Lögberg-Heimskringla - 15.06.2019, Blaðsíða 5

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Lögberg-Heimskringla • 15. júní 2019 • 5
An address by Guðni Th. Jóhannesson
President of Iceland
At the 100th anniversary convention of the
Icelandic National League of North America
Winnipeg, MB
May 17, 2019
Mr. Brian Pallister, Premier of Manitoba,
Mrs. Pallister,
Madame President of the Icelandic National
League of North America,
Madame President of the Icelandic Canadian Frón,
Vestur-Íslendingar, Ladies and Gentlemen:
First, my wife Eliza and I would like to thank you
for the goodwill and warmth we have encountered on
our visit here in Canada, in Manitoba and in Winnipeg.
I also bring you greetings from Iceland, from the
people of Iceland.
It was here, in this city, that a meeting was held
just over one hundred years ago – a meeting of the
newly founded Icelandic National League of North
America. We commemorate the founders’ initiative and
congratulate all members of the league on this historic
occasion. This year also sees the hundredth anniversary
of the founding of the Icelandic Canadian Frón here
in Winnipeg, and that of course is also a cause for
celebration.
Dear friends! The Icelandic National League of North
America has a fine Icelandic name: Þjóðræknisfélag
Íslendinga í Vesturheimi. Þjóðræknisfélag means
National League and the Icelandic word þjóðrækni
is a beautiful compound. The first element, þjóð,
suggests a grouping of people who share many traits
– not everything – from previous experience, and who
choose to be regarded, in most ways, as a distinct entity
in the present, working for a better life for themselves
and their descendants.
For us in Iceland, the language is an important
element here – our unique language, Icelandic, which
we must use and develop in daily life if we wish to
continue to be a nation among other nations, a people
who have something to offer in the varied fields of
human culture. We are small and without our language,
we would lose part of our character and special position.
The country itself also looms large in our national
consciousness and image, with its rough and terrible
beauty and, at the same time, its natural resources that
we own in common as a nation. Indeed, I hope this
common ownership will be enshrined shortly in our
constitution.
Those Icelanders who decided, a few generations
back, to seek their fortune out here, bore witness
to the qualities I have mentioned here. They used
their language in their daily lives; so too did their
descendants, though to a lesser extent, of course, as
the years passed. But newspapers were published here
in Icelandic; church services were held in Icelandic
and people quarrelled here in good down-to-earth
Icelandic. And people missed many things about the
old country – even the features that had made life so
difficult there: the violent weather, the barren soil.
So, the first element in the Icelandic word þjóðrækni
is þjóð, nation. The second element is, appropriately,
from the verb að rækja, to cultivate or nurture. It is also
found in the word frændrækni, an interest in cultivating
the bonds of one’s family relatives. Frændrækni is
praiseworthy and positive; the same cannot be said of
frændhygli, ‘nepotism’ – securing unfair advantages
for your relatives at the expense of others. Another pair
of contrasts is þjóðrækni – a healthy sense of national
identity and heritage – and þjóðremba, ‘chauvinism’ –
a sense of superiority on purely national grounds, an
attitude of condescension or even antagonism towards
others. Þjóðremba promotes ill-will; þjóðrækni, by
contrast, leads to tolerance, broad-mindedness and
respect for one’s neighbour.
Yes, let us by all means welcome healthy cultivation
of our national heritage, but let us reject chauvinistic
nationalism. At the same time, we can respect the
cultural achievements of all nations and uphold classic
virtues such as solidarity and compassion – virtues
which the Icelandic settlers in this country certainly
needed in the early days. And let us remember with
respect the sacrifices that previous generations made.
They made them so that we, who were to follow, could
enjoy greater security and greater quality of life.
Dear friends, Vestur-Íslendingar and others! We
are here today to mark an anniversary and to call the
past to mind. It was in 1875 that the first Icelanders
arrived in the areas where they were to settle around
Lake Winnipeg, in Gimli and other parts of New
Iceland, Nýja Ísland. Of course, they were not the first
people there. First Nations peoples lived in the region.
It was their land and that is also a part of this story of
emigration from Iceland to North America.
For a wave had started. Thousands sailed in the
wake of the forerunners. Volcanic eruptions and sea
ice, frost and famine: this was what the forces of nature
visited on our hard-pressed people. Moreover, many
of the younger generation felt they had no chance in
the stagnant and authoritarian society of the time –
particularly when a bright future seemed to await them
in the west. One morning, Sigríður Erlendsdóttir, a
teenage girl in Iceland, went up to her father, put her
arms round his neck and said: “Dear father, I have
decided to go to America. I can’t see any future for me
here.” Their parting when she boarded the ship was a
painful moment; both had tears in their eyes. Father
and daughter were never to see each other again.
