The Icelandic connection - 01.03.2018, Side 20

18
ICELANDIC CONNECTION
Vol. 70 #I
Thrifty they were and most still are
All of them are sure they’re right
And sometimes spoiling for a fight
Those readers of County Guide
(transl. Ingrid Roed)
County Guide was a Canadian
journal, a farm paper that published articles
on farming and country living. In these
words of Forarinn’s, we can see that he was
familiar with Kainn’s humourous use of
Western-Icelandic.
There was nothing else of use in the
letters I had researched. I then approached
the Amtsbokasafn librarian [Holmkell
Hreinsson] as to whether I might speak
on something relating to my personal
opinions of Kainn and his poetry or my
thoughts on his work as it relates to my
generation. He replied in his well-known
easy going way: ‘Do whatever you wish,’ he
said.
I can say that I do not remember a
time when I did not know of Kainn. It is
interesting to consider why this is. I spent
my youth in the Hvitarsi'da in what one
might call the last few decades of the
settlement age, for the modern age had
hardly arrived there at that time. Haying
was done, by and large, with the same type
of tools as were used in the days of Helgi
Magri and Forunn hyrma: scythe and rake.
Food was soured in whey, salted, dried and
smoked much like it was for the family at
Kristnes in the year 880. We sometimes
listened to the radio during the long
winter nights in my youth, but that what
entertainment it provided was often so
abysmal that we called it piano-blubbering’
or else ‘symphony-squawk’. But in my
earliest years, ‘rimur’ (rhyming chants) were
still being recited on the radio. It was said
that this stopped when the British Army
moved onto the island at the start of WWII
because every time they heard these long,
drawn-out recitations, they thought it was
some kind of air-raid warning.
But good poetry was, then as now,
always pleasing to the ear. And Kainn
was especially popular with readers and
listeners throughout the country. His
book, Kvidlingar, which was published in
1920, was widely available, as was the book
Kvidlingar og kvaedi (publ. 1945). I did
not read Kainn in my youth, but I learned
his poetry because the people around me,
residents at the farm as well as guests
and neighbours, would recite his poems.
I first began reading Kainn in 1965 when
Visnabok Kains was published and I came
to realize that there was much more to his
work than the short verses I had learned as
a child.
It is interesting to speculate as to why
Kainn’s poetry resonated so well in the
hearts and minds of the Icelanders. We
must remember that in the 1950s and 1960s
there was still some resentment towards
those who had left Iceland and emigrated
west to Canada and the United States in
the latter part of the nineteenth century.
This resentment applied to everyone -
except the poets. I have never heard anyone
criticize Stephan G. for being an Icelandic-
North American. The same goes for Kainn.
Their styles were completely different
however. So was their relative popularity.
Everyone liked Kainn, whether they were
‘poetry-lovers’ or not. On the other hand,
Stephan G. would certainly never be called
a popular poet. When Stephan G. wrote
about his opinions on the horrors of the
World War, some of his countrymen tried
to get him arrested for treason. Meanwhile
Kainn was writing about anything and
everything else.
Although Kainn is seldom mentioned
in letters of Icelandic North Americans,
I thought that it would be fun to think
about the themes in his verses and examine
them from the viewpoint of the Icelandic
and North American communities where