Lögberg-Heimskringla - 01.07.2015, Side 5

Lögberg-Heimskringla • 1. júlí 2015 • 5
ONLINE MAGAZINE: WWW. HEIMSKRINGLOG.COM
The former President of Iceland, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, was the
featured speaker at the annual
Samkoma of the Icelandic
Hekla Club, which was held
in conjunction with the annual
convention of the Icelandic
National League of North
America at Bloomington,
Minnesota on May 16, 2015.
This is Madame Vigdís’s
address from that occasion.
Distinguished guests,
ambassadors, consuls –
honorary and general – dear
friends … and especially my
Hekla sisters,
A Moveable Feast was the
name the great writer Ernest
Hemingway gave to his book
about his travels on the other
side of the wide, wet Atlantic
Ocean. The title was translated
into Icelandic as Veisla í
farangrinum. “A Feast in the
Luggage” occurs to me as
an English translation of the
Icelandic translation. But I’m
sure an English translator would
find a better English translation
of the Icelandic translation of
the title.
That is what is first and
foremost in my mind, here in
the Twin cities (Minneapolis
and St. Paul) at the convention
of the Icelandic National
League of North America – a
veritable feast for mind and
memory, with so many lucid
presentations, remembering
the past and illuminating the
present.
Thank you very much for
offering me the opportunity to
be here, to listen and to learn:
to listen to observations about
the present time and – what
I like best – memories from
past times. There is hardly
a family in Iceland who are
not aware of the emigration
from our country to the New
World in the last decades of
the 19th century, during times
of hardship and volcanic
eruptions – ironically enough
at a time when the Icelanders,
as a nation, were beginning to
see signs of independence on
the horizon. And in fact that
was little consolation: freedom
in itself cannot, unfortunately,
nourish people physically, nor
provide warmth and shelter in
hard times.
I must tell you how much
we in the old homeland admire
the Icelandic National League
of North America – we, the
people of that island in a state
of constant creation, almost lost
in the North Atlantic, speaking
that strange language – we
who believe that we are able to
remember in detail almost all
that has happened there over
eleven hundred years – thanks
to our stories and sagas, and
due to our consciousness of the
power of language, the power
of remembering.
The worst thing that can
happen is if peoples, nations,
when in delicate situations,
forget to pay attention to the
risk that they may forget, or
be forgetting, parts of their
history. Remembering is a
great privilege, of paramount
importance. I’m sure we all
remember from our childhood
one of the fairy tales of the
Brothers Grimm, about a young
prince who is bewildered and
lost in a forest, because he
has lost his memory and is
wandering, not knowing who
he is or what to do. Suddenly,
a smiling young girl from the
poor neighbourhood appears
– surely brought up in a turf
house (if this were an Icelandic
story), and guides him safely
out of the forest to his home
in the royal palace, teaches
him to speak and to remember.
And of course they fall in love
(thanks to language). And the
young man is the prince that
will inherit the kingdom, and
the little poor girl thus becomes
a princess – which was enviable
in those days, but perhaps not
so much in modern times, when
they are more-or-less fettered
by celebrity and besieged by
paparazzi.
The Icelandic National
League of North America is
a Bank of Memories for you
Vestur Íslendingar, or Western
Icelanders, as we in the old
country always call you – not
wanting to lose you! There
are no “Eastern Icelanders,”
however many may emigrate
to Norway, willingly suffering
homesickness for the sake
of a better job. Nor Southern
Icelanders – that would be
unthinkable!
And we Icelanders, who
are often rather antiquated in
our ways regarding history,
remember well the stories of
the hardships suffered by the
first settlers in Canada. And
allow me here to pay tribute
to Egill Helgason, who, with
his television series about
the Western Icelanders last
year, opened the Icelanders’
eyes to the way that you, the
extraordinary descendants of
courageous Icelanders who
left their home country over
100 years ago, are people who
remember so well whence your
great-grandmothers and fathers
came – and cherish warm
feelings for the old country with
the chilly name.
