The Icelandic Canadian - 01.09.1981, Síða 7

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
5
EDITORIAL
HOLMFRIDUR (FREDA) DANIELSON
The spring issue, 1981, of The Icelandic
Canadian featured an article by Dr. V. J.
Eylands entitled Four Strong Women of Ice-
land' s Saga Age, but strong women are not
confined to any age. From the earliest time
of mankind’s turbulent past, when men have
faltered, it has been the women who main-
tained the faith and fortitude that sustained
the life of the community. Matthias Jochums-
son’s beautiful eulogy to women FOSTUR-
LANDSINS FREYJA (The Motherland’s
Goddess) is a fitting tribute to women’s heal-
ing balm in times of tribulation throughout
the centuries.
In Dr. Wilhelm Kristjanson’s book The
Icelandic People in Manitoba there are list-
ed a number of women who, during the
pioneering age, selflessly assisted a large
number of newly-arrived immigrants to ad-
just to an alien environment. These people
were penniless, confused, unable to com-
municate in the language of their adopted
land, but to record the names of these
women would run the risk of neglecting to
mention the names of countless women
whose unrecorded acts of compassion and
good will paved the way for the adjustment
of these people to the customs of their
Promised Land. Suffice it to say that in
recording the achievements of a contempo-
rary lady, Holmfridur (Freda) Danielson,
we are not unmindful of the unremembered
deeds of kindness and of love of her predeces-
sors.
A feeling of inadequacy is uppermost in
the mind of the writer as he endeavors to pay
a fitting tribute to a strong lady of the
twentieth century, who has received scarce-
ly enough recognition during the period of
her manifold activities. Few there are
amongst us who “pay meet adoration to our
household gods.” She did and does.
When the youth of Athens were inducted
into the privileges and responsibilities of
citizenship, they took an oath, “I will
transmit my fatherland not only not less, but
greater and better than it was transmitted to
me.” Some such thoughts must have been
in the mind of Freda Danielson when she
began her teaching career at the age of
seventeen in the Minerva School near
Gimli, Manitoba. Since that time in all her
activities she has never ceased to be an
educator.
With regard to Freda’s seven-year tenure
of the editorship of the Icelandic Canadian
Magazine the following comment by one of
its subscribers in California speaks for itself:
“each time the magazine arrives with its
interesting contents our thoughts go across
the miles to ‘visit’ you good people who are
doing so much for our culture. Each issue is
treasured more and more. ’’ ,
When she became president of the Ice-
landic Canadian Club, it was more or less
moribund, but it wasn’t long until she had
breathed the life-giving breath of her own
dynamism into its sluggish lungs.
Would the Icelandic Canadian and Ice-
landic Canadian Fron be alive and flourish-
ing today had it not been for her spade work?
One of her ‘household gods’ is the land of
her ancestors, its culture, its history, its
literature, and last but not least its language.
At a time when Iceland was little known
throughout the world, and its culture less so,
she had an urge to do her best to spread
abroad information regarding her heritage.
To do so she co-edited with Professor Skuli
Johnson a book entitled ICELAND’S
THOUSAND YEARS (a direct result of the
Icelandic Canadian Evening School) which
has appeared in two editions, and has been
bought by universities and libraries all over
the world, including Canada, the United
States, Sweden, France, Russia, England,