The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1963, Blaðsíða 30

28
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
SUMMER 1963
IS CIVILIZATION SPREADING?
Thrain, Hrapp and Kari
by SHAUN HERRON
I wonder how many Icelanders in
the west know what these three odd
names are? I hope they are more
familiar to them than Niall of the
Nine Hostages, Cuohulain or the Men
of the Red Branch are to the Irishmen
away from their own place. The three
names are, of course, from what Ice-
landers know with affection as Njala
and we know as the Story of Burnt
Njal.
But these are not my subject. I see
from a report by an American journal-
ist in Iceland that American influence
is winning and the islanders are be-
ginning to teach English in the schools.
Our little national assumptions are
among the things we ought to find un-
endingly amusing about ourselves. Our
national pride when Mr. Green returns
from another international conference
with a report about yet another pro-
position that “was practically proposed
by Canada”, and this American re-
porter who with innocent unawaxeness
assumes that English in Icelandic
schools is a sign of the spread of Amer-
ican civilization: they are among the
little vanities of belonging.
As far back as 1941—when there
wasn’t a decent book store from Hal-
ifax to Victoria—Reykjavik, the Ice-
landic capital, had an English language
bookstore that had no superior in Bri-
tain—and I suspect no equal—outside
London, Glasgow and Edinburgh. It
was owned by Mr. Peterson who was
also at the time minister of education
in the Icelandic government.
It may be that I met only the right
people, but they were an assorted lot
of right people: for example, a laundry
girl, a minister of education, farmers,
clergy, neighbors, business men, child-
ren, and they all spoke English. They
spoke it variously, I admit, but most
of them spoke it well, some excellently
and all of them could make themselves
easily understood. The Icelanders com-
municated easily with Scandinavians
in their native Old Norse, and with
Germans and Englishmen in German
and English.
Some of our Englishmen on the is-
land at this time could scarcely be
called the reading ipublic and their
difficulties with their mother tongue
were not less than those of the Ice-
landers. .They certainly read a great
deal less than their reluctant hosts;
they would in fact have been astonish-
ed to see what the Icelanders did read
in English, if they had ever visited
Peterson’s bookstore and been able
to read the titles.
This did not prevent them having
firm views on the peculiar backward-
ness of the natives. “Out in the coun-
try they drink human blood,” I was
often assured by flat-footed Pioneers
building Alabaster Airport.
It may have been the human blood
habit that confused a confident young
lieutenant when he and his men were
storm bound in a farmhouse. The lieut-
enant was some kind of junior chess
champion and his condescension to-
wards the farmer was exquisite. They
played four games in three hours. The
farmer won them all.
“Where did you get these beautiful
chessmen?” asked the humbled lieut-
enant.