Languages and the cultures
they express have been my field
ever since I can remember – and
this is the moment to confess
that I am well aware of my
Icelandic accent when I speak
English – and the Icelandic-ness
of the way I think. As much as
we all use English nowadays,
you native speakers must be
used to hearing English spoken
with all sorts of accents. I used
to be most unhappy that I could
not express myself well enough
in English – and I once made
an apology in the presence of
a well-known poet – actually
Seamus Heaney, who went on
to win a Nobel Prize. And he
taught me words of wisdom,
which I shall share with you, in
order to encourage you to learn
as many languages as possible.
“Never excuse your accent,”
he said, “because it proves that
you have taken the trouble to
study the language, to be able
to convey your thoughts, and
meditations.” Since then I have
not hesitated to use English
– sometimes with a dash of
French or Latin – just to show
off.
We all speak our mother
tongue best: the first language
we learn to use to define the
world – and I must express
my sincere admiration for the
way that the first Icelanders in
Canada brought their language
with them, and introduced
Icelandic placenames into
English: the Guttormssons at
Viðivellir (the Wide Plains)
– Lundar, Arborg, Kjarna,
Husavik, Gimli – which is the
heavenly abode of the gods in
the heathen cosmology of the
Old Norse.
You Western Icelanders
must often be asked what all
these place-names mean – and
it must be a thrill to explain,
starting with the words: “Well,
when our ancestors came to
this country they brought with
them the Icelandic tradition of
naming places as they appeared
to them in nature.” Iceland
was originally settled not only
by people, but also by words,
language.
“Whoever doesn’t live in
poetry cannot survive here
on earth,” said the Icelandic
Nobel Prize-winning author
Halldór Laxness, in one of his
outstanding novels in the late
20th century. Indeed, languages
are the core of humanity.
Languages cannot exist
without us – nor can we exist
without languages. In truth,
everything in this world, which
man understands and creates,
together with his emotions, is
grounded in language. Words
are behind the economy and
every material invention,
whether it consists in making an
aircraft or a submarine, building
a house or a road – and, above
all, the outstanding work of
creating literature, poetry, and
music, which are a source of
unlimited joy, speaking across
centuries and chronology.
A good friend of mine
in the literary field once said
that language is the musical
instrument of the mind. And he
also said: in my own language
I can say all I want to say, but
in other languages only what I
know how to say.
And it is an endless delight
to be able to play on the
instrument of language – or
rather instruments, for they
make up a great orchestra
comprising, as we know, well
over 6,000 languages on earth –
that all carry special memories of
environment and achievements
of past generations, down the
centuries.
I always think of world
language as a huge tapestry
in which vivid colours are
interwoven with more muted
threads – as “languages
represent the very fabric of the
cultural diversity of the world;
they are the carriers of identity,
knowledge, values and world
views,” in the words of another
friend of mine. Languages and
the world’s cultural nuances are
siblings – and a cosmopolitan
person is one who strives, him-
or herself and with others, to
understand the world.
As we all know here at
“Samkoma,” Icelanders were
very isolated for centuries
on their rocky island, and the
people of such a place had
nothing to conserve, surrounded
as they were by fresh lava in
the ongoing creation – except
the language: the Word, which
has the miraculous power of
telling stories. What can one
do to pass the time in a dark
Nordic winter, other than tell
stories – stories that open up
the imagination, in a language
that enfolds the mystery of the
surroundings, and at the same
time the history of a people.
Telling, for instance, the story
of when the high god Óðinn
won back the mead of poetry
which had been stolen by the
enemies of the ancient gods,
the giants. Óðinn adopted
the shape of an eagle, took a
draught of the mead from its
hiding-place, and flew home
with his mouth full to Ásgard,
the stronghold of the gods.
Óðinn, in the form of an eagle,
just made it over the fortress
wall before spitting out the
mead of poetry in the one and
only place where it would be
kept forever for human joy,
in Ásgard. But the giants had
given chase, and Óðinn was
close to exhaustion. He spilled
a little of the mead outside the
wall – and that is the source of
all the bad poetry in the world.
This is now my ambition
– to save the languages of
the world – bad poetry, as
well as the good. Because all
languages – whether in good
poetry or bad – have this
unique capacity to nurture and
safeguard friendship.
The power of language, the power of remembering
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Vigdís Finnbogadóttir
Former President of Iceland