The Icelandic Canadian - 01.11.2007, Qupperneq 9

Vol. 61 #2
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
51
grave that first time, I called to mind a few
poems—well, actually a few snippets of
poems, since my memory is better suited to
recalling obscure facts than lines of verse.
The first poems to come to mind were his
whimsical verses, such as Bordsalmur or
“Table Hymn,” a wittily irreverent piece
written in the form of a responsive hymn,
and his prayer of an imagined farmer to the
goddess of drizzle, offering his cow, his
wife, and his faith in return for some sun-
shine to burn away the mist. How strange
it is, I thought, that the composer of such
whimsy should be immortalized so. It has
taken me years to grasp his significance as a
poet and scientist, scholar and statesman.
My own deeper interest in Jonas grew
out of the discovery that he had written a
poem about my third great-grandfather,
Jon Lorlaksson Kjternested - “A gomlu
leidi 1841” (At an Old Grave). There’s
nothing like family conceit to motivate
interest! It seems that this ancestor of mine
had taught Jonas how to swim in the years
following the tragic death of the poet’s
father by drowning, when Jonas was still
eight years old. In 1841, while traveling
around Snadellsnes in his work as a natu-
ralist, Jonas stumbled upon his old
teacher’s grave at Ingjaldsholl, penning a
verse that both eulogized Jon Kjxrnested
and betrayed Jonas’s own recurrent melan-
choly. Two verses will suffice to convey
the flavour of the poem:
Hardship! Though your unhappy son
Lies here secure in nature’s keeping,
Clad in eternal night and sleeping,
His soul’s enduring weal is won! ...
Rest in your mold-embosomed bed
Patiently, old friend long departed,
And peace enfold you, weary-hearted!
Iceland was cold, O Kjamnested.1
In the years since, I've come to appre-
ciate Jonas Hallgrlmsson’s significance to
the flowering of romantic literature and
rationalist philosophy in Iceland - an
unusual combination - not to mention his
influence on the embryonic independence
movement. As a poet, scientist and social
commentator, he was truly a “Renaissance
man” and he left an enormous legacy for
one who died so very young.
It was suggested to me by a parish-
ioner, some time ago, that “Eg bid ad heil-
sa!” (I Send Greetings!) is the most beauti-
ful poem ever written, and I can find little
reason to quarrel with this sincere and
appreciative hyperbole.
As a vocational exile’s love poem to his
homeland, it is unequalled in its sentiment
and eloquence, which were captured in this
translation by Jakobina Johnson:
As a nature poet, Jonas is rivalled
among Icelandic writers only by our own
Stephan G. Stephansson and the different
landscapes they celebrated has meant that
Old fashioned hospitality & modern
convenience set on historic Hecla Island
Explore Manitoba’s
Icelandic Heritage
Solmundson Gesta Hus
B & B and Wellness Centre
Hecla Island, Manitoba
204-279-2088
hecla@mts.net •• www.hedatourism.mb.ca