<\/p>\n
Which reminds me that \u2013 lately, we\u2019ve been hearing a lot of talk about Icelanders losing Icelandic to English. Prior to their independence, Icelanders used the same rhetoric to talk about the Danish presence in Iceland. To be dana<\/em>\u00f0ur <\/em>\u00a0– to be Danish-ed \u2013 meant to be refined. The Danes were in general the upper class in Icelandic society.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The rather pointed opinion I received when I posed the question of danish-ness in pre-independence Iceland to a very informed friend was that \u201cthe refined part of Icelandic culture was basically Danish culture because Icelandic culture was looked up on as rural<\/em> and primitive<\/em> and maybe even kind of gross \u2013whereas Denmark was worldly and mainland.\u201d For example, Icelanders would travel to Denmark for their university education simply because there was no university in Iceland until 1911, when the University of Iceland was founded.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As an aside: it was typically people of means that would travel to Denmark \u2013 or people with access to people of means that would be able to go for their education. So the university system was by and large exclusionary, though not closed as such. (P.S. – educational institutions were not open to Icelandic women until 1905).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So this rabbit hole led me to four young Icelanders in the 1830s, called the Fj<\/em>\u00f6lmennir. <\/em>The fj\u00f6lmennir started the journal Fj\u00f6lnir, <\/em>which was a politico-literary-historical journal published in Copenhagen by four young Icelandic intellectuals who sought to revive a sort of quintessential Icelandic consciousness and to foster an independence movement. Published from 1835-1847, it\u2019s attributed with having brought romanticism to Iceland (of particular note: J\u00f3nas Hallgr\u00edmsson<\/a>\u2019s work featured prominently in the journal).<\/p>\n Me\u00f0 Konr\u00e1\u00f0 G\u00edslason, J\u00f3nas Hallgr\u00edmsson, T\u00f3mas S\u00e6mundsson, Brynj\u00f3lfur P\u00e9tursson – http:\/\/www.alftamyrarskoli.is\/gamla\/nemendur\/JonasHallgrimsson\/fjolnir,%20forsida2.png, \u00cd almenningi, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=18496366<\/p><\/div>\n Fj\u00f6lnir tried to draw attention \u2013 from Copenhagen as the cultural nexus \u2013 to the state of affairs in Icelandic society and culture. It proposed three major areas where progress could be made across the board: the reestablishment of the Al\u00feing at \u00deingvellir, better knowledge of the sagas and Icelandic literature, language, and history, and (as romantics tend to do), a stronger awareness of Icelandic nature. The pamphlet was sharply critical of many things that the older generation of Icelanders had been accustomed to, including their sense of style, mannerisms, language usage, and, naturally, political and economic issues.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And they did it all in Icelandic, at a time when Danish language and culture had a massive influence on Icelandic culture, both domestically and through educational systems abroad.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Literary journals and zines, as a rule, are often used as a means to communicate revolution, to awaken ideas, to reinvent the way we see language and culture- and ourselves within those frameworks. The four founders of the journal \u2013 all young men born in Iceland and university educated in Denmark, writing from Denmark — \u00a0typify revolution, democracy in action, and represent an important step in the Icelandic independence movement, through both the interrogation and preservation of Icelandic-ness.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My initial intention with the somewhat winding road of a blog entry below started out as a look at translations of the names of storybook and fable characters \u2013 like Donald Duck (as below) \u2013 but my research and persistent questions took me down a rabbit hole that I couldn\u2019t bring myself to climb out…<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2017\/05\/Fjolnir_forsida2-620x1024.png\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2017\/05\/fjolnir-219x350.jpg\")