The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1995, Síða 23

SPRING / SUMMER 1995
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
133
Everywhere I went, people knew Halldor
Hermannsson’s name, and I was received
graciously because I had been a student of
Halldor Hermannsson and knew him well.
In 1939-40, when I was studying in the Uni-
versity of Copenhagen, I took a course in
modern Icelandic with his friend Sigfus
Blondal. When I was in Iceland in 1949,
Halldor Hermannsson furnished me with
an introduction to Matthias Thordarsson
who also received me very kindly in his
home. It was no doubt also because of my
association with Halldor Hermannsson that
I was well received at the National Library
in Reykjavik, and was engaged to work on
the Icelandic dictionary under the super-
vision ofjakob Benediktsson in October of
1949.
As the years passed, Halldor and my as-
sociation became more a social one than a
scholarly one. I had however learned a
great deal from my working with Halldor
Hermannsson and remain ever grateful for
his guidance, particularly within the field
of bibliography.
My wife and I spent the summer of 1951
in Ithaca where I worked in the Icelandic
Collection daily and had rich opportunity
to discuss various matters, including poli-
tics and the fate of Icelandic manuscripts
with Halldor Hermannsson. As ever, he was
always eager to hear what news I could
bring — news on practically any subject.
He was an omnivorous reader of the New
York Times and was well informed on most
issues.
My wife and I continued our annual pil-
grimages to Ithaca in order to visit Halldor
Hermannsson through the year 1957.
When our first son was born, we decided
to call him Halldor Erik, but when our next
son was born, we dropped Halldor as Erik’s
first name and gave that to our second
son, Halldor Krag Mitchell. Halldor
Hermannsson was apparently very pleased
by this and was interested in the welfare of
the two boys. The last few years of Halldor’s
life was spent to a large extent in a wheel-
chair and our last visit with him was in 1957
when he was in his wheelchair in his apart-
ment on Stewart Avenue and tossed a ball
back and forth between his namesake,
Halldor, and himself.
The American-Scandinavian Founda-
tion had asked him to write a history of Ice-
land and he had agreed to do so some years
previously and had started reading and
making notes for such a book. As time
passed, however, he did not feel he was able
to write and made no more progress, save
occasional notes on the proposed history
of Iceland. To my knowledge, there are no
preserved notes. If there were, they would
have been in the hands of his successor,
Johann Hannesson, who had followed
Kristjan Karlsson, the immediate successor
of Halldor Hermannsson, as curator of the
Fiske Icelandic Collection. Johann has
since died. One must presume that there
is indeed no manuscript material pertain-
ing to history of Iceland preserved.
1 Ward Goodenough, a past president of the
American Anthropological Association, is
one of the most prominent anthropologists
in North America. (Editor’s note.)