Early nineteenth-century Europe experienced an onslaught of political turbulence and
a concomitant rise in Romantic nationalism, a term Joep Leerssen describes as “the
celebration of the nation (defined by its language, history, and cultural character)
as an inspiring ideal for cultural production; and dissemination and instrumentalization
of that production in political consciousness raising” (2018, 36). Interest in native
legends, supposed golden ages of history, and national landscapes
abounded as cultural nationalists sought to uncover a unique and inherent national
character, or what Johann Gottfried Herder called Volksgeist. In many cases, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century politicians and activists
instrumentalized the notion of a distinctive national spirit in order to promote greater
democratic representation or even political autonomy. Icelandic national poet Jónas
Hallgrímsson (1807-1845) engaged in such “cultivation[s] of culture” (Leerssen 2018,
23): by reimagining national spaces and a past Icelandic golden age, Hallgrímsson
left
a lasting, ideological impact on Iceland’s process of nation-building.
In Hallgrímsson’s poetry, glorification of the past melded with idealization of landscape
through recontextualizations of saga-sites featured in Íslendingasögur such as Njáls saga and Eyrbyggja saga. He reimagines locations such as Þingvellir, Gunnarshólmi, and the farm Fróðá as
proof of Iceland’s worth and distinctiveness and as temporally complex conduits to
a past golden age, which though perhaps distant or muted in his own day, reverberated
in Icelandic nature and character, waiting to be regained. In doing so, Hallgrímsson
cultivated these landscapes as lieux de mémoire, important sites of collective memory with deep nationalistic resonance (Nora 1989,
10–11). By reaffirming these sites of Icelandic cultural memory and emphasizing their
innate
and perpetual presence in Iceland—rooted in both mind and physical landscape—Hallgrímsson
ennobled his country’s cultural heritage and helped foster a proud and unique national
self-image in his own day. Moreover, he used these sites as rallying points for not only national pride and
self-identification but also for political change. In effect, his recontextualizations
of these selected saga landscapes contributed to the early, ideological stages of
the Icelandic independence movement by mobilizing his compatriots in support of Icelandic
nationalism, which took the form of separatism, and creating cultural justifications for greater Icelandic sovereignty that would
appeal not only to Icelandic politicians but—due to a sense of shared, or transcultural,
memory—Danish officials as well.
Though primarily remembered as a poet, Hallgrímsson was a devoted natural scientist,
who was as invested in exploring and extolling Iceland’s unique landscape as he was
in elevating its literature, glorifying its past, and shaping its political future.
While he showed interest in nature and poetry in his younger years in Iceland, namely
during his secondary education at Bessastaðir, Hallgrímsson undertook these pursuits
in earnest at the University of Copenhagen from 1832 to 1838. There, he studied natural
history and—along with a number of other Icelandic students living in Copenhagen “who
became deeply influenced by Johann Gottfried Herder’s notion of ‘national spirit’”
as well as by Danish Romanticism (Oslund 322)—began the Icelandic nationalist journal
Fjölnir. Most of Hallgrímsson’s poems, as well as some of his essays, were first published
in Fjölnir, which, running intermittently for nine numbers from 1835 to 1847, functioned as
a platform to foster Icelandic pride and encourage increased Icelandic sovereignty
(Ringler 30). While Icelandic critics often found Fjölnir’s publications controversial, the journal helped develop and disseminate nationalist
ideals among an influential Icelandic intelligentsia. The journal even briefly attracted the renowned Icelandic politician Jón Sigurðsson
(1811–1879)—often credited with attaining major strides in Icelandic independence—before
he started his own journal, Ný félagsrit.
In blending together nature and a shared Icelandic legendary past—or historical past
as it was considered at the time—in his vernacular poetry, Hallgrímsson drew upon
several outside influences. Eggert Ólafsson (1726–1768), who lauded Iceland’s nature
and used its legendary past to emphasize the need for national revitalization, loomed
large for Hallgrímsson in this respect (Ringler 3). Renowned national poet Bjarni
Thorarensen (1786–1841), whose poetry features references
to Old Norse literature and Icelandic landscapes, likewise proved influential. Perhaps
most interestingly, Hallgrímsson, like Thorarensen before him, was influenced by Danish
Romanticists such as Adam Oehlenschläger (1779–1850). In his poetry, Oehlenschläger
drew upon the ideas of a Danish golden age and a distinctive Danish spirit, glorified
Iceland’s land and culture, and even implied “that ancient history is tied to national
space” (Rix 441). In a number of poems, Hallgrímsson reflects Herderian notions of
an innate and unique
Icelandic identity, depicts a national golden age, and uses national space in a manner
comparable to Oehlenschläger. He even responds directly to the Danish poet in a number
of works. As will be discussed, Danish and Icelandic nationalists’ mutual regard for Herderian
philosophy and, most importantly, their shared idealization and reliance on Icelandic
cultural memory and land for their respective nationalistic interests vitally impacted
Iceland’s independence movement.
I understand Hallgrímsson’s fusion of saga and landscape, cultural memory and place
in terms of Pierre Nora’s concept of lieux de mémoire, sites where “memory crystallizes and secretes itself” (1989, 8). As Stefan Brink
elaborates, lieux de mémoire are “sites of cultural memory that simultaneously store
and allow for the communication
of symbolic cultural structures, e.g. national stories and myths, and help engender
a collective sense of shared history and identity in the present” (613). Hallgrímsson
saturates national spaces and memory with nationalistic concerns of
“the present”: his use of saga-sites of memory are “not about fixed preservation but
reconstruction” of both the past and of the sites themselves (Glauser, Hermann, and
Mitchell 8). Joep Leerssen illuminates this process through his concept of “cultivation
of culture,” which describes how aspects of a cultureʼs heritage “are, at a specific
historical juncture, lifted from their context of origin by a professionalizing
philological elite; they are recontextualized and instrumentalized for modern needs
and values; and they are invested with a fresh national symbolism and status” (2005,
22–23). In effect this is the development that Hallgrímsson undertook: he reestablished
saga-sites as locations of cultural memory, reinterpreting them and filling them with
renewed symbolic meaning in order to address contemporary interest in promoting a
strong sense of Icelandic identity and nationalism.
More specifically, Hallgrímsson reimagined saga-sites—and the Commonwealth period
they supposedly chronicle—as evidence and vestiges of an Icelandic golden age. According
to Anthony D. Smith: “The return to a golden age is an important, and probably an
essential, component of
nationalism. Its role is to re-establish roots and continuity, as well as authenticity
and dignity, among a population that is being formed into a nation, and thereby to
act as a guide and model for national destiny” (59). In reconstructing the cultural
memory of a golden age, Hallgrímsson thus engages
past, present, and future: he conjures and reaffirms a glorious and collective past;
he validates a present collective identity; he shapes a vision for Iceland’s future,
one that implies regeneration and political change. Oscar Aldred has asserted that
“landscapes … are a nexus or a convergence of multiple temporalities” (60). Hallgrímsson’s
lieux de mémoire of saga landscapes likewise embrace and convey “multiple temporalities.”
Furthermore, the very nation they construct is “Janus-faced”: it “forges a modern
aspect for itself, yet simultaneously looks back to a putative historical
identity or to a golden age to justify the collectivity” (Koranyi and Cusack 192–93).
It is important to point out that while it is significant that the material locations
of the saga-sites exist and, to a certain extent, can even be mapped—adding legitimization
to claims to a supposed golden age through a “sense of realism and verisimilitude”
(Lethbridge 69)—Hallgrímsson produces these lieux de mémoire by means of literature.
According to
Jürg Glauser, “literature provides an ideal place in which memory is generated and
discussed; literature
is the medium, through which a certain culture … may best engage with the position,
function, or the meaning of memory within this culture” (2018, 232). Hallgrímsson’s
poetry provides a method of articulation and dissemination of cultural
memory in a way in which landscapes alone could not. Furthermore, as Björn Ægir Norðfjörð
points out, Iceland “construct[ed] its very national identity on its separate language and … literature” (13). Hallgrímsson’s endeavors can be seen, on the one
hand, to reaffirm the sagas as
nationally defining cultural achievements and, on the other, to answer the demand—by
Finnur Magnússon (1781-1847), for example—that Icelanders “live up to the literary
reputation of their ancestors, and to start writing great
national literature again, to show the world that the spirit of their Nordic forefathers
had not left them” (Halink 2018, 807). Hallgrímsson makes use of Old Icelandic literature
and provides his own literary
contributions—written in Icelandic—to define and empower a national identity.
In addition, Hallgrímsson draws upon the “‘locating’ of culture, a semioticization
of landscape” already established in the literature of the sagas themselves in his
work (Glauser 2000, 209). As has been well-established by scholars, the Íslendingasögur—as well as other sources such as Landnámabók and Íslendingabók—clearly, and inextricably, link narrative to location. Within such texts, shared
cultural memory is imprinted onto Icelandic landscapes. Successive generations, including
Hallgrímsson’s own, could instrumentalize, build upon, and re-shape the memory and
ideology associated with these locations: this has caused scholars to characterize
such landscapes as “palimpsest-like,” capable of being re-written yet bearing traces
of earlier cultivations (Lethbridge 68; Osborne 46). On one hand, in his poetry,
Hallgrímsson makes use of the cultural memory already
invested in saga landscapes; he purposefully avails of sites pre-possessing cultural
value. On the other hand, he readjusts and magnifies the political relevance of these
lieux de mémoire: Hallgrímsson re-invests these sites with contemporary, nationalistic
significance, rallying his countrymen and legitimizing Iceland’s claims to increased
sovereignty by cultural means in the process.
Significantly, Hallgrímsson’s cultural claims to increased Icelandic autonomy proved
persuasive beyond Icelandic borders, resonating with the Danish state. The effectiveness
of Hallgrímsson’s nationalist ideology arguably relied not just on cultural memory
but the “transculturality of memory,” memory’s ability to move across not only temporal
but national borders (Erll 10).
Due to the perceived transculturality of Old Norse collective memory—the idea of shared
cultural memory between Iceland and Denmark—Danish nationalists, politicians, and
authorities were more inclined to sympathize with cultural arguments for increased
Icelandic autonomy, especially as they availed of this transcultural memory to shape
their own Danish nation-building. In this regard, Danish sympathy derived from the
“multidirectional” facet of transcultural memory (Rothberg 11), from the sense that
cultivations of Old Norse memory mutually reinforced both Danish
and Icelandic nationalisms. As a result, Hallgrímsson’s cultural cultivations and nationalist argumentation ultimately
helped prompt the gradual implementation of liberatory measures for Iceland through
peaceful, legislative means, his re-inventions of Old Norse memory contributing to
widespread support for Icelandic nationalism at home and to consideration and concession
from Denmark abroad.
Hallgrímsson’s most clear and direct attempt to project a proud, distinctive national
self-image, prompt the revitalization of his nation, and legitimize Icelandʼs claims
to greater autonomy occurs through his cultivation of his “principal lieu de mémoire” of Þingvellir (Egilsson 136), the site of the general assembly of the Alþingi,
which met in this location from
the Saga Age until Denmark dissolved its parliamentary power in 1800. Þingvellir [Assembly
Fields], taking its toponym from its association with the Alþingi [All Assembly],
notably figures in saga literature such as Brennu-Njáls saga as well as in Íslendingabók. Such works served to imprint cultural value onto Þingvellir, establishing the site’s
nexus of physical location, history, and toponym as a part of Icelandic cultural memory
and even ethnogenesis. Though invested with cultural significance through these texts, Þingvellir’s ideological
value waned in the eighteenth century: the drive towards Enlightenment and modernization
in Iceland by figures such as Magnús Stephensen (1762–1833) diminished interest in
supposedly antiquated relics such as Þingvellir’s Alþingi, and Icelanders observed
its 1800 disbanding with relative apathy. The next generation, however, revived the
cultural significance attached to Þingvellir and added political value besides, value
that has since permeated the lieu de memoire. Specifically, Hallgrímsson and the other
contributors to Fjölnir—called the Fjölnismenn—used their journal in part to foster support for the re-establishment
of the Alþingi at this site, reimagining Þingvellir as the foundation of an admirable, self-governing Icelandic
community and as a symbol of Icelandic nationhood in the process. Hallgrímsson’s “Ísland”
[Iceland] (1835)—which, significantly, was the first poem published in Fjölnir—encapsulates such nationalist interests, instituting Þingvellir as a defining and
politically significant site of Icelandic nationality.
In the first portion of his poem, Hallgrímsson describes Iceland in its saga-days,
the Commonwealth period, which extended from Iceland’s settlement until 1262, when
Iceland entered into an agreement with the king of Norway:
Landið var fagurt og frítt, og fannhvítir jöklanna tindar,
himininn heiður og blár, hafið var skínandi bjart.
Þá komu feðurnir frægu og frjálsræðishetjurnar góðu,
austan um hyldýpishaf, hingað í sælunnar reit.
Reistu sér byggðir og bú í blómguðu dalanna skauti;
ukust að íþrótt og frægð, undu svo glaðir við sitt.
Hátt á eldhrauni upp, þar sem enn þá Öxará rennur
ofan í Almannagjá, alþingið feðranna stóð.
Þar stóð hann Þorgeir á þingi er við trúnni var tekið af lýði.
Þar komu Gissur og Geir, Gunnar og Héðinn og Njáll. (1989, 63)
[The land and the snow-white peaks of the glaciers were beautiful and peaceful, the
heaven cloudless and blue, the ocean was shining bright. Then came here from the east
our famous forefathers and good freedom-loving heroes over the very deep sea into
a place of happiness. They built for themselves buildings and farmsteads in the corners
of the flower-filled valleys; increased in accomplishments and fame, thus quickly
became pleased with their lot. High up on the lava field, there where the Öxará River
flows, down into Almannagjá, the assembly place of our forefathers stood. There stood
Þorgeir at the assembly when the Christian faith was accepted by the people. There
came Gizurr and Geirr, Gunnarr and Héðinn and Njáll.]
Extolling the beauty of Iceland’s landscape and the glory of its past, Hallgrímsson
presents an Icelandic golden age replete with heroism, natural beauty, freedom, and
prosperity. He creates a cohesive sense of nation and unique national identity by
“locating the power of imagination in an invented history, and grounding it in an
imagined
geography” (Osborne 41). He accomplishes this primarily by centring on the “imagined
geography” of Þingvellir, reverently depicting its landscape—the Öxará (Axe River),
Almannagjá
(Public Gorge), and lava field—and the “invented history” of the
Íslendingasögur, triumphantly describing how the Alþingi assembled with legendary saga heroes there
each year during the Commonwealth period. Hallgrímsson glorifies several important
aspects of Icelandʼs uniqueness and value—its nature, legendary past, and literary
accomplishments—and converges these attributes in one place, Þingvellir. In doing
so, Hallgrímsson uses Þingvellir as a physical and symbolic reminder of Iceland’s
worthiness and individual character, re-establishing the saga-site as a lieu de mémoire
that represents Iceland as a collective community and distinctive nation.
Notably, Hallgrímsson embeds specific saga heroes of Brennu-Njáls saga directly into the site of Þingvellir. As a result, he reaffirms the saga as part
of Icelandic national “canon,” or active cultural memory (A. Assmann 100), and contributes
to a proud Icelandic self-image. Referencing Gunnarr Hámundarson
from Hlíðarendi and Héðinn, or Skarpheðinn Njálsson, both of whom were courageous
and successful warriors, Hallgrímsson emphasizes the heroic heritage of Icelanders. Hallgrímsson also refers to the characters, Gizurr hvíti Teitsson, Geirr goði Ásgeirsson, and Njáll Þorgeirsson, who—especially Njáll—were reputed for their honour,
integrity, and wisdom. By recontextualizing heroic, noble, and wise saga characters and placing them into
the landscape of Þingvellir—the so-called “hjartastaðurinn,” or the place of the heart
(22)—Hallgrímsson not only reminds his countrymen of their shared and impressive cultural
heritage, but he implies that Iceland’s “heroic individuality” (Smith 50) is still
recoverable or accessible to contemporary Icelanders. The admirable traits
of Iceland’s past are portrayed as still present, innate, and embedded within the
foundations of Iceland itself. The landscape of Þingvellir, fused with an impressive
history and literary tradition, in a sense provides a vehicle for cultural Icelandic
memory, a link between past and present that encapsulates Iceland’s supposedly enduring
wise and heroic identity, or inherent “spirit.” Significantly, this spirit was distinctive
from that of its foreign ruler. According
to Herderian philosophy, “an important purpose of government is to maintain and develop
naturally the national
character of the people over which it has power” and, “all else being equal, the boundaries
of the state should not exceed those of the people:
the uniting of several nations into a single state should be avoided” (Patten 683).
Hallgrímsson’s portrayal of a unique Icelandic character, therefore, had significant
nationalist implications, especially when instrumentalized later by Icelandic politicians
such as Jón Sigurðsson.
Of course, most significantly, what Hallgrímsson also depicts at the “heart” of Iceland
in its saga-site of Þingvellir—and thus an innate and defining feature
of Icelandic character—is the Alþingi and the desire for self-governance that it represents.
He connects the location directly to the Alþingi by referring to the annual meeting
there during the Saga Age and even to the specific event of Iceland’s conversion to
Christianity at the recommendation of the pagan lawspeaker Þorgeir Ljósvetningagoði
Þorkelsson in 1000 AD, as recorded in Íslendingabók. Likewise, in poems such as “Til herra Páls Gaimard” [To Mr. Paul Gaimard] (1839)—a
poem popularly sung in Iceland following its composition (Ringler 166)—the landscape
of Þingvellir evokes for Hallgrímsson Iceland’s “frístjórnarþingi frægu’ um heim” [the
parliament of an independent government, famous throughout the world] (1989, 104).
In “Fjallið Skjaldbreiður” [Mount Broadshield] (1845) Hallgrímsson even indicates
that Alþingi’s presence is protected by the landscape
of Þingvellir as well as perpetual: “Enn þá stendur góð í gildi / gjáin kennd við
almenning” [Then still stands valid in force, the gorge associated with the common
people] (1989, 132). In validating this unbreakable connection between Þingvellir
and Alþingi, Hallgrímsson
indicates that Iceland’s tradition of self-rule is inextricably rooted in its national
origins and in its landscape, that the Alþingi is part of Iceland’s natural state
on a physical and ideological level.
In “Ísland,” Hallgrímsson not only suggests that Iceland is innately self-governing,
but that
Icelanders inherently desire autonomy and that such autonomy enables, or even engenders,
national greatness. He expresses this by emphasizing the sovereignty enjoyed by Iceland’s
legendary ancestors, calling them “frjálsræðishetjurnar” [freedom-loving heroes] and
implying that they came to Iceland from Norway primarily to benefit from that
sovereignty. In doing so, he idealizes the Icelandic Commonwealth as an “epoch of political independence”
(Helgason 2005, 79) and establishes continuity in the Icelandic desire for self-governance,
justifying
contemporary Icelanders’ aspirations for greater independence by suggesting both that
they have always inherently longed for freedom and have a tradition of autonomy—encapsulated
in the Alþingi and preserved at Þingvellir—that simply needs to be reclaimed. In addition,
Hallgrímsson not only emphasizes how Iceland’s ancestors benefited from freedom, but
also from the prosperity that accompanied that freedom during the supposed golden
age of the Commonwealth of Iceland. He describes the legendary heroes as wealthy and
“svo glaðir við sitt” [so pleased with their lot] and even depicts Icelandic nature
as “blómguðu” [flower-filled], or abundantly thriving. In doing so, he depicts the
Commonwealth of Iceland, a period
in which Iceland was autonomous, as an age of affluence.
This stands in direct contrast to the second portion of his poem, which focuses on
the present. Depicting Iceland in his own time, Hallgrímsson writes, “Það er svo bágt að standa’
í stað og mönnunum munar/ annaðhvort aftur á bak ellegar
nokkuð á leið” [it is so distressful to stand still, and people are different either
with their backs
turned or facing somewhat to the front] (1989, 63). Hallgrímsson projects a sense
of stagnation, immobilization, and even apathy: he
implies that his contemporaries either ignore, or turn their back to, the lethargy
and degeneration of their own day, or acknowledge the situation without taking any
action to repair it. By juxtaposing the prosperity of Iceland’s autonomous past with
its stagnant, powerless present, Hallgrímsson seems to propel the notions that a nation
is more economically successful when it is self-governing and that a nation’s decline
is caused by “an alien government” (Hálfdanarson 2006, 242). These liberal and Herderian notions gained currency at this time in Europe, especially
among the Icelandic intelligentsia in the wake of Iceland’s many eighteenth-century
misfortunes of earthquakes, famines, epidemics, and volcanic eruptions, particularly
the Móðuharðindi: “Jón Sigurðsson and other nationalist leaders blamed Danish rule
not for the eruption
itself, but for the series of catastrophes that followed, which could have been prevented
or at least mitigated with better—more local—management” (Oslund 322). Hallgrímsson
thus exposes the need for Icelandic self-governance, condemning the
conditions under Danish leadership on one hand, and deriding the apathy of the Icelanders
in allowing their subjugation to continue on the other.
Hallgrímsson goes on to point out that although Iceland’s nature continues to be beautiful
in his own day—“Landið er fagurt og frítt” [the land is beautiful and free] (1989,
63)—and the past that it signifies remains alive through Þingvellir’s continued presence,
one important thing has changed: “En á eldhrauni upp, þar sem enn þá Öxará rennur
/ ofan í Almannagjá, alþing er horfið
á braut” [But up on the lava, there where Öxará still flows, down into Almannagjá
the Alþingi
has vanished away] (1989, 63). As a consequence, he implies that an integral, natural
part of Iceland degenerated
when the Alþingi was dissolved by Denmark in 1800. In his conclusion, “Ó þér unglingafjöld
og Íslands fullorðnu synir! / Svona er feðranna frægð fallin í
gleymsku og dá!” [Oh you multitude of children and full grown sons of Iceland! Thus
is the fame of your
forefathers fallen into oblivion and torpor] (1989, 63), Hallgrímsson suggests that
Icelanders’ reattainment of their forefathers’ fame,
their past golden age, rests in the re-establishment of the Alþingi at Þingvellir,
in other words, through greater Icelandic sovereignty. As Simon Halink points out,
while Hallgrímsson’s poem could be interpreted as a national eulogy, it instead “contains
a message of hope”: with Hallgrímsson’s cultivation of the lieu de mémoire of Þingvellir—far
from being
forgotten—cultural memory continues to be inscribed upon this site and the site itself
functions as a “promise for the future” (2014, 219). A temporally complex national
symbol, Þingvellir serves as a conduit to a golden
age of the past, a catalyst for pursuit of greater autonomy in the present, and an
assurance of Iceland’s glory and self-governance in the future.
It is interesting to note that Hallgrímsson’s nationalistic poem draws upon Adam Oehlenschläger’s
revised version of a poem also titled “Island” (1823) : according to Dick Ringler, “there is no question that Jónas’s poem is closely dependent
on Oehlenschläger’s” (103). The opening lines of the works roughly correspond: while
Oehlenschläger’s begins
“Island! Oldtidens Øe, Ihukommelsens vældige Tempel” [Iceland! Ancient Isle, the great
Temple of Memory] (1823, 233), Hallgrímsson’s proclaims “Ísland! farsældafrón og hagsælda hrímhvíta móðir!” [Iceland!
Land of happiness and prosperous frost-white mother] (1989, 63). Yet, while both poets
show admiration for Iceland, namely for its past, as illustrated,
Hallgrímsson’s poem is just as invested in his nation’s present, namely its political
situation. Sveinn Yngvi Egilsson argues that “in Jónas’ powerful appropriation of the poetic
subject and its representation … one
can certainly see this as a cultural power struggle, an aspiring ‘national poet’ of
a small nation and province trying to wrest his country as a poetic subject from the
hands of the ‘national poet’ of the ruling nation” (136). In a sense, Hallgrímsson
does seize back control over Iceland as poetic material
by creating poetry about Iceland for Icelandic political purposes. At the same time, Hallgrímsson echoes and takes advantage of
Oehlenschläger’s—and Denmark’s—veneration of Iceland. He affirms that Iceland is a
land of memory and majesty, but he further, and crucially, suggests that Iceland’s
uniqueness and greatness validate a proud and separate Icelandic consciousness, that
this distinctive identity entitles Iceland to autonomy and, moreover, that Iceland’s
deprivation of self-governance stagnates the nation’s potential, or even destiny,
to regain its past golden age. He does this primarily through the formulation of Þingvellir
as a lieu de mémoire.
In Hallgrímsson’s poetry, Þingvellir operates in accordance with each of the three
modes of a lieu de mémoire, “material, symbolic and functional” (Nora 1996, 14). Hallgrímsson
not only valorizes the material setting of Þingvellir, but he draws
on its functionality as a “direct link through the land back” to a supposed Icelandic
golden age (Sigurðsson 1996, 43) and reimagines the site as a symbol of national
consciousness and pride as well as
a representation of Iceland’s natural state of autonomy. Hallgrímsson’s appropriation
of legend and landscape, his reinvestment of ideological value into the lieu de mémoire
of Þingvellir, functioned as an effort to spur Icelanders into political action while
also providing justifications for increased Icelandic independence on cultural, economic,
and political levels. While he certainly did not accomplish it single-handedly, Hallgrímsson
as well as other Fjölnismenn were ultimately successful in helping persuade the Danish
monarchy to reinstitute the Alþingi in 1843, though at Reykjavik rather than at Þingvellir,
as recommended by Jón Sigurðsson (Halink 2018, 809); this in part demonstrates the
vital impact of cultural arguments on the Icelandic
independence movement. Despite the fact that the Alþingi was not re-established at
Þingvellir, Hallgrímsson’s work helped endow the site with enduring political, nationalistic
relevance. The controversial 1946 reburial of Hallgrímsson’s remains at Þingvellir
speaks to the establishment of both the poet and location as mutually reinforcing
national icons, especially where the Icelandic government is concerned. Moreover, Hallgrímsson’s nationalization of the saga site paved the way for national
celebrations held there in 1930, 1944, 1974, and 1994, celebrations that again reinvested
the site with political force. The national significance of Þingvellir so well-established by Hallgrímsson’s “Ísland”—which
“(at least the beginning of it) is still popularly sung in Iceland” (Ringler 104)—and
reaffirmed by later developments continues today, the site acting as a lieu de
mémoire in the form of a prominent, nation-defining tourist destination.
In “Gunnarshólmi” [Gunnarʼs Holm] (1837), Hallgrímsson similarly recontextualizes
a saga-site, the titular Gunnarshólmi, for
purposes of nation-building. Rather than appealing to continuity of Icelandic self-rule,
however, in this case, he primarily appeals to continuity of Icelandic patriotism.
The poem draws on an episode in Chapter 75 of Brennu-Njáls saga concerning Gunnarr Hámundarson, “the most attractive and unreservedly admired of
Icelandic saga heroes” (Ringler 139). On his way to leaving Iceland due to a three-year
banishment sentence, Gunnarr is
thrown from his horse. Upon arising, the warrior is so overcome by the beauty of Hlíðarendi,
his home region, that he tells his also-banished brother, Kolskeggr, that he will
remain in Iceland: “Fǫgr er hlíðin, svá at mér hefir hon aldri jafnfǫgr sýnzk, bleikir
akrar ok slegin
tún, ok mun ek ríða heim aptr ok fara hvergi” [Lovely is the hillside—never has it
seemed so lovely to me as now, with its pale fields
and mown meadows, and I will ride back home and not leave] (Brennu–Njáls saga 182; Njalʼs Saga 123). Even when reminded by his brother that failing to honour his sentence will
mean
his death—an outcome prophesized by his wise companion Njáll—Gunnarr steadfastly asserts,
“Hvergi mun ek fara” [I will not leave] (Brennu–Njáls saga 183; Njalʼs Saga 124). In his poem, Hallgrímsson reinterprets the location indicated by “local tradition”
to be the site of this event (Ringler 140), called Gunnarshólmi, as a “symbolic element
of memorial heritage,” or an Icelandic lieu de mémoire (Egilsson 131). Hallgrímsson
transforms local active memory into national canon, and cultural elements
into defining components of nationhood: he inscribes a national dimension to this
site—and to its corresponding saga and saga hero—using it to cultivate a patriotic,
empowered Icelandic self-image and inculcate Icelandic nationalism.
Hallgrímsson undertook the composition of the poem in the summer of 1837 in part due
to the influence of Bjarni Thorarensen—the foremost Icelandic poet at that time—who
encouraged him to write on the subject not long after Hallgrímsson had re-read Brennu-Njáls saga and visited the site (Ringler 140). Thorarensen himself had written on the topic
in “Um afturfarir Fljótshlíðar” [The Decline of Fljótshlíð] (1821) (Thorarensen,
1: 101–2). Aspects of Thorarensen’s poem carry over into Hallgrímsson’s: both discuss
the degeneration
of the Icelandic landscape surrounding Gunnarshólmi since the Commonwealth period,
and both allude to what would become an iconic episode of Brennu-Njáls, arguably due to their very own reinterpretations. Yet, in its passionate exaltation
of Iceland’s landscapes and past and its patriotic, political message to its contemporaries,
Hallgrímsson’s poem encapsulates an evocative nationalist ideology that has caused
Sveinn Yngvi Egilsson to assert, “If any one poem can be said to have defined the
national cause of the Icelanders,
this is it” (137). Indeed, Thorarensen upon hearing the poem for the first time supposedly
remarked,
“Now it’s time for me … to stop writing poetry” (Ringler 141), offering a creation
myth, so to speak, for Hallgrímsson’s place as a, if not the, national poet.
Hallgrímsson begins the poem with the glorified, lush imagery of the land nearby Gunnarshólmi,
where “má líta sælan sveitarblóma” [one may see the blessed rural blooming] observed
in its surroundings in the Commonwealth period, emphasizing the landscape’s
beauty and abundance and pointing out specific, striking landmarks such as Eyjafjalla
Glacier, the Summit Mountains, and Hekla (1989, 77). He follows his lengthy, idyllic
description of Icelandic nature with a reinterpretation
of Gunnarr and Kolskeggr’s ride towards the ship that will take them away from Iceland
to their banishment, describing both men’s fierceness, steadfastness, and nobility.
Hallgrímsson goes on to devote particular attention to Gunnarr’s decision to stay
in his homeland before describing the site of Gunnarshólmi and the erosion of the
surrounding area in the modern day:
Því Gunnar vildi heldur bíða hel
en horfinn vera fósturjarðarströndum.
Grimmlegir fjendur, flárri studdir vél,
fjötruðu góðan dreng í heljarböndum.
Hugljúfa samt eg sögu Gunnars tel,
þar sem eg undrast enn á köldum söndum
lágan að sigra ógnabylgju ólma
algrænu skrauti prýddan Gunnarshólma. (1989, 79)
[For Gunnar would rather endure Hell, then be absent from the shores of his native
land. Fierce enemies, buttressed with false treachery, manacled the good fellow in
bonds of death. Even so, I recount the well-loved tale of Gunnar because I am still
amazed at low-lying Gunnarshólmi, decorated with an all-green garniture, conquering
the savage fearful wave on the cold sands.]
