The Icelandic Canadian - 01.11.2007, Qupperneq 7

Vol. 61 #2
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
49
books were read quite frequently:
Hallgrfmur Petursson's Passion Hymns
and Mynster's Reflections on the Principal
Points of Christian Faith. The latter, writ-
ten by the Danish bishop J.P. Mynster
(1775-1854), was also read in Icelandic,
translated by Brynjolfur Petursson
(1810-1851), Jonas Hallgrfmsson and
Konrad Gislason (1808-1891), published
1839 in Copenhagen. The early Icelandic
settlers were thus at home in the still
incomparable religious poetry of
Hallgrfmur Petursson (1614-1674). They
were also the people to ferry over the
Atlantic Ocean an Icelandic translation of
Mynster's text, a translation renown for its
poetic beauty. The translators, who had all
moved to Copenhagen to seek higher edu-
cation, were friends, and along with Tomas
Sa:mundsson (1807-1841) - who had also
studied and lived in Copenhagen, and trav-
elled far and wide within Euorpe prior to
his returning to the isolated island back
home - belonged to the so-called Fjolnir-
group. This group of friends were the peo-
ple to create and publish the annual period-
ical Fjolnir, its first issue to appear in 1835.
What the friends envisioned was nothing
less than a cultural and economic revival
for Iceland, later to be recogniced as one of
the most creative attempts in the history of
Iceland to acknowledge both the indespen-
sible role of culture, and the desirable rela-
tion between utility, beauty and truth.
In a year set for Jonas Hallgrfmsson, it
is also time to recall the circumstances in
which this group of friends, or, in the
words of Halldor Laxness, these apples of
Idunn, managed to rejuvinate the Icelandic
nation in the nineteenth century. They did
not originate from “fancy offices, support-
ed by bulging bankbooks, nor from power-
ful officials.” This renewal, Halldor
Laxness also wrote, and David Gislason
translated; “came at the hands of a few
insignificant revelers, living in a big city
south of Oresund, colourless and wearing
worn out shoes.” Jonas, the poet in the
group, “has not told us any heroic tale
which is in danger of losing its colour to
the cold irony of life, nor opened up for us
a fairy tale world more beautiful than real-
ity itself.”