65° - 01.07.1968, Blaðsíða 31

AS hugsa ekki 1 arum en oldum.
AS alheimta ei daglaun aS kvoldum,
J)vf svo lengist mannsaefin mest.
Think not in years but in ages,
Claim not at once but in stages,
Only then life on earth will endure.
The poet points out how destructive it is if a
farmer “mines” his land, takes all it can yield,
does not fertilize, re-sow or replenish for those
who succeed him. The time will come when noth-
ing is left but wasteland. From this inevitable
destruction the poet generalizes. If people (and
nations) reach out for all they can encompass,
and make no provision for improvement or for
those who succeed them, an end is inevitable.
Man must build not only for the present and him-
self but for others and for the future. Only then
“mannsaefin”, human life on earth, will endure.
The poet closes with this warning:
)>a(S er ekki oflofuS samti'3,
en umbsett og glaSari framtiS
su verbid, er sjaandinn ser.
Not an over-praised present
A future improved and more pleasant
Is the world which the prophet does see.
(Composed in 1906).
In order to establish the continuity of the Ice-
landic mind in action in North America to the
year 1968, one needs but quote from a poem
written this year by a school teacher, a third
generation Icelander, who lives in Morden, in
Manitoba, Canada. He was stricken with polio
and moves about in a wheel chair.
As might be expected, Paul Sigurdsson accepts
the philosophy of history as expounded by Arnold
J. Toynbee, the great English historian, who re-
gards adversity as a virtue in the struggle of
human existence. In a chapter entitled The Virtues
of Adversity, Toynbee points out that there is
an optimum of adversity beyond which it does
more evil than good and claims that in Iceland
there was an optimum of adversity.
The title to the poem is “Weeds”, and it is an
allegory, the attack of weeds upon cultivated
vegetation being a sustained metaphor, depicting
the struggle that human beings have to wage to
provide for their continued existence on Earth.
The lesson to be learned in this continuous
struggle is revealed in the following verse:
65 DEGREES
The weed:
Our stimulation;
Our challenge;
Our point of bearings;
Where life takes two directions
And we leave unity to God.
On earth there are adversities, constant ad-
versities — weeds that retard growth. To Paul
Sigurdsson they are an inspiration. The greater
the struggle, the greater the challenge. On earth
man chooses the direction he takes. A battle
ensues; the weeds may gain ground. Eventually
God, the Supreme Power and Wisdom, provides
direction for the establishment of unity — peace
on earth.
It would not be fair to leave the impression
that the attitude which I have named “the Ice-
landic mind” has not continued in the other
Scandinavian countries and elsewhere. It has.
Suffice it to mention but two names: the creative
genius of Denmark, N. S. F. Grundtvig, the father
of the Danish Folk Schools; Dag Hammerskjold
of Sweden, the late Secretary of the United Na-
tions, who service proved to be a supreme sacri-
fice.
One can summarize:
the Norse sense of positive fatalism gave rise to
a self-directive which led to upright and honest
action, individual and collective;
a man of the cloth in Iceland exhorted his people
to build as God — the supreme deity — would
want them to build;
an Iceland-Canada poet appealed to mankind to
be ever mindful that human life on this planet
will continue only if human service is partly de-
voted to the ultimate objective of peace;
a Canadian of Icelandic blood, himself afflicted,
has in a modern parable pointed out how world-
wide rivalries have provided the needed adversi-
ties to enable man to find the right of two direc-
tions, leading to permanent peace — unity with
God.
These are the guidelines which the Norse, the
Icelandic mind, has evolved for itself — and for
mankind.
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