Stefan Jonasson Interview Part 3

Duration of Audio Clip: 4:57

Transcription of Audio:

Stefan: As I have mentioned, the newspapers originally covered all the news that Icelandic North Americans might be interested in, in the Icelandic language, so that the Icelandic community in North America was well informed. And I would go so far as to say one of the reasons for the Icelanders’ very early integration into the public life of Manitoba and North Dakota, Minnesota, Washington State, Saskatchewan, wherever Icelanders settled … one of the primary reasons that they integrated into public life so quickly and began seeking office and served as leaders not only of the Icelandic community but of the larger communities in which they lived, a primary reason for that is how well-informed they were by the Icelandic newspapers.

I think it’s also important to know that the leaders of the Icelandic community from very early on had impeccable English language skills. So having had the opportunity, you know, to read the writings of Reverend Jón Bjarnason and Reverend Björn Pétursson in the English language, having seen things that Sigtryggur Jónasson and Baldvin L. Baldvinsson said or wrote in English, it’s very apparent that the key leaders of the Icelandic community were fluently bilingual and arguably wrote better English than most English speakers of their era. And so, they were able to translate what was happening in the English-speaking world and beyond into the Icelandic language for their readers. And so that was, I think, a central part of the mission. of the Icelandic newspapers. It also allowed Icelandic people to continue expressing themselves in the Icelandic language if they preferred to do so, or if they felt like they couldn’t express themselves in writing in English. And so, the newspapers provided an outlet for Icelandic authors.

But certainly, for that first generation, the newspaper allowed them to continue to dwell in the Icelandic language, both in the spoken word and in print. For the second generation who generally grew up speaking Icelandic and learned English when they entered the public school system, the Icelandic papers became a way of following the news in a second language and actually encouraging their bilingualism. So even as they would function primarily in English at work, they could fall back and continue to read the news and read literary contributions in the language that they learned in their childhood. And to the extent that Heimskringla and Lögberg were publications that were printed here in North America and had more of a North American flavor to them because of that, I think that they were relatively appealing for the second generation of Icelanders in terms of keeping up with things Icelandic, keeping their command of the Icelandic fresh. And even empowering their own writing skills in the language.

By the time you reach the third generation, the relationship to the Icelandic is more passive. So it too was a generation where many spoke Icelandic at home until they started school. And then English became the dominant language of their lives. That was a generation that was less likely to be able to write in Icelandic themselves without fear of the grammar police descending upon them. But they could still read in the Icelandic language with a certain degree of sufficiency. And so once again, the paper, how the paper served the Icelandic community morphed.