The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1995, Qupperneq 10

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THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
SPRING/SUMMER 1995
my mind. The world of medieval chivalry,
on the other hand, is much more fantas-
tic. I like this style very much, for even
though chivalric romances are imaginative
literature, the landscape of the mind is simi-
lar. Scholars in Iceland have not been in-
terested in chivalric literature very much,
in former days they considered it stylisti-
cally inferior to the sagas — they claimed
that it had not been well translated into
medieval Scandinavian. When I read the
chivalric sagas in their Old French origi-
nals, I found that this was not true. While
the Icelandic sagas are, of course, very im-
portant for our own sense of cultural and
political independence, we have also pro-
duced fine works of literature modelled on
other traditions. Icelanders kept on read-
ing and rewriting the old books of chivalry
much longer than any other European
nation — well into the 17th century.
The texts that are still unpublished
should be examined by scholars even
though they probably aren't great litera-
ture. I have the feeling that there are huge
gaps in Icelandic literature; that is, we re-
ally know mostly about the medieval and
modern periods. But a great deal hap-
pened in between. Iceland was in close
touch with the intellectual and artistic cur-
rents of other countries most of the time.
These gaps have always been interesting to
me. As I learned to build up arguments in
academic discourse, I discovered that one
can always find fault in any argument by
looking at it from a different angle. At the
same time I developed a new perspective
on style and a new perception of time. And
so the different ages came nearer to me and
I to them. In countries like Spain there is
such a rich history, with treasures of litera-
ture and art filling up the centuries. Most
Icelanders of my generation feel the gaps
in our literature and therefore insist that
the sagas should occupy such a position of
absolute primacy. It took me years to un-
derstand that, until my own sense of time
shrank and I found that the Middle Ages
are not very far away, that they happened
not very long ago. And while medieval peo-
ple perceived the world differently from the
way we do, it’s not difficult to put yourself
in their place — at least up to a certain
point. You can never bring the Middle Ages
back entirely, of course, but you can still
get a fairly good idea of the period through
art and literature. The Dark Ages, as some
people call them, were not darker than our
own age, than our own century.
Evelyn: Why did you change your inter-
ests from linguistics to literature? People
usually work in either one or the other and
seldom in both.
Alfrun: I was looking for contact with
the outside world. With our Icelandic lan-
guage alone we don’t go very far! (Laugh-
ter) So you have to be interested in linguis-
tic questions. At the time there weren’t
many translations of the important works
from other countries available to us here.
We still don’t have them, for that matter.
Somehow, little by little, we have to put all
of these important pieces into place
through translations. I was abroad for
eleven years and actually lost contact with
my own language during this time. Espe-
cially when speaking about abstract things,
I often could not find the words. I was able
to express my thoughts in Spanish or
French but not in Icelandic. So I decided
to sit down and compare Icelandic closely
with foreign texts. To my surprise and dis-
may I found I could not do it, but then I
realized that it had nothing to do with the
words but rather with the structure of the
language. The structure of one’s active lan-
guage makes it very difficult, for one lan-
guage always seems to be on top of the
other. I could never talk equally well in two
languages at the same time. For me, the
predominant foreign language has always
been Spanish because I learned it at an
early age. I find even now, when I haven’t
been to France or Switzerland for a long