Ancient, Remote Iceland Knows American Eagle

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 170, 21 July 1941, Page 6

Ancient, Remote Iceland Knows American Eagle

VXTAR throws many a stone into " placid waters of ignorance and indifference. When Britain occupied Iceland last year the news received only passing attention. It was a small happening amid the thunder of guns from the Skager Rak to Narvik. Yet it must have sent some Britons to their encyclopaedias and atlases. For what did we know of Iceland? Little, save a few scraps from our schooldays—that the island was very far north, that the capital was a town with the jaw-breaking name of Reykjavik, and that Iceland was a land of volcanoes.

By Cyrano

To-day interest in Iceland is revived and intensified by the decision of the United States to take over the island. Strategically the step means much more than the British Government's move last year, but that is not my province here. lam concerned with Iceland itself, and the fresh illustration it affords of the fact that no land, however remote, can be certain these days of staving out of war.

There will be looking up of authorities in households from Cape Cod to San Francisco to find out something about this latest addition to the responsibilities of the United States. And what will strike the imagination of many Americans more than anything else will be this, that it was from Iceland that the original discoverer of America came, centuries before Columbus. The discoverers were far from the main stream of European activity, and the results were passed over. Americans to-day may imagine the ghost of Leif Erikson watching soldiers disembark from Vineland the Good, as he called America, and saying the equivalent of Canning's famous words: "I have called in a new world to redress the balance of the old."

Leif and his men were Norsemen, of the division of the race that colonised Iceland. They are called Vikings, but an English writer says they were not the lawless pirates that the name "Viking' suggests today. "For Iceland, the country which had given them birth, was actually enjoying democratic government nearly three hundred years before the signing of Magna Carta, and the Icelandic Parliament—the Athling—justly claims to be Mother of every Parliament since its inception." "Government of the people, by the people, for the people —" this goes back to the Greeks, but through the Athling, or All-Moot— the Thing, or Parliament representative of all the country—that first met, in the open air, in Iceland, a thousand and ten years ago. Iceland's Heritage Why was such a beginning in popular government lost to Europe? Partly because of Iceland's isolation. Kinsmen of these Norsemen who settled in the British Isles were better situated to influence the political development of Europe. Also because of divisions in Iceland itself, and because of its subjection to Norway and later to Denmark. "With the loss of her independence, Iceland fell upon every imaginable misfortune besides. Disease and famine, and eruptions from her many volcanoes, wrought havoc, and by the end of the Middle Ages Iceland was little more than a half-forgotten land of poor, half-starving peasants."

In modern times, however, Iceland has known much happier days, and the cultural riches of her past have been recognised throughout the world. It is significant that the Icelandic language is a subject studied by students of English in the University Colleges of New Zealand, a land most remote from Iceland. You will find pages and pages about the literature of Iceland in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica." Now in the days of her ancient independence the population of Iceland seems to have been not more than 80,000, and today it is about the same as that of Wellington City. Cultural achievement is not dependent on numbers. Before this war some Britons were rather envious of Scandinavian communities. These were free of the burden of empire. Their economic life was less complicated. They seemed to have achieved an exceptional measure of happiness, or at least contentment. If the standard of living was often low, there was less disparity between rich and poor, and culture was widely diffused. In short, some of us felt that Scandinavians might have gone further than we had towards a satisfactory philosophy of life. Then came Hit-1 ler's descent on Denmark and Nor- [ way, and the civilisation of the victims had little or nothing to protect them against the barbarian. Never Seen a Soldier Iceland was a special case. It was j so far away that the people cannot have thought of being drawn into the war. It was said when the British troops arrived that, except for a few Danish staff officers, the people had never seen a soldier. In his remarkable account of a voyage to Iceland in an English trawler in 1938—"North Cape"—Mr. F. D. Ommanney gave us glimpses of the : land and its people. It did not seem to him as if the "little lost community" in the port at which the ship called would have much use for the outside world or care greatly whether or not it could communicate with that world. The people lived almost entirely by fishing. "One-eyed sort of a hole, this!" commented one of the trawler's crew. Mr. Ommanney wasn't sure. "It seemed to me at that moment to be an immense advantage to live in a one-eyed hole (those were the days of Munich) and to be a member of a one-eyed community. No one j wanted to take your one eye from ; you." He frankly didn't want to | live like the Icelanders, but he j thought there was something to be said for the simplicity of their lives, and that it might be in such oneeyed holes that civilisation would survive when those who despised them had killed one another. "I shall not forget the calm peace of that tiny distant city, lost and lonely and remote, where the people live hard and work hard, and never think about anything at all. Their hand is against no man's and no man's hand is against theirs." This was not just to the Icelanders. They do things. Their level of culture is exceptionally high. The tiny population supports several secondary schools and a university. And the statement about no man's hand being against them was soon proved incorrect. No corner of the world is perfectly safe from the threat to liberty and fundamental human values. Iceland has become an important military post in the Battle of the Atlantic, wnich is part of the battle of civilisation, a bridge between the sorely pressed Old iWorld and its mighty reinforcement' 'in the New. , im k