The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1984, Page 39

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
37
and did not go to school until a com-
paratively late age, by the aid of people
who had been impressed by his talent.
After graduating from the Theological
School in Reykjavik, he took orders and
was appointed to a small living in the
neighbourhood of the town. This he re
signed in the autumn of 1873, whilst in a
state of mental distress over the loss of his
second wife and being at the time, as so
often in his early life, tom by an inner re-
ligious struggle. For the next few years he
was editor of the oldest weekly periodical
in Iceland, afterwards resuming his office
as clergyman, and held two major livings
successively until the turn of the century
when he became the first Icelander to re-
ceive a pension from the Icelandic Parlia-
ment, which he held for the remaining
twenty years of his life.
Matthias Jochumsson is one of the most
comprehensive, inspired, eloquent yet pro-
lific and uneven major Icelandic poets of
any age. He is best known and will be
longest remembered for the finest of his
own poems and for his masterly trans-
lations of various major works of world
literature and for his many and spirited
essays and letters. More than anyone else
he has earned the honoured title of “Ice-
landic national poet”. Above all he is the
poet of life and faith as is evident for
example from the national anthem —
though it would be unfair to the poet to
regard this as one of his very best poems.
The poem was written in Great Britain
during the winter of 1873-74, the first
verse in Edinburgh, the remaining two,
which, however, Jochumsson himself never
estimated highly, in London. At that time
only a decade had passed since he had
attracted nation-wide notice by his poetry,
and yet another ten years went by before a
separate volume of poems by him was to
appear.
The composer of the tune was Svein-
bjom Sveinbjomsson (1847 - 1926); his lot
was very different from that of Jochumsson.
He was the son of one of the highest
officials in the country — the president of
the Superior Court of Justice — and spent
the greater part of his life abroad. He took a
degree in divinity and later became the first
Icelander to make music his career. He had
finished a five years’ musical education in
Copenhagen, Edinburgh and Leipzig and
had just settled down as a music master and
pianist in Edinburgh when Jochumsson
came there in the autumn of 1873 to stay
with him, for they were old school-friends
despite a twelve years’ difference in age.
When he had finished the opening verse of
the hymn, Matthias showed it to Svein-
bjom, and in his autobiography we find the
following description of this scene: “After
studying the words carefully, Sveinbjom
professed his inability to set them to music;
during the course of the winter I wrote
repeatedly, pressing him to attempt the
hymn. And at length, in the spring, the
music arrived, reaching us at home just in
time for the national celebrations.” Svein-
bjomsson lived in Edinburgh for most of
the remainder of his life, except the last
eight years which he spent in Winnipeg,
Reykjavik and Copenhagen, where he
died, sitting at his piano. From the time he
wrote the tune for O, gud vors lands until
the end of his life he continued to compose
different kinds of music. Among his works
are to be found a number of excellent tunes
written for Icelandic poems, in spite of the
fact that he was most of the time in little
direct contact with his native people;
indeed he became earlier known as a
composer in Britain than in his mother-
country, although his compositions are
more in the style of Scandinavian than
English music. Among the small band of
Icelandic composers he is both among the
pioneers and among those who have attained
the greatest heights.
Neither the words nor the melody of the
anthem seem, however, to have attracted