The Icelandic Canadian - 01.10.1942, Page 5

The Icelandic Canadian
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF..
ASSOCIATE EDITOR...
LITERARY EDITOR..
CIRCULATION......
BUSINESS MANAGER.
EDITORIAL ADVISOR.
.LAURA GOODMAN SALVERSON
...........STEFAN HANSEN
.........HELEN SIGURDSON
.......HJALMUR DANIELSON
...........GRACE REYKDAL
.......JUDGE W. J. LINDAL
Address all communication to the Editor, 407 Devon Court, Winnipeg, Man.
Vol. 1 Winnipeg, Man., October 1, 1942 No. 1
EDITORIAL
Every nation ascribes to itself some peculiar treasure; some unique
culture; some imperishable virtue which it firmly believes to be an
inestimable inheritance from the past. The Icelandic people are no
exception. We have our Golden Age, our ancient classics, our pride in
ancestors who loved freedom above lands and possessions. We like to
glorify those hardy Norsemen who pioneered in Iceland, established
there a remarkable Republic and instituted the first government pat-
terned upon democratic principles.
It is right that we should cherish this inheritance, and we should
remember with humility rather than pride that we are the repositors of
a humane tradition; that we are the sons and daughters of heroic men
and women whom neither tyranny nor indescribable hardships could
make to falter from their steadfast faith in the cardinal virtues of
justice and liberty and the dignity of human life. But sentimental fond-
ness is not enough. It is not enough that we should be proud of our
ancestors. We must waken to the inexhorable fact that the past lives
in us and dies in us. Every inheritance, whether concrete or spiritual,
can be squandered and laid waste; and this squandering and this waste
take place in the individual heart and consciousness.
What we owe to our ancestors is not worship but work. Not
didactic eulogies upon the courage, the daring, the dreams that are
dust, but dreams of our own sprung from that dust to show that their
vision still lives in us.
When the Long Ships of the Norsemen turned their prows into un-
known seas, their eyes trained upon far and strange horizons, they left
by that act alone an imperishable challenge to their descendants and to
all men of vision everywhere. Not the known but the unknown was
their quest; not the past but the future was their abiding obsession.
With a zest and a hunger for a richer way of life those incorrigible
adventurers braved a thousand dangers and by their daring broke for-
ever the traditional mold of the past. The kingdoms they carved for