Studia Islandica - 01.06.1957, Page 21

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Bjarni Pálsson, the first Surgeon-General of Iceland, is
worthy of the translator of Paradise Lost. Written in the
old fornyrðislag, which the writer later used masterfully
as the vehicle for translating Milton and Klopstock, it is
a dignified poem, a fitting monument to an excellent man
and a noble patriot. The poet personifies Health as a wo-
man and pictures her deep grief at the loss of one of the
bravest and best of her warriors. The memorial poem on
Tullin, the Norwegian poet, also deserves special men-
tion; it is melodious and eloquent, clearly the poet’s heart
is in his subject. Some others of the obituary pieces, in
particular those written in the memory of close personal
friends and relatives, breathe the same spirit.
Of Þorláksson’s other occasional poems few are of great
literary value. Most significant is his poem of thanks ad-
dressed to a certain Dane, the anonymous donor of prizes,
primarily to encourage the development of means of tran-
sportation and farming in Northern Iceland. This ge-
nerosity on the part of a foreigner inspired the poet to
write a tribute vibrating with feeling of deep gratitude
and appreciation, and challenging in its vigorous and out-
spoken patriotism.
Þorláksson’s poem of thanks to the British and Foreign
Bible Society, although well deserved and of some literary
merit and beauty, is not, as Henderson maintains, by any
means the poet’s most beautiful poem, but no doubt be-
came the one most widely known abroad.1)
Among Þorláksson’s poems of general nature and
serious in tone, his satires, such as “Bardaginn við Ijósið”
(The Battle Against the Light), are particularly effective.
Bitterly scomful in their invective are the poems written
in the course of his celebrated quarrel with Magnús
1) Iceland, I, p. 100. In an appendix Henderson prints a Latin
and English translation of the poem. According to Erslew’s For-
fatter-Lexicon (III, pp. 362-363) it was also printed in the Accounts
of the Proceedings of the Bible Society (London, 1816), pp. 55-58,
and in some publication in Calcutta, India, as well.