Lögberg-Heimskringla - 14.07.2006, Blaðsíða 11

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David Jón Fuller
For literary scholar Garðar Baldvínsson, a story about a scythe encapsu-
kates the Icelandic experience
in Canada. Some things from
the old country may not work
in the new one.
Garðar is the editor of
a new book in Icelandic,
Íslandslag, in which he surveys
how the Icelandic immigrants
and their descendents explored
what it meant to be “Icelandic”
in Canada.
The story about the scythe
comes from Guðbrandur
Erlendsson, who settled in the
Markland area of Nova Sco-
tia in the late 1800s. He wrote
an account of his experiences
called Markland — Endurmin-
ningar frá Árnum 1875 – 1881
(translated as Markland — Re-
membrance of the Years 1875-
1881). Guðbrandur brought
his Icelandic scythe with him
to Canada, and
found when
working along
with others in
the field that the
Canadian scythe
was larger, and
the other work-
ers mocked the
one he used. He
determined to
show them up
and worked so
hard in the field
that he harvested
more than anyone
else. But, Garðar
notes, Guðbrandur never used
his Icelandic scythe again.
Garðar Baldvínsson was
first exposed to Icelandic-Ca-
nadian writing “through travel
literature,” he says. “I was
studying at the University of
British Columbia in 1990 and I
got interested in travel literature
and Kristjana Gunnars’s The
Prowler got me very interested
in this notion of Icelanders in
Canada, Icelandic immigrants
actually being ‘the other’ in
Canada — the whole process of
assimilation, or adaptation.”
He read through many jour-
nals and diaries by Icelandic
immigrants. “What surprised
me was the feeling that they
had been looked down on as
‘Eskimoes,’ as speaking not
only some gibberish, but also a
similar feeling by the Iceland-
ers themselves.” He relates one
account of an Icelandic immi-
grant who, when speaking to his
English brother-in-law, heard
the other say his daughter was
speaking Icelandic and declare
“She’s just speaking gibberish,
let’s cut out her tongue.”
Garðar says he couldn’t
help but wonder “whether these
things made the Icelanders
more enthusiastic to assimilate
to a certain degree; or to anoth-
er degree, more enthusiastic to
keep to their roots?”
The tension between these
two broad choices is at the
heart of what Garðar examined
in more than 100 years of lit-
erature written by people of
Icelandic descent. “I selected
these texts with this criterion
— it’s not ‘the best’ stories by
Icelandic-Canadian writers,”
says Garðar. “Good literature
— well, that’s a criterion, of
course — but reflecting on
this, not dilemma, but this pro-
cess of being Icelandic or of
Icelandic descent and adopt-
ing or assimilating into a new
culture, and how
you tackle the
problem of your
‘Icelandicness’
in this place and
time.”
Some, such
as Laura Good-
man Salverson,
met with criti-
cism for aban-
doning Icelandic
— she wrote The
Viking Heart in
English. Others,
such as Stephan
G. Stephansson,
captured much about Canada
in the Icelandic language.
Part of the problem regard-
ing keeping the Icelandic lan-
guage “pure” in North Amercia,
writes Garðar, is what should
the Icelanders have called a cat-
fish, poplar or train when there
was no word in Icelandic?
In addition to the linguistic
challenges, there were also lit-
erary ones.
One contrast is the way
in which roses were used in
Icelandic poetry in Iceland as
opposed to how Icelandic im-
migrants wrote about them in
Canada. In Iceland, he says, the
poet’s experience of the flower
was in a literary sense only
— many would not have seen
an actual rose, but only read
about them. The flower came to
be emblematic of “death, sick-
ness, sorrow, and in one case
an image for the diseased or
dying body,” says Garðar. “But
when poets would come to
Canada and were writing about
roses — and this seems to go
for everybody — roses were
the symbol of life, of beauty...
the spring, life awakening; it’s
never connected with death or
sorrow.”
Similarly, writers’ perspec-
tives on Iceland and its culture
also changed.
“I thought they would all
be romanticizing Iceland, that
it would be a kind of ‘one-way’
literature — everybody writing
the same thing. But it struck me
that people were actually writ-
ing in different ways, seeing
Iceland from different perspec-
tives.”
Júlíanna Jónsdóttir, who
most likely emigrated to Can-
ada in the 1880s, embodies this
process in her writing.
“She’s the only example of
a poet writing about Iceland in
one way before she leaves, and
then in a totally different way
after she comes to Canada,”
Garðar says.
“She wrote a book in 1876
and this poem, ‘Ísland’ is a
caricature of a Bjarni Thora-
rinson’s poem ‘Íslands minni.’
And this is a caricature not of
the poem but especially of the
image of Iceland.”
She goes on to mock the
images of the nationalistic pic-
ture of Iceland.
But years later, in Canada,
she wrote in the poem “Æskan
mín” with the same sort of hazy,
romantic vision of Iceland she
had been critical of before.
“It’s partly her sorrow for
the country, but also for her
youth. And I think the idea of
youth and your roots has a lot
to do with this ‘good’ notion of
Iceland and this different feel-
ing of Icelandic culture that
Icelandic Canadians have com-
pared to Icelanders in Iceland.
Because the immigrant poets
almost always mix together
Iceland and their youth. Well
— they were in Iceland during
their youth.” As a consequence,
they may gloss over the nega-
tive aspects and present a kind
of nostalgic picture of Iceland.
“And that’s exactly what hap-
pens with Júlíanna,” he says.
The book Íslandslag: Íslen-
sk-kanadískar bókmenntir frá
1870 til nútímans is published
by GB útgáfa in Reykjavík.
Lögberg-Heimskringla • Föstudagur 14. júlí 2006 • 11
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PHOTO: DAVID JÓN FULLER
Garðar Baldvínsson with his new book Íslandslag on a recent visit to the Lögberg-Heimskringla
offices in Winnipeg. To the left is a painting of poet Stephan G. Stephansson’s house.
Icelandic writers in Canada
struggled with identity