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West Icelanders: Icelanders and West Icelanders in the Modern Age
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16287 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
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3 / 1989 |
3,530 Words |
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E. Paul Durrenberger and Gisli Palsson
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That many Icelandic-Americans maintain their self-identity as Icelanders despite being born and living outside of Iceland demonstrates that being an Icelander is more than an accident of birth or habitat. Isaac Bashevis Singer, the noted author, once said that being a sociological exception is the essence of being Jewish. That is how Icelanders fell. Their feelings are ratified when they see others maintaining an identity as Icelanders in other parts of the world. For example, considerable interest was generated among Icelandic-Americans in the mid-1980s when filmmakers recorded the blond, Portuguese-speaking descendant of a small group of Icelandic immigrants in Brazil. Even more interest comes from the contemplation of such figures as Stephan G.Stephansson, a poet born in North Dakota; and Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who was born in North America and achieved worldwide recognition as an Arctic explorer.
Historically, there have been two organized and focused migrations from Iceland. One was the Greenland settlement, which persisted from the tenth century until about 1550. There were probably never more than three thousand individuals in this colony (Tomasson 1980, 57). The reasons for the demise of the Greenland colony and the fate of its people remain topics of speculation, scholarship, and popular writing in Iceland. It was from Greenland that Leif Eriksson, son of Erik the Red who founded the Greenland settlement, discovered Vinland in America. He is often seen as the founder and legitimator of later western movements of Icelanders across the Atlantic. Recently, the new international airport at Keflavik was given his name. The second migration was the exodus to North America, which began in the late nineteenth century.
Stefansson pointed out that his father wanted to impress his children that they were "living in a western extension of the Wineland that Eric and his descendants discovered" several hundred years before (1964, 16). Thorstina Walters carried on this tradition by labeling the first chapter of her book on West Icelanders (those of Icelandic descent living in the Western Hemisphere) "Vinland the Good" and second "Vinland Rediscovered." She starts her second chapter with, "Nine centuries had passed from the time of Leif Eriksson's Vinland discovery when the Icelanders again felt the urge to take up the trail to the West and immigrate to America" (Walters 1953, 31). In the fall of 1875, 285 Icelanders settled in Winnipeg and established the town of Gimli and the republic of New Iceland. From 1878 to the 1880s, some of them moved south into North Dakota's fertile Red River Valley to try grain farming, rather than fishing, and to take up livestock raising on the Icelandic model in early New England.
Development of Icelandic identity
The strength of Icelandic identity in Iceland's contemporary culture may be rooted in the struggle for independence, a nonviolent, legal, political, and literary struggle that lasted from the advent of home rule in 1918 to 1945. During this period, there was a revival of the ancient literature and language. The sagas began to be collected and published with critical commentary, much of which argued for the historicity of the sagas and the glories of a golden age of Icelandic culture to which modern Icelanders and foreigners alike could look with admiration and pride. Literature and language are consequently important to Icelandic identity, and contemporary Icelanders' interest in those who have emigrated from their homeland reflects the strong sense
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