New position in memory of Icelandic immigrant poets and writers of North America

The Stephan G. Stephansson Chair has been established at the University of Iceland. As well as strengthening international research collaboration focusing on migrant settlers in modern literature, the Stephan G. Stephansson Chair will be responsible for strengthening ties between the University of Iceland and the University of Manitoba in research and teaching. The Icelandic government will be directly supporting the teaching element.

The literary scholar Birna Bjarnadóttir will be the first to hold this position, creating a clear opportunity for the University in the field of international research. One of her tasks will be to increase knowledge on both sides of the Atlantic of the literary and cultural heritage of Icelandic migrants and their descendants in North America, for example through research into the creative power of migration in the literary and cultural history of European migrants in North America, around and after the start of the 20th century, and migrant settlers in modern literature.

Endowment fund in the name of Stephan G. Stephansson

The Stephan G. Stephansson Chair will also oversee the continuing funding of the Stephan G. Stephansson Endowment Fund, which is under the auspices of the University of Iceland. The origins of the research position can be traced to the endowment fund and the invaluable support it has received from the descendants of Icelandic migrants in North America. Fund raising for the endowment fund will be managed in collaboration with the rector of the University of Iceland.

The establishment of the endowment fund was announced at the opening ceremony of Veröld, the House of Vigdís, in the spring of 2017. Stephan G. Stephansson's grandson Stephan Benediktson and his wife Adriana Benediktson donated the start-up capital for the fund. Heather Alda Ireland, the granddaughter of of the Icelandic-Canadian poet Guttormur J. Guttormsson, and her husband William Ireland also contributed to the creation of the fund, as well as Mooréa and Glen Gray. Many others have since contributed to the fund, with particular thanks due to Donald K. Johnson, Arni Thorsteinson, Oskar Sigvaldason, Susan Rodriguez Abbiati, Paul David Benediktson og Stephan Robert Benediktson. During the first stages of the fund raising, the University of Iceland also enjoyed the invaluable assistance of Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, the former President of Iceland, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir.

In recent years, the Stephan G. Stephansson Endowment Fund has been widely publicised in Canada, and since June 2018 the University of Iceland has enjoyed charitable status with the Canadian tax authorities, one of only a few universities outside Canada, the USA and the UK. There are plans to systematically publicise the endowment fund in the USA, as well.

Stephan G. Stephansson, the poet of the Rocky Mountains

Most Icelanders are familiar with Stephan G. Stephansson, who is considered an Icelandic national poet despite having lived in North America for most of his life. Indeed, many Icelandic poets forged their literary careers in the New World, so Stephan G. Stephansson was in good company. He was born on 3 October 1853 in Kirkjuhóll in the Lýtingsstaðir district of Skagafjörður and was registered in parish records as Stefán Guðmundsson.

At the age of almost 20, he migrated with his parents across the Atlantic in search of a better life in Wisconsin, USA. He worked as a manual labourer, for example in railway construction and logging, and conditions were tough.

In 1889 he moved to the province of Alberta in Canada, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and became a farmer and notable poet. Stephan G. Stephansson moved around a lot in his life, but has frequently been called the poet of the Rocky Mountains. Conditions in Alberta were not always easy for the poet and he had little time for anything other than scratching a living. He composed all his finest poems by night, so it is fitting that his collection of verse is entitled Wakeful Nights. Stephan G. Stephansson was not formally educated, but never missed an opportunity to immerse himself in books, which were his particular passion in life.

Stephan G. Stephansson composed the majority of his poems in his native tongue, Icelandic, and most of his work was published in Reykjavík. Many Icelanders can therefore quote lines from his poetry, but this is probably the best known and most quoted:

Þó[tt] þú langförull legðir
sérhvert land undir fót
bera hugur og hjarta
samt þíns heimalands mót,
frænka eldfjalls og íshafs,
sifji árfoss og hvers,
dóttir langholts og lyngmós,
sonur landvers og skers!

This has been translated as:

Though you have trodden in travel
All the wide tracts of the earth,
Bear yet the dreams of your bosom
Back to the land of your birth,
Kin of volcano and floe-sea!
Cousin of geyser and steep!
Daughter of downland and moorland!
Son of the reef and the deep!

Several works published in the field

Recently, several works have been published on the subject of the cultural heritage of Icelandic immigrants and their descendants in North America. For example, in December 2019, Two Lands, One Poet. The Reflections of Stephan G. Stephansson Through Poetry was published, a bilingual Icelandic and English collection of Stephan G. Stephansson's poetry. The English part of the book contains a historical overview of existing  translations of many of Stephan G. Stephansson's poems, including those by Bernard Scudder (1954-2007), Viðar Hreinsson, Kristjana Gunnars, Finnbogi Guðmundsson (1924-2011) and Jakobína Johnson (1833-1977).

The foreword was written by Jón Atli Benediktsson, Rector of the University of Iceland, and the book was edited by Birna Bjarnadóttir along with the Canadian author Mooréa Gray. All proceeds from sales of the book go to the Stephan G. Stephansson Endownment Fund.

New position in the name of Stephan G. Stephansson

Birna Bjarnadóttir, who will fill this new position, is a literary scholar and well versed in the cultural links between Icelanders here in Iceland and Western Icelanders in Canada. She served as the Chair of Icelandic at the University of Manitoba's Department of Icelandic Language and Literature from 2003 to 2015 and managed the University of Iceland's project on Western Iceland at the Vigdís Finnbogadóttir Institute of Foreign Languages from 2015 until recently.

Birna has studied literature at the University of Iceland, Freie Universität Berlin and the University of Warwick and wrote her doctoral thesis at the University of Iceland on aesthetics in the work of Guðbergur Bergsson. Birna has published widely, on both sides of the Atlantic, on the subjects of modern literature and aesthetics, literature and immigration, and the inheritance of exile in modern literature. She is also a published author of fiction and has edited a number of books. She manages "The Expedition to the Magic Mountain (2013-2020)", a collaborative project of artists and scholars and, along with the literary scholar Ingi Björn Guðnason, leads the international cultural project Perceiving the Creative Power of the Westfjords.

Donations to the Stephan G. Stephansson Endowment Fund

Donations to the Stephan G. Stephansson Endowment Fund can be transferred to the following account:
University of Iceland
ID no. 6001-692039
Account no. 0137-26-476
Canadian account no. 1373 137492

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The Stephan G. Stephansson Endowment Fund
Bank: Landsbankinn hf
Address: Hagatorg, 107 Reykjavik, Iceland
Iban no: IS86 0137 2600 0476 6001 6920 39
Swift code: NBIIISRE
Account holder: University of Iceland
Address: Saemundargata 2, 102 Reyjavik, Iceland
Subject: Canada-nr. 1373 137492