The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1967, Side 86

84
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Summer 1967
are all wrong. But what is in a name?
Having known Solly for many years,
I cannot bring myself to believe that
he wears his political label as smugly
as members of less enlightened races
are pleased to do. I could mention
Rev. Philip M. Petursson, a friend of
thirty years’ standing. As one of the
French painters once said, “He who
is a follower will always be behind.”
Unless I have seriously mis-read hi-
story, it has never been the place of
the Icelander to be behind. He has
never been a follower. He has been
one who breaks the trail for others to
follow. Philip Petursson’s politics, not
the politics of his party but his own
special brand—in the forefront of the
fray, where the heat of battle is most
intense—from a true Icelandic point-
of-view, should be acceptable. I could
speak of Will Kristjanson who was a
good next-door neighbor of my parents
for several years. Or, of his namesake
Kris Kristjanson, a member of the re-
markable Kristjanson family,—a family
that can claim five Ph.D’s—which must
surely be a record.
But I had to set myself limits. And
I determined to speak of Icelandic
friends of the past, not of the present.
And now to open a more general
theme. What have the Icelanders con-
tributed to world culture? Their
achievement in the field of literature,
begun at a time when most of the na-
tions of the world were sleeping
through the period of history known
as the Dark Ages, is unquestionably
their greatest achievement. “The Ice-
landic sagas, taken as a whole,” says
Watson Kirkconnell in his book The
European Heritage, “constitute the
most important contribution to Eur-
opean literature in the twelve centuries
between Virgil and Dante”. To the
early Icelanders, poetry was a necessity
of life—food for the spirit’s need. No
other country has produced as many
poets per capita, as Iceland. Many of
them, many of the greatest, were self-
schooled, of humble origin. Like the
great Icelandic-Canadians, St. G. St.
and G. J. G., they went to the books
and they studied life at first hand; they
quarried their own knowledge and
they distilled their own wisdom, drop
by drop, until their very souls became
saturated and overflowed in poetry.
Such poets are sometimes called
“peasant-poets”. Even Skuli Johnson
in his address at the unveiling of the
monument to Stephan G. Stephansson
at iMarkerville, in Alberta, fell into
error, when he said “St. G. St. is es-
sentially in the peasant-poet tradition
of Iceland.” The phrase i.s most in-
appropriate. It should never be used.
The word “peasant” has taken on an
unpleasant meaning. It is used as a
mark of degradation, to suggest a low
level of mentality—the level at which
unfortunately, the dumb, driven hu-
man cattle of this world, through no
fault of their own, are doomed to live.
In this sense, there were no peasants
in Iceland. There were many people
who lived in the most abject poverty,
but they lived a life of the mind.
In my office I have a copy of the
Columbia Encyclopedia. When I was
working on this talk, 1 turned up the
article on Iceland. I came upon this
statement: “The Icelanders are beybnd
doubt the most literate and best-in-
formed nation in the world. There is
a university at Reykjavik; the high
educational level, however, is due to
ancient tradition and ingrained civil-
ization rather than to formal school-
ing.” Could praise go much higher?
Next in the roster of Iceland’s great
achievements must be placed her
contribution to practical politics. She
gave the world an early lesson iii
ocracy. In England, there sits a Parli-