpskvæðið eftir Tolla gefur góða hugmynd um
veru leika skynjun gúanóskálda. (Silja Aðalsteinsdóttir
1980:350)
[The village poem by Tolli gives a good idea of the guano
poets’ perception of reality]
(16) Grein Árna Óskarssonar [...] kom af stað snörpum blaða-
deilum um ,,gúanótextana“ svonefndu. (Silja Aðal steins-
dóttir 1980:348)
[Árni Óskarsson’s article brought about heated newspa-
per debates about the so-called “guano texts”.]
(17) Seinna komu ,,tappar tíkarrassar“ og ,,sjálfsfróanir“
og gúanómenn voru ekki lengur töff. (Helgi Grímsson
1982:607)
[Later came the “Tappi bitch-asses” and “masturbation”
and the guano men were no longer cool.]
Like atóm, gúanó is an international term for a concept for which native
words exist, e.g. (fugla)dritur. The oldest att estation of gúanó in ROH
is from Jón Sigurðsson’s Lítil fi skibók (1859). 14 of the 16 att estations of
the word in ROH all relate to the fertilizer industry; the transferred
meaning appears only in two articles from 1980 in Tímarit Máls og
menningar by Árni Óskarsson and Silja Aðalsteinsdótt ir, respectively,
that att empt to characterize cultural trends and shift s. Árni Óskars-
son (1980:200) introduces the term to scholarly discourse, suggesting
that it already existed in popular parlance: “fyrirbærið fékk heitið
„gúanórokk“ – eðlilega, gúanó gegnsýrir jú allt okkar þjóðlíf” (Árni
Óskarsson 1980:200) [the phenomenon received the name ‘guano
rock’ – naturally, for guano of course permeates all of Icelandic life].
Compounds in gúanó- generally refer to popular music and liter-
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