The Icelandic Canadian - 01.03.1974, Síða 20

IB
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
SPRING 1974
dressed me as his “dear colleague”.
But the heading of this chapter is
“The Icelanders”, and I have apparent-
ly drifted away from my topic. Let me
return to it. Sitting in my chair and
dictating this to Mr. Barton I shall
not be able to give accurate dates, nor
is this necessary. It all happened dur-
ing the ’70s. Even before the ’70s a
few Icelandeers had emigrated to Am-
erica. They were of the working class
and found employment here and there
among their Norwegian cousins.
The first one of these Icelanders
whom I saw came to our house in 1871.
He was working on a farm near Mad-
ison. His name was Bergman and he
came from Akureyri in the north part
of Iceland. I had not learned old Norse
or Icelandic at Luther college. In my
study of the discovery of America and
of Scandinavian mythology and hi-
story I became most painfully conscious
of my need to unledstand Old Norse.
I got text books from Norway, Sweden
and Denmark and studied these books
most industriously, and now you may
imagine how glad I was to get hold of
an Icelander who could actually read
and understand my old Norse books.
I made him read aloud to me; then I
read aloud to him. I do not know
whether it was a blessing or a mis-
fortune that this Icelander knew
neither English nor Norwegian .He
had been sent to me by Madison pe-
ople because they could not converse
with him and they thought I might
be able to do so.
This Icelander brought three or four
of his countrymen to see me and we
soon all became fast friends. I looked
upon these sons of Iceland with
wonderment and they all had to help
me to read correctly and to talk Ice-
landic which is practically the same
today as it was in the days of Leif
Erikson. It is the only vernacular that
has continued more than a thousand
years with practically no change of
utterance. When you talk with an Ice-
lander you are hearing the same words,
the same accents that you would have
heard had you listened to Harald
Haarfager at the battle of Hafers-
fjord in 872.
Later, in 1871, I received a prolong-
ed visit from the Icelandic poet Jon
Olafsson. He was a fugitive from Ice-
land. At about this time, that is to say,
in the latter part of the ’60s and the
beginning of the ’70s the relations be-
tween Iceland and Denmark were ex-
ceedingly strained. The Icelanders
were clamoring for home rule. They
wanted their own parliament, a de-
mand which the Danes later very wise-
ly granted. I may add here that Iceland
with its scattered population of about
70,000 has absolutely no illiteracy. Al-
though there are no schools outside of
Reykjavik, the capital, in the south,
and Akureyri on the north coast, the
children are taught to read and write
by their parents in the long winter
nights and there is not to be found in
the whole island a single man or wo-
man of normal mind who is unable
to read and write Icelandic, while a
large percentage of the population
can read Danish and English and some
of them even German and French
books. It is also a remarkable fact that
Iceland has no executioner and hence
a person guilty of a capital crime can-
not be executed. Not a criminal has
been executed in the past one hundred
and fifty years.
Jon Olafsson was charged with high
treason. Though but a young man in
the early ’70s he was very precocious
and had already written enough to
make a substantial volume. Among
other things he had written a patriotic
song breathing defiance to Denmark,
and it was for this fact that he was to