Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1942, Síða 60

5°
LE NORD
hands to the building-up of the new world, and his artistic heritage
to all Icelanders, wherever they may be.
None of the other Icelandic-American writers are in the
same class with Stephan G. Stephansson. Considerations of space
make it impossible to do more than mention a few names. Jóhann
Magnús Bjarnason (born in Iceland in 1866) wrote a number of
novels and stories, the most valuable being his descriptions of
the Icelandic colony in Nova Scotia. The first American-born
Icelandic writer was Guttormur J. Guttormsson, a farmer from
New Iceland, who wrote poems and plays mainly descriptive
of life in that settlement. An anthology published by the Icelandic
Government in 1930 gives some idea of the literary activities of
the Icelandic emigrants. The book has 736 pages, and represents
the work of 36 writers. The majority of the writers belong to
the first generation of emigrants, though most of them left Ice-
land in childhood or early youth. This literary output cannot
therefore be expected to continue at the same rate in the future.
How long it will be possible to preserve the Icelandic language
and Icelandic nationality in America, no man can tell, but it
seems probable that it will not be preserved indefinitely. A
national group consisting of less than 30,000 people and scattered
over an enormous area cannot have much chance of preserving
their distinctive national stamp in the long run. That they should
have done so as long as they have is admirable in a way, but it
has only been made possible by the cultural tradition which the
emigrants carried with them to their new homes. And gradually
as the first generation of emigrants dies off, the second becomes
old, and a third grows up, it becomes increasingly difficult to
keep up a separate language and separate traditions. Nevertheless,
the National League has done much to save what could yet be
saved. Among other things, the League did good work in or-
ganizing a conducted tour to the Althing Jubilee in 1930, in
which about 500 Icelandic Americans took part. On this oc-
casion, many links were forged across the Atlantic, and at the
same time the history of Iceland attracted a good deal of interest
among the American public. Thus, homage was done to Iceland
by the American States and Provinces — the States of Minnesota
and North Dakota, and the Provinces of Manitoba and Saskatche-
wan sending Icelandic-American delegates — and the University
of Iceland conferred honorary doctors’ degrees on eight Icelandic-
American university men, etc. But the most important thing was