The Icelandic Canadian - 01.08.2006, Qupperneq 25

Vol. 60 #2
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
67
ancestors, and who might have experienced
much social mobility within the larger soci-
ety but whose feeling of identity with their
ancestral group has actually developed
rather than decreased.” These people are
rediscovering their ancestral past as some-
thing with a new meaning. The past
becomes transfigured (Isajiw 1975:134). In
some people’s cases this might be accompa-
nied by rejection of the values of the dom-
inant culture but others enjoy their heritage
culture without rejecting their own. It is
this third stage that most of the visible
Icelandic Canadians are in today. These are
the people who want to keep contact with
Iceland, want to keep some of the customs
and even learn the language, but, at the
same time, be Canadian. This is the group
most important for preserving the ethnic
culture.
For an ethnic language to survive in a
bilingual situation it must be of some inde-
pendent use because the languages with
more prestige have a tendency to crowd
them out (Kelly 1975:24). We can’t any-
more depend on the amma-factor, with the
kids learning Icelandic just so that they can
talk to the grandparents. A language that is
the property of the old is simply a dying
language. That is sad, but it is a fact. In the
Census of 1996 it is stated that 70.685 peo-
ple of Icelandic origin live in Canada,
25.735 of them in Manitoba. At the same
time, only 3,275 Manitobans spoke any of
the Scandinavian languages, with only 130
considering it their mother tongue. And
although Icelandic is no doubt the biggest
factor in this number it is nevertheless clear
that those who speak the language are
becoming fewer, and they are getting older.
Most Icelandic Canadians who speak
Icelandic today learned it as a first lan-
guage, spoken at home. They didn’t learn
English until they went to school at the age
of five or six. Young parents today, howev-
er, don’t speak Icelandic, which means they
do not speak the language to their children
and when the children don’t grow up hear-
ing Icelandic, the future of the language in
Canada is clear. Only death is possible.
But it doesn’t have to be so bad and the
Icelandic Canadian community certainly
seems to be strong enough to survive even
though the language disappears as a first
language. The third stage of rediscovery
blossoms and there are hundreds of
Canadians of Icelandic origin who want to
keep their roots and want to keep the con-
nection with Iceland. They are simply
going to do that in English. I am not here,
however, to say that we should not pay
attention to the Icelandic language. On the
contrary. I think it is quite important that
the Icelandic language will be kept alive in
some form, although it has ceased to be the
first language of Icelandic Canadians.
Everything that has already been done to
keep the language is quite important: con-
versation classes at the Scandinavian
Centre, language teaching in various places
throughtout Canada, and certainly the
Icelandic Department at the University of
Manitoba.
We have to make sure that even though
Icelandic will, after a few decades, probably
have died as a mother tongue in Canada,
there will always be Canadians who do
speak the language, who can read Icelandic
books, poems or even just postcards. And
together, we can do that.