The Icelandic Canadian - 01.03.1968, Page 15

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
IB
lectures in the University of Manitoba,
and on the same visit to Winnipeg ad-
dressed the final concert and meeting
at the annual conference of The Ice-
landic National League. In a letter to
W. J. Lindal, author of The Icelanders
in Canada, Professor Palsson writing
partly in Icelandic and partly in Eng-
lish, has said:
“Eg er alveg sammala }:>er um is-
lenzkan anda (The Icelandic Mind)
sem aetti aS geta lifaS afram Jsott Vest-
ur-lslendingar tyni moSurmalinu . .
(in translation, I am in full agreement
with you about the Icelandic Mind,
which should be able to continue
functioning even though Western-Ice-
landers lose their mother tongue).
Professor Palsson continues in Eng-
lish: “To be an Icelander in Canada
ultimately becomes a matter of taste;
just as one can cultivate a taste in exot-
ic food, unusual poetry, or strange
music, it is also possible to cultivate a
taste for one’s remote national heritage.
It may involve the deliberate cultiva-
tion of sympathy for one’s ancestors
and what they stood for, but this is
likely to be well-rewarded; such a pur-
suit would not only give one a great
deal of personal pleasure and satis-
faction; I also believe that it would
have a beneficial effects on one’s char-
acter.”
The future Canadian of Icelandic
descent, who feels that such results
would follow, will encourage his child-
ren to select Icelandic as their third or
even their second language in their
undergraduate studies.
There are grounds for the optimism
of our editor-in-chief who is convinced
that if Icelandic Canadians handle
their affairs wisely, a hundred years
from now there will be more Canad-
ians who have a reasonable command
of Icelandic than at the present time.
—Arilius Isfeld
NOTICE TO READERS OF THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
When I accepted the assignment to
write a book on the Icelanders in Can-
ada I fully intended to call it “The
Icelandic Mind in Continuity”. The
Centennial Commission quite proper-
ly took the position that the names of
all the books in the Ethnica Series
would have to be uniform and I would
have to call mine “The Icelanders in
Canada.”
What has been called the thesis in
the book should be publicised and I
am taking advantage of an unfortunate
postponement of a two-page advertise-
ment which was to be inserted in the
middle of this number of the mag-
azine. We were not notified of the
postponement until after the whole
magazine had been set and the pages
numbered and ready for the press. To
call upon someone to write a two-page
article might have caused a week’s de-
lay so I decided to take the space, at
my expense, to give publicity to the
claim that there has been a continuity
of the Icelandic Mind (translated by
Hermann Palsson to “islenzki and-
inn”), the thesis which I endeavoured
to expound in my book
-W. J. Lindal