Lögberg-Heimskringla - 15.02.2019, Blaðsíða 6

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6 • Lögberg-Heimskringla • February 15 2019
Stefan Jonasson
Not long after Iceland became a
sovereign country, the Icelandic
communities in North America
established the Icelandic National
League of North America. More than
four decades had passed since the major
wave of immigration had begun – and
that wave had already come to an end –
so the Icelandic community was already
well established in Canada and the
United States.
In The Icelanders in Canada, written
on the occasion of the centennial of
Canadian Confederation, Judge Walter
J. Lindal asked why the INLNA came to
be organized when it was. “Why so soon
after the war? Why such an apparent
withdrawal from Canadian objectives?
… Why the sudden outburst?” At
the same time, he noted that the two
individuals at the centre of the initiative,
Rev. Rögnvaldur Pétursson and Jón J.
Bíldfell, had been strong supporters
of the war effort and that the Icelandic
community had shown itself to be
fiercely loyal to their new homeland.
Lindal concluded that it was “natural,
almost inevitable” that the INLNA came
into existence, coming as it did in the
immediate aftermath of the end of the
First World War. He speculated about
the “general disappointment in the
victory” of the Allies, the realization
that “democracy was far from being
safe,” and the post-war isolationism of
the United States. But it’s difficult to
believe that any of these factors could
have been so apparent to have influenced
the creation of a new organization little
more than three months after the war’s
end. While the development may have
been “natural, almost inevitable,” surely
other factors were at play.
Stefan J. Stefanson pointed out that
the seeds for the INLNA were sown long
before the First World War. “In the early
years of the 20th century, the settlers and
their descendants expressed a desire to
establish an organization to represent the
Icelandic community at large in order
to preserve their language and culture,”
he wrote. “Their intention was to form
an umbrella organization to promote
programs beneficial to all groups as
well as act as a liaison with Iceland.”
If the end of the war may have given
the Icelanders an occasion to organize,
some believed that the war had delayed
initiatives already underway. That said,
the community had already established
a pattern of discussing things at length
and then taking a long time to organize
around what they had discussed. We
do know that informal meetings began
some two years before the INLNA was
formally established. In the early months
of 1919, everything fell into place and
the INLNA was born.
It seems significant to me that, in
the years leading up to the INLNA’s
organization, the community had
successfully established the Jón
Bjarnason Academy and its women,
having succeeded in helping to win
the vote, organized the Jon Sigurdsson
Chapter IODE in 1916. There also
seemed to be a growing awareness
that the Icelandic community needed
an organization that would bridge the
divides of politics and religion. Add to
this the impact of the war, which led
many to both a deeper sense of the duties
of citizenship, whether Canadian or
American, and a deeper sense of pride in
how Icelanders had risen to the occasion,
and Judge Lindal may be correct in
concluding that the establishment of the
INLNA was “natural, almost inevitable.”
“Among some of the leading
Icelanders in Winnipeg there was an
awakening, a reassessment of values,”
Lindal wrote. “That did not mean that
there was a withdrawal from Canadian
loyalties.”
At the time of its founding, three
primary purposes were established for
the INLNA:
• To encourage people of Icelandic
descent to become the best possible
citizens of their new homeland.
• To maintain and strengthen the
Icelandic language and literature in
North America.
• To work in cooperation with all
Icelanders on both sides of the Atlantic.
Formal statements of purpose tell
us one thing about the motives of the
INLNA’s founders, and speculation
about how contemporary events affected
them may help to expand the story, but
an even deeper understanding of the
founders’ aspirations was offered by
the first president, Rev. Rögnvaldur
Pétursson, who wrote in Tímarit: “For
the best citizenship it is not sufficient
to develop physically, or to be a good
employee, a good farmer, or even
wealthy, and to be law-abiding, and to
adapt oneself to the customs and way
of life of the country. One must also
grow mentally and spiritually. The first
step is to know oneself, and this he
cannot do who knows nothing of the
story of the people from whom he is
descended. In every civilized country,
history and literature are the basis of
higher education. To be fully developed
as individuals and the best possible
citizens of this, their country, the people
of Icelandic origin must study their
own language and literature at the same
time as the official course of studies.”
(Translated by Wilhelm Kristjanson.)
The Icelandic name chosen for the
new organization was Þjóðræknisfélag
Íslendinga í Vesturheimi. “The name
of the organization was misleading,”
according to Lindal. “The word þjóðerni
would have been much closer to what
was intended than the word þjóðrækni.
The connotation of the latter is similar
to that of ‘patriotic’ and the connotation
of the former closer to the word ‘ethnic’
as commonly used at the present time.”
The significance of Lindal’s distinction
became readily apparent to me a few
years ago when reading a book that
mentioned the activities of the INLNA,
which had been translated from Icelandic
into English. The American translator,
who had a fluent command of modern
Icelandic but no real familiarity with
the history of the Icelandic diaspora,
rendered the name as the “Icelandic
Patriotic Society” throughout his
translation. Not knowing there was an
official English version of the name, this
translator used the closest literal English
approximation of the Icelandic name, but
the result could easily lead to confusion
about the purposes of the organization.
“If the word ‘patriotism’ is used it should
be limited to the sentiment of Canadians
to Canada,” Lindal went on to observe,
ignoring the American component of
the INLNA, although its reasonable to
assume that he would have added “or the
sentiment of Americans to the United
States” if he had been addressing a larger
audience than Canadians.
Judge Lindal went further,
expressing his dissatisfaction with use of
the word national in the official English
name, saying, “the translation is even
WHY 1919?
The origins of the Icelandic
National League of North America
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IOGT Hall, where the first INLNA convention was held in 1919