We share this history, we Icelanders and you
Vestur-Íslendingar of the present time, who do us
such honour through your þjóðrækni, the cultivation
of your heritage. And we can use this common history
as a source of optimism. After all, our history, in
Iceland, and your history, our kind Canadian hosts, in
the Icelandic settlements and in North America as a
whole, has mostly been one of progress. “I can’t see
any future for me here,” said the girl. In 1915 women at
last gained the right to vote in parliamentary elections
in Iceland. On that occasion, Bríet Bjarnhéðinsdóttir,
the great leader of the women’s rights movement, said:
“We welcome a future in which men and women will
work together on all national issues, both in the home
and in the Alþingi.”
By that time, Iceland had already secured home rule;
sovereignty was on the horizon and the foundations
had been laid for social progress, equal opportunities
and welfare, which we have since striven to bring into
being, consolidate and develop. And notwithstanding
all our disagreements, our in- fighting and our different
needs and expectations, it can still be said of Icelanders
that we are united in more ways than we are divided.
And this applies to you too, Vestur-Íslendingar
and our kind hosts, the good people of Canada. I am
sure you have heard how you are described as the
most polite people on earth, extremely friendly and
courteous. One should, of course, avoid generalizations,
and particularly when they have become clichés.
Nevertheless, I do want to say that here in Canada I
have encountered only goodwill and warmth.
I think a more impartial deduction would be that
the open-mindedness and solidarity, evident in so many
places in Canadian society, can be attributed to the fact
that Canada is, in large measure, a nation of immigrants.
In this respect, Iceland has made its contribution
to the building of Canadian society. For decades,
Canadians and Americans of Icelandic descent have
served in positions of responsibility and done much to
strengthen their communities. You are still doing this
and will probably continue on the same path. This fills
us with healthy pride; our sense of family relationship
– frændrækni ‒ comes out in this.
What qualities, then, came to you from us? What
was our contribution? I have sung the praises of the
true cultivation of one’s heritage, and I am proud of my
country and its people, but I have also pointed out the
need for candour and a realistic narrative rather than
a photo-shopped picture. Thus, I have to admit that
while my fellow countrymen and women are certainly
friendly, in general, it doesn’t often happen that we
Icelanders are praised for being excessively polite and
courteous. This Canadian virtue must have originated
elsewhere. It did not pass through the Icelandic
immigrants.
So, what are we like, we Icelanders? Or, to put the
same question in another way: What are you like, you
Vestur-Íslendingar, you North Americans of Icelandic
descent? For is it not true, what the old Iceland proverb
says, that ancestry influences character? About a
thousand years ago, Icelanders were described as
“living in holy simplicity ... in which they demand
nothing more than what nature gives them.”
Apparently, we were also apathetic and slow. Yet
somehow we survived: we lived through famines,
natural catastrophes and shortages, century after
century. In the latest novel by the writer Hallgrímur
Helgason, which is set in Iceland in the years when
the emigration to North America was at its height,
Icelanders are described as: “tough in times of
challenge, resourceful, helpful and good at coming
up with a solution; world champions when it came
to dealing with unexpected situations but nothing
causes them greater torment than definite figures,
well-prepared decisions, fixed contracts and concrete
plans.”
Can we still find these traits in today’s Icelanders?
Well, we are sometimes said to be eagerly materialistic
with a great interest in the latest gadgets and
playthings, so the “holy simplicity” seems to have
gone out of the window. On the other hand, certain
characteristics remain that kept us alive through the
centuries, and I think they served the emigrants to
North America well too. I am thinking of stamina
and stubbornness, the ability to stand together when
this is called for, even though we squabble at other
times, and the contradictory combination of a lack of
discipline and a certain stoicism which gets us into
all sorts of messes but also gets us out of them again.
This has been summed up in the expression (much
used in Iceland): Þetta reddast! “It’ll work out!”
... continued on page 6
Wouldn’t your amma and afi be proud?
THE ICELANDIC NATIONAL LEAGUE OF NORTH AMERICA
Tel: (204) 642 5897
Email: inl@mts.net www.inlofna.org
Are you proud of your Icelandic Heritage?
Do you want to see it preserved for your children and grandchildren?
Are you a member of your local Icelandic Club?
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Visit our website for more information or contact our INL office.
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