Lögberg-Heimskringla - 01.02.2019, Page 11

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Lögberg-Heimskringla • 1. febrúar 2019 • 11
All heroes have feet of clay. Or,
in the case of a lot of male
heroes, it’s not their feet that
are a problem, it’s usually a problem
with keeping their flies buttoned. As the
latest tell-all book on John Kennedy,
Once Upon a Secret: My Affair With
President John F. Kennedy and Its
Aftermath by Mimi Beardsley Alford,
makes clear, as busy as a president is
with deciding on whether or not to start
a nuclear war, there’s always time for a
little nooky with the hired help. There
are, of course, more recent situations
that could be cited.
That was Jón Þorláksson’s problem.
He was a Lutheran minister but it didn’t
keep him from getting Jórunn, daughter
or Brynjólfur Bjarnason, a wealthy and
influential local farmer, pregnant.
Given his poverty and his need to
work night and day getting in the hay,
you wouldn’t think Jón would have
time to lie down in the meadow with
Jórunn. Of course, there are those
long Icelandic winter evenings when
one might meet in the dairy. Given
living conditions in Iceland, it’s hard
to imagine where a couple found the
privacy for sex. According to Halldór
Laxness in Paradise Reclaimed, a
butter box would do for a momentary
moment of passion.
Jón Þorláksson would have made
the farmer’s daughter an honest woman
but her father considered Jón such a
hopeless case that he wouldn’t agree to
her marrying him. It must have been a
hot affair because they started it up a
second time.
Jón got tossed out of the ministry,
then got let back in. He would have
been better off to have gone to the
farmer and said, give me the fare to
Denmark and your daughter will never
again be tempted. Life in Denmark
couldn’t have been worse than Jón’s
life in Iceland. He ended up with a
lousy job, an unhappy marriage, and
dreadful pay.
Why do we care about the love life
and living of some country preacher
living in a hovel? Why is he a part of
the Icelandic heritage of which I’m
proud?
When he quit messing around with
the farmer’s daughter, he got busy
making hay, tending to his flock (both
the sheep and the parishioners), and
he also got busy translating Milton
into Icelandic. He did it brilliantly.
So brilliantly that he was revered in
England. In spite of his moral lapses, he
was highly intelligent, gifted, talented,
and dedicated.
But to Iceland’s shame and England’s
credit, Jón lived in abject poverty until
an English literary society raised the
equivalent of six year’s income and
sent it to him. The fact that an English
literary society knew about Jón and his
work, revered both him and the work,
makes it clear how interested the English
educated class was in Iceland. They
held Iceland and the accomplishments
of Icelanders in greater esteem than the
Icelanders did themselves.
Paradise Lost – Jón Þorláksson of Bægisá
W.D. Valgardson
Victoria, BC
Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden by Paul Gustave Doré,
from an 1866 edition of Paradise Lost
Lucifer expelled from Heaven by Paul Gustave Doré,
from an 1866 edition of Paradise Lost
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