The Icelandic connection - 01.03.2018, Qupperneq 33

Vol. 70 #1
ICELANDIC CONNECTION
31
By the grace of the Holy Ghost” (95).
Something of Kainn’s gift for parody
appears in the following lines remembered
by Pall Hallson of Winnipeg. The poet
refers to the American liquor prohibition in
this contemporaneous verse:
Pa voru landar miklir menn,
meiri en jotnar i homrum.
Margur fekk kjaftshogg, eg man ]aa5 enn,
me5an vi5 drukkum a komrum.
This translates as: "Our compatriots
were mighty back then,/ Mightier than
giants in cliffs./ Many got a blow in the
chops, I remember it still,/ When we drank
in outhouses" (138).
Gfsli Gillis of Wynyard, Saskatchewan
recalled this verse about a hard winter.
Siggi Ptarmigan, so named for his dapple-
coloured hair, shared a room with K.N.:
Vetrarforda eigum ei
utan skuldasiipu,
pad veit Gud og Maria mey
um mig og Sigga rjupn.
Einarsson translates: "We don't have
winter provisions,/ Except for some soup
on credit,/ God and the Virgin Mary know
that/ About me and Siggi Ptarmigan" (148-
149).
On another occasion, Kainn perceives
something of the brevity of life, and the
surety of decay, when observing his room-
mate Siggi asleep:
Pad veit Gu3 mer gremst a3 sja
graflekkotta kupu
Jiegar eg fer a5 hatta hja
henni Siggu rjupu.
This recollection, also from Gfsli Gillis
of Wynyard, Saskatchewan, translates as
follows: "God knows it irritates me to see/
The grey-patched skull/ When I go to bed
down with/ Siggi ptarmigan" (367).
When a friend had lost his girlfriend,
and asked K.N. to produce a fitting, forlorn
poem, Sveinn Bjornsson of White Rock,
British Columbia remembered the reply:
Eg hvfldi Jareytta hjarta3
Vi5 hvelfdan barm a Jaer
og Jatiu lag3ir vinstra laeri3
vi3 lasri3 hzegra a mer.
This translates as: "I rested my tired
heart/ At your swelling bosom/ And you
laid your left thigh/ Up against my right
thigh" (307-308). In English poetry, this
ironic change in tone in the final two lines is
called "bathos." The parodist wields bathos
with precise and constant skill.
The comic tradition of writing that
K.N. Julius belongs to traces back in
Icelandic literature to the some-times
humorous and sexually explicit comments
recorded in the sagas. In the western
tradition of literature, such wit, sarcasm,
parody, and word-play stretches back to
the Greek dramatist, Aristophanes, whose
raucous and racy language entertained
thousands of Athenians each year in the
Classical Age. The Athenians used the
farfetched, fanciful and bawdy plays of
Aristophanes to break the tension of the
tragedies, with which they competed
for attention, during a period when they
fought for survival against the Spartans in
the Peloponnesian War. Humanity always
has a need for humour.
The great American humorist, Mark
Twain, sometimes despaired because he
could not write serious, tragic and profound
literature. Writing with a darker theme,
even in the Icelandic literature of North
America, seems to gain in significance
over "less serious," humorous writing. This
bias, which claims that tragic literature
lays closer to the heart of the Norse Muse,
recommends the superiority of Stephansson
and Guttormsson to Johann Magnus
Bjarnason and Kainn.
Comparing Aristophanes to Sophocles,
Mark Twain to William Faulkner, or Kainn