The Icelandic Canadian - 01.11.2006, Síða 38

124
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 60 #3
SALLY MAGNUSSON
Dreaming of Iceland
By Sally Magnusson
Reviewed by Elva Simundsson
Published by Hodder & Stoughton,
London, UK 2004
The book is written as a travel diary of
a trip to Iceland Sally took with her famous
father, Magnus Magnusson. Magnus is a
household name in Britain for his role in a
BBC television show for a quarter century.
He is also known in Icelandic-English liter-
ary circles as a translator of the sagas and
several other pieces of Icelandic work.
Magnus, although born in Iceland, has
lived in Glasgow from the time he was only
eight months old. As happens often with-
in expatriate families, Iceland becomes
more than just another country to
Icelanders living off the island. It becomes
larger than life, not quite matched in the
reality of the truth. Sally says that in the
stories of her family: “Iceland is more than
a homeland - it is a crusade.”
Sally grew up in Glasgow in a house-
hold steeped in stories of Iceland, her
Icelandic heritage and her Icelandic ances-
tors. In other words, she grew up hearing
how wonderful everything that a true son
of Iceland had never really lived in Iceland
could conjure up in the hearts and minds of
his children about his Icelandic roots. The
stories of hardship and poverty disappear
in the memories of the people telling the
stories and only the romanticism and beau-
ty remain.
In the prologue of the book, Sally
quotes the Laxness character, Pastor Jon
from Christianity Under the Glacier: “It is
pleasant to hear the birds chirping. But it
would be anything but pleasant if the birds
were always chirping the truth.” This fore-
warning reminds the reader to take a care-
ful account of what is relayed from the sto-
ries Sally heard in her childhood; stories
from her father and all the aunts, uncles
and grandparents who were part of her
Icelandic family.
The whole book is devoted to Sally’s
trip with her father to the home sites of her
ancestors, in order to - as Sally puts it - “to
penetrate my own legends.” She interspers-
es the travelogue with short history lessons
and personal insights. For instance, she
explains Iceland’s incredible literary legacy
with two observations. One observation is
that the country was so impoverished that
there were no other materials to create art
other than words. Another observation is
that the nature of a people who could cre-
ate a democracy at the turn of the first mil-
lennium was such that their wars were gen-
erally fought with words and only with
weapons as a last resort. Thus word skills
were equal in importance to a person’s
weapons skills.
Sally and her father discover a land that
does not quite match the legends. She
laments somewhat that the current genera-
tions seem to be too busy making money to
dwell too much on their past. But, when
they scratch the surface, they find the past