The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1995, Qupperneq 59

SPRING/SUMMER 1995
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
169
POETRY
Poetry by Johannes ur Kotlum and Jon Helgason
Translated from the Icelandic by Hallberg Hallmundsson
Johannes ur Kotlum (full name Johannes Bjarnijonasson) may
be counted among the salient figures of modern Icelandic po-
etry. He was born at Goddastadir in Dalasysla in western Ice-
land in 1899 and was educated as a teacher — a profession he
pursued for many years both in his home district and in
Reykjavik. Johannes published his first book of poetry in 1926
and followed it up during the next 45 years with a score of
others (thereof several of children’s verse) and five novels. An
early and life-long leftist, active in Icelandic politics, he was
once accused by a prominent political adversary of having writ-
ten “slander about his own father,” i.e., the long poem (alto-
gether 77 stanzas in 10 sections) seen here in a very much short-
ened form. Actually a paean to the heroic, if often futile, struggle of ordinary people
through the centuries, the poem has always struck this translator as a verse predecessor to
Halldor Laxness’ Independent People. It has been translated in the form it was written,
including alliteration. Johannes ur Kotlum died in 1972.
Jon Helgason is better known outside Iceland as one of the
foremost scholars of Old Icelandic studies than a poet. He was
born in Borgarfjar&asysla in western Iceland in 1899 but spent
most of his life in Denmark as professor at the University of
Copenhagen and director of the Arnamagnean Institute. As
such he was the author and/or editor of countless scholarly
papers and editions. His one book of original poetry, Ur
landssubri (From the Southeast) was first published in 1939,
but an altered version (some deletions, some additions) was
published in 1948. Some more of his poems have been printed
posthumously. He also translated a good number of poems from
other languages into Icelandic, all of them in a masterly fash-
ion. The translations of his verse here printed, faithfully render the original form, includ-
ing alliteration. Jon Helgason died in 1986.