The Icelandic Canadian - 01.12.2008, Side 28

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THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 62 #1
nent” in what can truthfully be labelled as
bilingualism.
In the early years of their history,
strong voices were heard from within the
Icelandic pioneer communities in the
United States and Canada advocating unity
among the people who had come there
from Iceland.The founding of an Icelandic
colony in North America was, in the opin-
ion of some individuals, the only way for
the immigrants to preserve their ethnic
identity, and that staying together was nec-
essary for the cultivation and maintenance
of the most important feature of that iden-
tity, which was the Icelandic language. A
poet, editor and a visionary of a rare mag-
nitude by the name of Jon Olafsson was, to
mention only one individual, an ardent
proponent of the separate-colony idea. An
exceptionally eloquent man and gifted with
a strong personality, Olafsson made con-
tacts in Washington D.C., where he is said
to have befriended the President of the
United States, Ulysses S. Grant. From the
government in Washington he obtained, in
1874, a special rank in the United States
Navy. Almost immediately afterwards, he
was sent on a special mission, in the com-
pany of two other Icelanders, to Alaska
where the three of them searched for a suit-
able site for an Icelandic colony. In his
report on their findings, written in
Icelandic and published in Washington
D.C. in 1875, (Olafsson had high hopes for
the future of Icelandic people and their lan-
guage in an attractive region he and his
team had picked out in Alaska. There,
according to his logistics, it would take the
Icelandic colonists anywhere from three to
four centuries to reach the 100 million
mark in number, at which time the bound-
ary of their original colony would long
since have been done away with and the
new and extended domain under their
jurisdiction would stretch from Hudson
Bay to the Pacific Ocean. From there the
Icelandic language could then spread south,
replacing, in (Mafsson's own words, “the
degenerate English tongue”.
A careful reading of Jon Olafsson’s
report leaves one with a strange feeling. He
seems to have believed or wanted to believe
that, in its southward flow, the Icelandic
language would assume the force of a tidal
wave. One can even go further by saying
that Olafsson, who was indeed a poet, envi-
sioned his native language as a new and
powerful element of nature, rushing forth
with a steadily growing intensity, leaving
its speakers behind and submerging at the
same time all the other languages on the
North American continent, including such
dialects as English and French.
Needless to say, Jon Olafsson’s grand
scheme never materialized. Therefore, peo-
ple of Icealandic descent in Alaska are still
few in number. Olafsson himself seems to
have lost interest in his project soon after
he gave his report to Washington. I have
tried to understand his sudden change of
mind and come to the conclusion that it
must have resulted from his own volatile
way of thinking. However, the idea has
also occurred to me that, having completed
his Alaska report and submitted it to his
friend, the President of the United States,
Olafsson may all of a sudden have realized
that, on the mythological plane, an anony-
mous Icelandic poet and the supreme god
Odinn had used their poetic skills almost a
thousand years earlier to make Icelandic
the language of the world. In comparison, a
minor conquest of only the North
American continent could then have begun
to appear to him as no more of an achieve-
ment than carrying coals to Newcastle.
After a fairly short but colorful career in
North America, Olafsson returned to his
native land where he lived for the rest of his
life. There he found himself again in the
vicinity of Odinn, a supreme sovereign and
a god of poetry. From times immemorial,
Odinn had been the one to give directions
to the Icelanders and others living in more
ways than one on the world’s peripheries,
leading them, on occasion, into the mytho-
logical realm where the laws of nature no
longer obtain and the greatest of conquests
are within reach.