The Icelandic Canadian - 01.09.1968, Blaðsíða 19

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
17
Guidelines to World Peace in the
Icelandic Record
Dr. Sigurdur Nordal, the sage of Ice-
land’s men of letters, has referred to
the “unbroken continuity in language
and literature” of the Icelandic people
As that continuity is of permanent
record, ancient, medieval, and modern,
it admits of comprehensive study and
realistic analysis.
In that record, which has continued
in North America as well as in Ice-
land to this very day, examples can be
found of self-directives and human
action revealing guidelines which ap-
pear to be appropriate to an amazing
degree to the furtherance of peace in
the troubled world of today.
Four principles, as laid down in
that continuity of thought and result-
ing action, will be discussed.
The first, perhaps the most funda-
mental of them all, is to be found in
the Sagas and the Eddas. It probably
developed in the evolution of Norse
mythology and is much older than the
sagas and poems in which it is record-
ed. In the original Icelandic (Norse)
and the English translation it reads as
follows:
Hann vill ekki vamm sitt vita.
He brooks no blemish in himself.
This is a directive, perhaps the most
powerful directive, a human being can
apply to himself. His conscience would
dictate what he regarded as a blemish
in himself, but the application of that
directive would, through that very
process, be character building and, ac-
cording to that great roving English
linquist, Richard Cleasby, would
develop “a conscientious and thorough-
ly honest person”. In course of time a
norm should evolve in the community,
not dissimilar to the Christian “Do
unto others as you would have them
do unto you”.
This is clearly and consistently re-
vealed in the actions of the Norse-
men of old when they embarked upon
expeditions in all directions. True,
when they met resistance no quarter
was given, but after the resistance had
been broken, or if they were received
in a spirit of friendship, or occupied
areas not peopled, the true spirit in
which the advances were made is re-
vealed. The man who declines to do
that which would be a stain on his
character will not seek to become a
dicator, will never build an empire
of overlordsbip of some over others, a
mother country over colonies, an
aristocracy over a proletariat.
The Swedes, Rurik and Askold, in
their expeditions to what is now the
Ukraine, did not act the part of con-
querors. They joined with the local
Slavs, in Novgorod and Kiev, and took
the lead in defending the fertile and
open lands of the Ukraine. Rollo in-
vaded the north of France. He did not
seek to establish a Norse colony but
founded a dukedom within France
and became the first Duke of Nor-
mandy. The Normans, as the British
historian, Dr. E. A. Freeman, has said,
strengthened the national usages and
national life wherever they went.