Lögberg-Heimskringla - 15.01.2019, Blaðsíða 6

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6 • Lögberg-Heimskringla • January 15 2019
He toured Scandinavia studying
the educational methods of
those countries, which led to
his first book, Lýðmenntun
(People’s Education), and then
toured Iceland on a similar
mission. His reports to Alþingi
laid the groundwork for
Iceland’s educational policy
as the country moved from
home rule to sovereignty. He
was editor of the journal of
the Icelandic Literary Society,
Skírnir, for 23 years and
president of the society from
1923 onwards.
Guðmundur returned to
Copenhagen to pursue doctoral
studies, also studying in Paris
and Berlin, completing his
thesis in 1911. He sought the
professorship in philosophy at
the University of Iceland when
it was founded in 1911 but he
didn’t join the faculty until he
was named professor of applied
psychology in 1918. From 1911
to 1915, he was the librarian at
the National Library of Iceland.
When his professorship was
abolished as a cost-saving
measure in 1924, he took over
the office of national librarian
and held the position until his
retirement in 1943. While it
might seem strange for The
New York Times to have invited
a philosopher and psychologist
to write on the subject of
Iceland’s sovereignty, there
were no Icelandic political
scientists at the time; indeed,
the field only emerged globally
as a separate discipline in the
latter part of the 19th century.
Guðmundur served
on a variety of boards and
committees over the years
and was Iceland’s official
representative at the celebration
of Normandy’s millennial in
1911. In 1916, he was a guest
lecturer at the Jón Bjarnason
Academy in Winnipeg and
went on a speaking tour of the
Icelandic settlements in North
America. He was a prolific
writer, primarily in Icelandic,
but he also wrote in Danish,
English, and German.
In his report for The New
York Times, Guðmundur
presented the larger context of
Icelandic history, geography,
and politics to help explain
why sovereignty had come
about. He quoted James Bryce,
then Viscount Bryce, who had
been Britain’s ambassador to
the United States from 1907
to 1913. Viscount Bryce was
familiar with Iceland and had
a very positive view of the
country.
“Iceland,” said Viscount
Bryce, “is a country of quite
exceptional and peculiar
interest, not only in its physical
but also on its historical
aspects. The Icelanders are
the smallest in number of
the civilized nations of the
world. Down till our own
days the island has never
had a population exceeding
70,000, yet it is a nation, with a
language, a national character,
a body of traditions that are
all its own. Of all the civilized
countries it is the most wild
and barren – nine-tenths of it
a desert of snow mountains,
glaciers, and vast fields of
rugged lava, poured forth from
its volcanoes. Yet the people of
this remote isle, placed in an
inhospitable arctic wilderness,
cut off from the nearest parts of
Europe by a stormy sea, is, and
has been from the beginning of
its national life more than 1,000
years ago, an intellectually
cultivated people which has
produced a literature both in
prose and in poetry that stands
among the primitive literatures
next after that of ancient Greece
if one regards both its quantity
and its quality. Nowhere else,
except in Greece, was so
much produced that attained
in times of primitive simplicity
so high a level of excellent
both in imaginative power and
brilliance of expression.”
“Not less remarkable is
the early political history
of the island. For nearly
four centuries it was the
only independent republic
in the world, and a republic
absolutely unique in what one
may call its Constitution, for
the Government was nothing
but a system of law courts,
administering a most elaborate
system of laws, the enforcement
of which was for the most part
left to those who were parties to
the lawsuits.” Parenthetically,
after reading Viscount Bryce’s
description of the Icelandic
Commonwealth, it occurred to
me that it may well have been
the only genuinely libertarian
republic the world has ever
known.
Guðmundur then concluded
with his own lengthy overview
of Iceland’s history and
political evolution, concluding
with a nod to Icelanders’ love
of genealogy and passion for
their distinctive language and
literature.
“It was this Icelandic
Republic which in the years
1262-64 made a covenant with
the King of Norway. There
we read how the Icelanders
granted the then King of
Norway royalty over Iceland.
This is the concluding sentence
of that remarkable document:
‘We shall, and also our descent,
keep all fidelity with you, so
long as you and your decent
keen this deed of agreement
with us, but free are we from it
if it is broken on your part in
the opinion of those men who
know best.’ This old covenant,
called the ‘Gamli Sattmali,’ has
been a deed of law from which
Icelanders have always refused
to depart. It was appealed to
at various epochs, whenever
attempts were made to resist the
ever-increasing encroachments
of the royal power, first
Norwegian, then Danish, after
Iceland, along with Norway,
(1380,) was inherited by the
Danish crown, to which it
has been united ever since.
However sorely tried Iceland
has been by volcanic eruptions,
polar ice, plagues, isolation and
trade monopoly, she has never
lost the consciousness of her old
right, and when the renaissance
came in the beginning of the
nineteenth century, when,
under the leadership of the
excellent chief Jon Sigurdsson,
the nation claimed that
independence which she had
lost in matter of fact, the
History of Iceland was the
arsenal whence weapons were
sought, and the proposition
was put forward that Iceland
is by right a sovereign nation
in union in royal union with
Denmark.”
“The new Constitution
which Iceland obtained on
her millenary in 1874, the
improvements made thereto in
1903, when the Government
was brought into the land, with
an Icelandic Minister residing
in Reykjavik, and responsible
before the Althing, were steps
in the right direction, but
inadequate to satisfy a nation
who could always point to the
fact that her prosperity was
always in proportion to her
independence.”
“Most Icelanders of today
can trace their genealogy back
to the Norse chieftains who
first colonized the country
a thousand years ago. The
modern Icelander still speaks
and writes the language of
his forefathers in such a way
that if the first colonists now
stood up from their grave and
addressed their descendants to
the thirtieth degree who now
dwell in the country, every
man’s child would understand
them. They would nevertheless
be the first to admit that the
old language, so strong and
so rich, has not lain stagnant,
but, on the contrary, acquired
new words as Iceland’s horizon
altered and widened. Yet they
would see their own mark on
every work, for the literature,
which has never ceased to live
and evinces now more activity
than ever, has sprung from the
seeds they sowed.”
While Iceland’s achieve-
ment of sovereignty may have
escaped the world’s attention
at the time, the readers of The
New York Times were brought
up to speed during the first
year of independence and
Guðmundur Finnbogason’s
scholarly but readable account
offers as good an explanation
of the significance of that
national milestone as any that
has been published over the
century that followed.
PHOTO: WILLEM VAN DE POLL, 1934
Guðmundur Finnbogason, philosopher, psychologist,
historian, and librarian
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