The Icelandic Canadian - 01.08.2009, Qupperneq 22

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THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 62 #3
pattern similar to the one which many
other ethnic groups had followed before
them. For example, New Iceland in Canada
brings to mind New England, Nova Scotia
and New France, which at one time
extended all the way from Quebec to
Missouri. Place names from the Homeric
Lays are not at all uncommon in upstate
New York where Greek immigrants were
among pioneer settlers, and countless other
parallels could be quoted. Yet it is very
likely that on the part of the Icelanders
their ties with their medieval heritage were
much stronger than would have been the
case among other minority groups.
Because of an uninterrupted continuity
in Icelandic language and literature from
the Middle Ages to the present day, any lit-
erate Icelander has unlimited access to the
total body of Icelandic literature, old and
modern. Not only were the immigrants
who came here from Iceland able to read,
but a number of them brought along col-
lections of books, including old sagas
which 19th-century romanticism had
placed in the classics category. Writers of
North American-Icelandic literature were
of course influenced by these works which
were set in the era of Viking Age heroic
ethics. Sir Maurice Bowra believed that
heroic literature originally served the pur-
pose of providing an audience of ordinary
mortals with the feeling that they them-
selves were taking part in the superhuman
accomplishments of heroes. A hero, as is
well known, differed from other people in
the degree of his or her powers. In most
heroic literature these are specifically
human, even though they are carried
beyond the ordinary limits of humanity.
In a recent publication I have called
attention to the popularity of a special kind
of poetry called Amur (ballads), commonly
composed and recited for entertainment in
Iceland and later in Icelandic immigrant
communities on this side of the Atlantic.
The Amur poetry is heroic in theme, which
among other things shows its close kinship
to the much older and much more serious
heroic poetry. The examples I discussed
were from North Dakota and Sunnybrook
in B.C. With these and many others in
mind we can safely draw the conclusion
that in the various late-nineteenth century
Icelandic settlements in North America
Amur ballads, which previously had been
composed and recited for entertainment,
assumed new force and import. Indeed
they took on, at least in some instances, the
role of truly heroic poetry under circum-
stances in which a deeply felt incentive or
challenge to survive was bound to override
the less significant elements of diversion or
vicarious engagement in superhuman
achievements, if we are allowed to make an
indirect reference to Sir Bowra.
To explain a little further what is
meant by all this, we may contend that
such famous legendary and prehistoric
champions from Europe’s remote antiquity
as Numi Pompilsson and An bogsveigir
(bowbender) assumed new and significant
roles in North American- Icelandic com-
munities. On this side of the ocean the two
of them were, in people’s minds, elevated
to the roles of such outstanding heroes of
Germanic legend as Sigurd the Slayer of the
Dragon Fafnir and his brothers-in-law and
members of the Burgundian Royal Family,
Gunnar and Hogni. For many centuries
and throughout the entire Germanic world,
from central Europe to Greenland, poets
and saga men never tired of extolling their
virtues and strength of character. From this
elevated stage of principal actors in heroic
dramas, memories of praiseworthy conduct
may well have been of importance. They
may have helped instill in those who had to
adjust to a new and often hostile territory
the will to meet adversity with an undaunt-
ed spirit. This would then apply in the case
of Eirfk the Red’s family and followers in
Greenland, people in Leif the Lucky's
Vfnland and, more recently, Icelandic
immigrant communities in Canada. Within
this sphere of human conduct and intellec-
tual activity it is interesting to note that the
longest heroic poem northern tradition has
handed down to us may have been com-
posed in the Icelandic colony in Greenland.
It is called the Greenland Lay of Atli and
describes the lives of the highly tragic char-
acters King Attila the Hun, his Burgundian
brothers-in-law, Gunnar and Hogni, and
their families. This poem is unique, in that
we sense in it the chilly environment of