The Icelandic connection - 01.03.2018, Blaðsíða 25

Vol. 70 #1
ICELANDIC CONNECTION
23
“use deceit and mockery”. And to “use
deceit and mockery” is, among other things,
to make fun of others. But humour is
often based on mockery, or more acurately
stated, on something being other than
what it is supposed to be. Many religious
fundamentalists thought that laughter was
for the sole purpose of entertaining the
devil. They did not believe that our Lord
could appreciate humour. This calls to
mind a well-known enemy of laughter in
more recent literature: Jorge, in The Name
of the Rose, had no doubt that the devil
waited by the fires with the whip raised
for those who use deceit and mockery.
This is reminiscent of Hallgrimur. I think
Lorarinn writes as he does not to criticize
Kainn but to characterize his writing. Fun,
humour, joking are all positive words, but
it is not considered nice to “make fun” of
others. It is much more positive to “joke
about”or “poke gentle fun” at others, so we
have to be careful in our choice of words.
And maybe what Kainn did, first and
foremost, was to gently poke fun at many
things. To ridicule others, to make fun of
them, to mock them, was not what Kainn
wanted to do. There was no one that Kainn
made more fun of than himself, and many
people could take a lesson from that.
Despite threats and punishments,
we love things that are funny and we are
grateful to those who draw our attention
to funny things. Kainn was such a person.
Nothing was sacred to him but he bore no
ill will towards anyone. He saw first and
foremost the humour in this world. Even
in obituaries he wrote about friends who
had passed away, he shows his humour,
but not to hurt or cause pain.
In a memorial poem to Wilhelm
Paulson, he says:
Forlog, (Decisions)
I kirkjunni leit eg Joig sidasta sinn,
]aa se jrar ei tfdur gestur.
Heyrdu jaad, Wilhelm vinur minn,
eg var |aar og Sigmar prestur.
‘Twas in the church I saw you last,
A place you seldom came.
Yes, we were there, Wilhelm, my friend,
I and the reverend, Sigmar by name.
(transl. Ingrid Roed)
Perhaps rather than enumerate Kainn’s
themes, it would be more appropriate to
count up the things he made fun of, but I
will leave that decision to others. Icelandic
rural society liked good-natured humour.
Kainn’s humour was sometimes a bit
crude. Let’s take, for example, the verse
he composed about the Lutheran Church
Conference of 1913. But first we need
to explain a little about North American
church conferences. Neither Canada nor
the United States has a national religion.
Everyone is free to believe what they
will and no one is born into a particular
religion according to the laws of the land.
Specific religious denominations that
fled from Europe to the New World in
the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries called
America ‘The Land of Freedom’, by which
they meant, first and foremost, freedom
of religion. Icelandic congregations in the
West quarrelled among themselves about
what constituted correct doctrine, and not
always in the biblical spirit of those of whom
it was said ‘how beautiful are the feet of the
one who brings news of peace’. Lutheran
Church conventions were established to
make peace and maybe also a little to clear
away misconceptions that may have crept in
from the Unitarians, spiritualists, Baptists,
Quakers, Methodists, Mennonites,
Pentecostals and later the Mormons. The
Lutheran Conference of 1913 was praised
in the Icelandic papers for its good work
and the great accomplishments of its
delegates. This caught Kainn’s attention
and he composed the following poem: