Culture

Both in Iceland and in Canada the Icelandic language symbolizes the nation and its history and literature. It is central to concepts of proper “Icelandicness.” Despite this fact, knowledge of the language in Canada has declined dramatically in the last decades, although compared to other Nordic groups, the loss has been less rapid. On coming to this country, Icelanders recognized the need to speak and understand English. Consequently, within two months of their arrival in New Iceland, they set up languages classes. Men have been slightly quicker to learn English: in 1921, 91 percent of them could speak it, whereas 85 percent of women could do so. At the same time, only 4.7 percent of both men and women spoke English exclusively, indicating retention of the Icelandic language.

Today, most Icelandic Canadians speak only English and retain a mere handful of Icelandic words in their vocabulary – words expressive of domestic life, such as amma(grandmother), afi (grandfather), súkkuladi (chocolate), and teppi (blanket). Fluency in Icelandic is more pronounced among the older generation, but knowledge of the language is in gradual decline. According to 1991 census data, 3,055 residents of Canada reported Icelandic as the language first learned and still understood. The number is higher for women (1,755) than for men (1,305). Most of those who gave Icelandic as the mother tongue were residents of Manitoba, where the figure was 1,715. With 585 individuals, British Columbia was in second place, whereas the Maritimes reported the lowest number. The figures from British Columbia probably combine recent immigrants, retired individuals from the prairies, and descendants of earlier settlers.

The census distinguishes the mother tongue from that most spoken at home. The number who reported Icelandic for the latter is much lower, only 170 individuals across Canada, indicating a profound drop in use. Given that population numbers are small, the census does not break down these statistics according to age group; it is safe to assume, however, that again the majority are in the oldest age bracket or are recent arrivals. Among all the Nordic groups, Icelandic has shown the most resilience in North America, probably because of the existence of New Iceland, the rural settlement pattern, and a lack of dialect variation.

Some research on North American variants of spoken Icelandic has focused on flámaeli, the so-called slack-jawed speech that is prevalent in Manitoba. One scholar has suggested that the predominance among Icelanders in North America of this blending of what should be distinct vowel sounds is evidence of its widespread occurrence in Iceland during the nineteenth century. Whereas in that country its occurrence is a variant, with a possible class basis that carries a social stigma, it is typical of the Icelandic spoken in North America. This separate development may be due to historical factors or to the influence of English. Education during this century in Iceland has decreased its incidence, while in Canada flámæli has developed further.

In the homeland a state commission monitors language use to protect it from foreign influences. Introduced technologies and concepts are given appropriate Icelandic names, usually derived from Old Norse words no longer in everyday use. This practice in part underlines the lexical differences between Icelandic there and in North America. Loanwords and blends characterize West Icelandic, the designation for the language spoken in Canada. The loanwords make West Icelandic clearly different from the language of the homeland: for example, beisment (from the English, basement) rather than the Icelandic kjallari. Blends involve some degree of substitution, such as ísrjóma (ice cream) rather than rjómaís.

The department of Icelandic Language and Literature at the University of Manitoba provides institutional support for the retention of the language, as does the library’s Icelandic collection. Community newspapers play a less significant role in the preservation of Icelandic. The weekly Lögberg-Heimskringla (Winnipeg, 1959– ) is the result of an amalgamation of Heimskringla (Round World; Winnipeg, 1893–1959) and Lögberg (Winnipeg, 1888–1959), named after the rock on which the ancient law speaker stood at the original Althing. It publishes news from INL chapters, articles about community events, life histories and reminiscences, language lessons, and articles from the English-language monthly News from Iceland (Reykjavik, 1975– ). Originally written entirely in Icelandic, since the 1970s Lögberg-Heimskringla has featured predominantly English, with an editorial or occasional article providing material for readers to practise their Icelandic. The decline of the language in the newspaper reflects the disappearance of spoken Icelandic in the community generally. As well, readers’ interests have changed with the generations; there is a stronger emphasis on nostalgic articles about the pioneer past than on reports about contemporary trends in Iceland. In fact, outside human-interest stories from the homeland, Icelandic Canadians focus on their own communities and not at all on Icelandic affairs. In public ceremony, Icelandic plays a symbolic, rather than a communicative, role. Speeches at the Icelandic Festival are generally in English, although most fjallkonas still strive to speak in Icelandic.

Because of the historic importance of language for the group’s identity, it is not surprising that poetry and prose have played a major part in the creative expression of Icelandic-Canadian culture. In the 1930s, for instance, approximately seventy writers of Icelandic descent were actively publishing poetry. The saga tradition from the homeland has exerted a strong influence on aspiring and established writers. Dating primarily from the thirteenth century, these prose narratives are divided into several genres, the two most important being the family sagas (Íslendingasögur), which deal with occurrences between 930 and 1030, and the samtídarsögur, which describe contemporary events.

Contrary to nineteenth-century romantic views, however, it was the rímur, or narrative epic poems, that provided the more popular entertainment until the twentieth century. Many writers cultivated this craft to communicate events, biographies, and contemporary debates. The continual composition and recitation of rímur, rather than the reading aloud of sagas during kvöldvaka (evening entertainment during the winter in Iceland’s isolated farmhouses), was responsible for language stability and widespread literary awareness, even during the hardest times. The practice was brought to Canada, although, more typically, a competitive game of short-verse improvisations formed the oral poetic tradition. Also influencing early Icelandic-Canadian culture were such activities as societies established in the mid1800s to read Nordic, English, and German secular writings in the original and the publishing of poetry and fiction in handwritten journals. These activities underlined the attitudes towards literacy that settlers brought to Canada.

One scholar, in analysing these influences on Icelandic literature in North America, has concluded that, with some notable exceptions, the early poetry dealing specifically with emigration is monotonous and repetitive, typically glorifying Icelandic nature and history and lamenting its present state. As well, the writers portray themselves and other immigrants as seekers of freedom and self-consciously draw parallels with the ninth-century settlers and Vinland explorers represented in the sagas. Short stories by Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason and Gudrún Finnsdóttir address immigrant experience in terms characteristic of turn-of-the-century boosters of frontier life. Their characters, newcomers from diverse backgrounds, articulate their longing for a Canadian mosaic of equal but different groups.

Two poets in particular achieved recognition in Iceland as well as in North America: Guttormor J. Guttormsson and Stephan G. Stephansson. Guttormor was born at his parents’s farm, Vidivellir, near the Icelandic River in 1878. Both had been part of the original group who went to Muskoka before settling in Manitoba in 1875. Guttormor received little formal education, but his poetry was of such quality that the Icelandic government twice financed his travels to the homeland (friends in Canada helped with the second journey). Best known for his poem “Sandy Bar,” he examines the immigrant experience and the universals of human psychology in his work.

Stephan G., as he is known, was called the “poet of the Rocky Mountains” in his native Iceland. He immigrated to Wisconsin in 1873, later moved to North Dakota, and then settled with his family in Markerville, Alberta, in 1889. Plagued by sleeplessness, he spent his nights writing while his days were taken up with homesteading. His brilliant use of Icelandic cannot be grasped in translation, since his wordplays and coinages, double and triple entendres, ironies, and genremixings confound the most diligent translators. Although well-read in American and European literature, he never joined a writing community. Thus the fact that his work was directed primarily at a West Icelandic audience has limited his influence. Never at home anywhere, he addresses the “in-betweenness” of immigrant experience. His work is also distinguished by its international scope and its concern with a broad range of social issues, such as freedom of thought and humanitarianism. For example, he withdrew from the Lutheran Church over the passing of by-laws that, among other things, banned women from voting. His refusal to join the majority in support of involvement in World War I aligned him with pacifism in his native land, but prompted other immigrants to reject him. A monument to his memory stands in Skagafjördur in northern Iceland, and his homestead near Calgary has been restored as a historic site.

Another man of letters whose politics separated him from his fellow Icelanders in Canada was Sigurdur Júliús Jóhanneson. He arrived in this country in 1899, already opposed to the prevailing belief in progress and economic growth. Perhaps his early years, spent in poverty before he entered the University of Iceland, influenced his ideas. He fled arrest on political charges in Iceland and attended a medical college in Chicago. A utopian socialist, he was influenced by such writers as the English socialist, William Morris. Sigurdur translated Morris’s A Dream of John Ball (1886) and Edward Bellamy’s utopian Looking Backward (1888) into Icelandic. Like Morris, he supported skilled manual labour and opposed both industrialization and large unions. He also edited and financed an Icelandic socialist newspaper, Voröld (Age of Spring; Winnipeg, 1917–21).

Laura Goodman Salverson was the first Icelandic Canadian to write in English and to gain a wider audience in this country. Confessions of an Immigrant’s Daughter (1939), an autobiographical account of the years between her birth and the publication of her first novel, The Viking Heart (1923), received the Governor General’s Literary Award. In it she writes of injustices, poverty, and other trials experienced by newly arrived Icelanders. Her work brilliantly articulates the dilemmas facing the children of immigrants, who live in two worlds: their parents’s place of origin and their new homeland. She portrays a harsh social reality that at the time was kept hidden from view. Although a contemporary reader may find her description tending to the sentimental, it is starkly realistic when compared to the writing of her contemporaries. Confessions is darker than her earlier work and expresses her sense of growing alienation because she was unable to negotiate the two realities of her experience.

In all, Salverson published ten books and numerous short stories and poems. Another novel,The Dark Weaver (1937), also won the Governor General’s Award, and in 1938 she received the gold medal of the Paris Institute of Arts and Sciences, from which she had already been granted an honourary degree. Her fame was not sustained, however; although her books were reissued in the early 1980s, the Icelandic-Canadian community rejected her, ostensibly for having incorrectly described a piece of Icelandic geography in The Viking Heart.

By contrast, the non-fiction writings of Arctic explorer Vilhjálmur Stefánsson continue to have a widespread popular appeal. Born at Hulduárhvamur near Árnes, Manitoba and educated at Harvard University, Stefánsson had as his primary interest the study of the Inuit, but he also wrote works about Icelandic history and culture. His autobiography, Discovery (1964), begins with a brief account of Icelandic emigration and discusses the influence of his ancestry on his life.

Marking the beginning of modern Icelandic-Canadian literature is the work of W.D. Valgardson, who first appeared in print during the 1960s, and David Arnason and Kristjana Gunnars, first published in the early 1980s. All three have addressed aspects of experience in Iceland and among Icelandic Canadians and have selfconsciously explored stylistic and thematic elements from the sagas in their writings. When Valgardson’s first book appeared, it met with some criticism from the community for its portrayal of the cruelty of life in the Interlake region of his youth. Bloodflowers (1973) and God Is Not a Fish Inspector (1975) are both collections of short stories, and Gentle Sinners (1980) a novel, later dramatized for television by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. His style is influenced by the terse, direct prose of the sagas, in which no inner voice or psychological interpretation is used. Thematically, the novels explore questions of assimilation and loss.

Whereas Valgardson’s writings are dark in mood, David Arnason’s tone is ironically humorous, another characteristic of the sagas. In his early works, Arnason explores the transplanting of old stories to a new land through the unconscious reworkings of memory, and he imaginatively combines saga and immigrant histories and myths with contemporary settings and plots. His epic poem Marsh Burning (1980) intermingles personal experience with glimpses of immigrant life and references to the Nordic pantheon of Odinn, Freyja, and Thor. Some stories in Fifty Stories and a Piece of Advice (1982) draw on Arnason’s upbringing in Gimli. This book achieved fame when it was briefly banned from schools in the author’s home town for purportedly being pornographic. In collaboration with the artist Michael Olito, Arnason produced The Icelanders (1981) and with his son Vincent, The New Icelanders (1994). The first combines old photographs with Arnason’s memories and childhood stories. The latter is also a study of regional culture, complete with recipes and essays by Icelandic Canadians.

Kristjana Gunnars arrived in North America from Iceland at age sixteen. Though not a native Icelandic Canadian, she carried out interviews and read archival sources in order to reconstruct the community’s past. Settlement Poems I and II (1980) build on this research and evoke dark, introspective portraits of earlier times. Her writings resonate with a deep understanding of the tragedies of human life, a theme that links her work to the sagas; when she focuses on immigrant life, she shows a side glossed over by celebratory community histories. Her writing also grows out of postmodern textual practices, which enhance the sense of displacement underlying immigrant experience. Her recent novels include The Prowler (1989), set in Iceland, Zero Hour (1991), and The Substance of Forgetting (1992).

Many Icelandic-language plays that exist only in manuscript form were frequently performed by rural and urban amateur groups before World War II. Between 1880 and 1930, over 120 plays were written and more than sixty translated into Icelandic from various northern European languages. The Icelandic Dramatic Society was formed in Winnipeg in 1920, but most performances appear to have been spontaneous rather than the work of any group. The war’s beginning struck a blow at this activity, particularly in the rural areas. Up until that time, most productions were in Icelandic, but after the war English was increasingly used. The last Icelandic-language performance appears to have been given in Geysir, Manitoba, in 1951. The New Iceland Drama Society, comprised mainly of university students, performed in Winnipeg and smaller communities in the 1970s and 1980s.

Until the twentieth century, dance, music, and pictorial representation were not developed as aspects of Icelandic culture. The Lutheran Church had traditionally suppressed dance, and a lack of materials limited the visual arts to decorative carving and church ornamentation. Contemporary artists have developed a thriving culture in the homeland, but immigrants to Canada had few traditional, non-literary forms on which to build. A few individuals have nonetheless contributed to Canadian artistic life, although little in their work is notably Icelandic.

Filmmaker Guy Maddin, who began his career with the Winnipeg Film Group, achieved international acclaim for Tales from the Gimli Hospital (1988), a surrealist work shot in black-and-white, 16-millimetre film that represented Canada at the Mannheim film festival. Telling the story of Einar the Lonely and his interactions with a man named Gunnar, whom he meets in a smallpox hospital, it is the only work of Maddin’s that interprets his Icelandic-Canadian background. His other films include Archangel (1990), Careful (1992), and a recent film-poem about the French painter Odilon Redon.

Another visual artist of Icelandic descent was Charles Thorsson, a cartoonist from Winnipeg who worked for Walt Disney and Warner Brothers. He designed the prototype for Snow White, which he based on the image of a young Icelandic woman he had once admired; he also created cartoon character Bugs Bunny. Louise Jonasson is a Winnipeg painter whose work explores the unseen worlds of emotional conflicts and sharing by means of ambiguous images. She has shown her art across Canada and in 1994 had a solo exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. She has also served as an associate editor for Prairie Fire: A Magazine of Canadian Writing.

Folk tales concerning elves, trolls, dwarfs, and beasts that live in lakes and the sea have been a dominant part of Icelandic culture since the island’s settlement in 874 and were still related by older Icelandic Canadians in the 1960s. Indeed, any distinction between this narrative tradition and other story forms, such as the sagas and rímur, is an arbitrary one. Some of the tales have origins stretching back to old Norse mythology, but new stories in the oral tradition have been continually added to the repertoire of Icelanders in Canada. They include accounts of ghosts, prescient dreams, humorous events, and other subjects. The story of Thorgeir’s bull is perhaps the best-known example of a tale that was brought from Iceland to Canada; in it nine generations of a family are haunted by a bull that was skinned alive in the early 1800s. The bull’s ghost has followed Thorgeir’s descendants to the Manitoba Interlake district and is still seen there on occasion.

However, many traditions retained by the first and second generations of immigrant families have disappeared along with the everyday social practices that fostered them. Only occasionally can drying fish now be seen in the backyards of New Iceland homes. Nicknames, poetry competitions, and Icelandic wrestling (glíma) have also nearly disappeared. Christmas remains the time when tradition is most to the forefront. Thirteen elves (jólasveinar), rather than Santa Claus, appear on Christmas Eve and disappear one by one the following day. In Iceland, friends and family gather together to drink mulled wine (jólaglögg) and make intricately decorated fried bread (laufabraud), while in Canada the food is more often layer cake (vínarterta), deep-fried bread (kleinur), and crêpes with cream or jam (pönnukökur). Icelanders take their main meal on Christmas Eve; it typically consists of smoked lamb with potatoes and peas, after which gifts, usually books, are opened. Icelandic Canadians vary in the extent to which they maintain these practices.

Another celebration resurrected by Icelandic nationalists residing in Copenhagen in 1873 and adopted by Icelandic Canadians in 1881 occurs anytime from late January to early March. Thorrablót (the feast of Thorri) ushers in the fourth winter month according to the old calendar. Icelanders celebrate it with a feast of soured, rotted, or pickled meats washed down with aquavit; in Canada rolled lamb (rúllupylsa) on brown bread is added to a more conventional supper buffet. Local INL chapters organize the observance of Thorrablót, and in Alberta a fjallkona is chosen to honour the event. On 17 June, Icelandic Independence Day, members of the community in Canada gather in front of the statue of Jón Sigurdsson, Iceland’s father of independence, located outside the Manitoba legislative building, to lay a wreath. The statue, by Icelandic sculptor Einar Jónsson, duplicates one erected at the Althing in the homeland.