The Icelandic connection - 01.06.2014, Qupperneq 43

Vol. 66 #4
ICELANDIC CONNECTION
185
Book Review
Wakeful Nights
A review of Wakeful Nights, Stephan G. Stephansson
Icelandic Canadian Poet,
a biography of Stephan G. Stephansson
by Vidar Hreinsson
Reviewed by Bryan D. Bj erring,
Arnes, MB
607 pages
Benson Ranch, March 2012
Language: English
ISBN-10:0973365722
ISBN-13:978-0973365726
The One Who Got Away
When the Foreward to a book is
written by John Ralston Saul,
likely Canada’s only contemporary public
intellectual, one expects the book to be
significant. Wakeful Nights is, indeed, such
a book. This biography is the English
version of Hreinsson’s two volume work
published in Icelandic in 2002 and 2003.
In Saul’s opinion, “The most important
Canadian war poetry - or in his case anti-
war poetry was written in Icelandic by
an Alberta farmer.” This was Stephan G.
Stephansson.
While the focus of the biography is
Stephansson, the poet, the pages are replete
with accounts of the experiences of first
generation Icelandic immigrants arriving
in the United States and Canada in the
latter quarter of the 19th century. In this
regard, Hreinsson has accessed countless
sources - letters, diaries, newspapers - all
of these contributing to the biography’s
sense of the immediate. The reader is
quickly caught up in an adventure story.
In Iceland of the second half of the 19 th
century schools were not easily accessible
for many Icelandic children, Stephansson
among them. He was taught to write by
his mother and his early education was