Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1939, Page 466
LE NORD
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Fjalar he says that none of the recent Northern poets, not even
Oehlenschláger or Tegnér, has such a command of “the ancient
diction” as Runeberg. “No one has to the same extent understood
how to acquire this mode of expression, which keeps more than
it promises.” Grímur Thomsen has also rendered a couple of
Runeberg’s poems into Icelandic: one of them Ojan Pavo, he
has even localised to his own country, giving it an Icelandic
setting and introducing Icelandic images instead of the Finnish
ones. (Another Finnish poem, Emil von Qvanten’s Suomis Sáng,
which he has similarly localised, belongs to the stock of verse
that every Icelander with some knowledge of poetry knows by
heart). Grímur Thomsen’s own lyrical poems sometimes stríke a
note akin to that of Runeberg, not least in the strong emphasis
laid on the solidarity of a man with the land in which he has
grown up, be it ever so poor. That he meant this seriously will
appear from the fact that he gave up an official career in Den-
mark to settle in his home country.
Another enthusiastic admirer of Runeberg was Eiríkur Mag-
nússon (1833—1913). As an undergraduate at Reykjavík he be-
came acquainted with Runeberg’s poetry; and henceforward
he was a votary of it all the rest of his life. A visit to
Flelsingfors in 1878, when he had the opportunity of meeting
one of the pupils of the master, contributed to enhance his in-
terest. It fell to the lot of Eiríkur Magnússon to work in a wider
sphere than that of his countrymen. He lived in England most
of his life and there he made it his aim to introduce Runeberg
to the English-speaking public. Collaborating with the English-
man Professor E. H. Palmer, he published in translation Rune-
berg’s Lyrical Songs, Idylls, and Epigrams (1878), and later on,
alone, King Fialar (1912).
Matthías Jochumsson (1835—1920), one of Iceland’s most
prolific poets and translators, is the man who has done most to
spread a knowledge of Runeberg among the Icelandic reading
public. He has translated parts of Fánrik Stál’s Ságner, among
these the Finnish National Anthem (printed in Svanhvít, 1877)-
Characters such as old Stál, Zidén, and Sven Dufva have through
his interpretations become popular heroes even among the remote
mountains of Iceland.
This does not by far exhaust the number of Icelandic trans-
lators of Runeberg. If you turn over the leaves of Icelandic collec-
tions of poems from the i9th and the beginning oFthe 2oth century