The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1967, Blaðsíða 77

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
75
The valley in northern Iceland gave
its first settler BarSur a cool reception,
but it gave him a twofold reward for
his labour. In the first place it provid-
ed him with the kind of sustenance
which stayed with him, even after he
had moved to another district. Second-
ly, in its name BarSardalur (BarSur’s
Valley) it faithfully preserved the
memories of its first inhabitant.
The example of the ancient settler
BarSur and Stephan G. Stephansson
manifests the everlasting reciprocal
faith between Iceland and those of her
people who have the strength to cul-
tivate what she has bestowed upon
them.
VII
As has been indicated earlier the
works of Stephan G. Stephansson be-
long 'to world literature, because, in
many instances, they are universal in
theme. Secondly, his works are a part
of Icelandic literature, because ithey
were written in the Icelandic language
and have a distinctive Icelandic back-
ground. Thirdly, one would be entirely
justified in classifying many of his
poems as Canadian, since they were
not only composed and printed in Can-
ada, but, as shall be pointed out soon,
were Canadian both in theme and
idiom.
Stephansson had such rare command
of his native tongue that one can
truthfully say that his works are among
the important linguistic sources for
students of Modern Icelandic. This
was duly recognized by the Chief Ed-
itor of the largest Modern Icelandic
dictionary which has been published
to date, Dr. Sigfus Blondal, who select-
ed a great number of lexical items for
his dictionary from the poems of
Stephan G. Stephansson (of. Dansk-is-
landsk ordbog, Reykjavik 1920-1924).
As has been implied earlier the
themes of Stephansson’s poems span
the entire range of events from the pre-
historic (cf. SkagafjorSur, I, 134-135)
to the contemporary. His own experi-
ences were also of a wide range, cover-
ing in time about three quarters of a
century and in geography the distance
from northern Iceland to the Canadian
Rockies. Memories from his adoles-
cence in Iceland provided him with
themes and the raw material for des-
criptive metaphors for some of his
best liked poems (cf. Rammislagur, I,
369-371); SkagafjorSur, I, 134-140). A
well-known Canadian literary scholar
maintains that “No other Canadian
poet in any language” has ever present-
ed a comparable picture of Western
Canada (Dr. Watson Kirkconnell:
University of Toronto Quarterly V,
264-265). Among the poems on Can-
adian themes is Klettafjoll (The Rocky
Mountains, I, 307-310). This poem and
the location of the author’s home in
Alberta gave rise to the name Kletta-
fjallaskaldiS (The Poet of the Rocky
Mountains), a name which all Ice-
landers occasionally use in reference
to Stephan G. Stephansson.
To help explain Stephansson’s use
of Canadian idiom in his Icelandic
poems the following verse from Kol-
beinslag can be used as an example:
I>6 a(5 spor a “eld” og “ork”
yrSu kjorin ferSa,
axarfor i bjarkabork
benda a orugg leiSarmork.
(Ill, 79).
An imperfect rendering of this verse
follows: ‘Although the pioneer’s course
of travel is neither shown by burning
beacons nor lavishly praised in authors’
writings, the “axe-marks” on the “birch