For centuries, Icelanders looked to the sagas to reinforce values and guide behaviour,
with saga heroes such as Gunnarr acting as “role models” (Helgason 2005, 65). In this
poem, Hallgrímsson deliberately selects
Brennu-Njáls saga, the illustrious Gunnarr, and the site of Gunnarshólmi and bestows them with a new,
political significance and national status: he not only reaffirms these elements as
aspects of Icelandic cultural memory but re-envisions them as indicators of Icelandic
identity and nationalism. He does so by reimagining Gunnarr’s act of remaining in
Iceland “as a patriotic one—a national declaration” (Norðfjörð 14) and transmuting
its ideological power onto the supposed location of this event. On
the one hand, Hallgrímsson imprints a national value onto this episode—and by extension
Brennu-Njáls saga itself—with lasting significance: in fact, following Hallgrímsson’s work, “Gunnarr’s
‘return’ had become so fully accepted by the Icelanders as a patriotic gesture
that the scene–and thereby the saga which contained it–had begun to acquire the status
of a national emblem” (Helgason 2005, 74). At the same time, he locates and condenses this national value in the synthesizing
saga-site of Gunnarshólmi. In his preface to the poem, Hallgrímsson points out that the local populace identified
how “stendur eptir grænn reitur óbrotinn” [still stands an undamaged spot] where “Gunnar
frá Hlíðarenda snúið aptur” [Gunnarr from Hlíðarenda turned back] (1838, 32); however,
in the poem itself, he builds off of this local memory and reshapes this
location into a lasting, reinterpretable symbol of Iceland and Icelandicness, a lieu
de mémoire. Through this lieu de mémoire, Hallgrímsson narrates his nation: Iceland’s
majestic nature, impressive literary tradition of the sagas, and patriotic past coalesce
in the still—though barely—visible location of this saga-site, which Hallgrímsson
uses to reflect a national self-image that is worthy, unique, and nationalistic. In
other words, Hallgrímsson’s reinterpretation of Gunnarshólmi redefines the site, its
toponym, and its related saga episode in national and nationalistic terms, cultivating
a patriotic Icelandic identity in the process.
Hallgrímsson not only instrumentalizes this saga-site of memory to define his nation
but also to catalyze his contemporaries into reclaiming Iceland’s supposed former
greatness. Hallgrímsson acknowledges the “savage fearful wave on the cold sands” in
the area around Gunnarshólmi, that is the erosion and destruction of the once
fertile fields caused by the Markafljót river; however, he suggests that Gunnarr—“patriotism
personified” (Óskarsson 268)—remains embedded in this landscape due to the fact that
the patch of land upon which
he fell still remains lush and thus also capable of inspiring similar shows of patriotism
such as Hallgrimsson’s own poem. Moreover, the golden age that Gunnarr represents—an
age of patriotism and virtue—also continues to endure through this site and the cultural
memory imprinted upon it. According to Dick Ringler, it is both the material and symbolic
nature of Gunnarshólmi that makes Hallgrímsson’s call for renewed patriotism effective:
The river of time and change, endlessly flowing, has washed away the glories of Icelandʼs
heroic past, but Gunnarʼs Holm has survived into the present as the objective correlative
of the memory of Gunnar himself: a man of heroism, energy, virtue, and—above all—unswerving
loyalty to the land of his birth and love for its overpowering physical beauty. (139–40)
As a lieu de mémoire, Gunnarshólmi functions on both physical and ideological levels:
the site evokes the past but also locates it in a tangible location in the present.
By suggesting that a glimmer of Iceland’s past greatness persists in this plot of
land, Hallgrímsson implies that the glory and patriotism that characterizes Iceland’s
golden age remains accessible, continuing to characterize an innate Icelandic character
and a “glorious destiny” (Smith 51). He attempts to mobilize his countrymen into recovering
their nationʼs “true self” and national destiny (Smith 49)—promised through the persevering
site of Gunnarshólmi—through revived nationalism.
Simon Halink asserts that the decline of the Icelandic landscape since the Commonwealth
Period was commonly attributed to the shortcomings of Iceland’s foreign ruler (2018,
808). Ostensibly, for Hallgrímsson, re-attainment of a national golden age—and thus
the
restoration of Icelandic nature and a true self—would more specifically necessitate
renewed Icelandic nationalism in the form of renewed Icelandic autonomy. Hallgrímsson’s
poem thereby operates as an incitement for his countrymen to restore Icelandic sovereignty
in order to enable “material and cultural progress” (Hálfdanarson 2006, 245) rather
than allow their nation to stagnate and decay under foreign leadership.
Hallgrímsson’s “Gunnarshólmi” uses poetic and physical space to recontextualize Icelandic
legend and cultivate
cultural memory for nationalist purposes. Building on the work of Jan Assmann, Sophie
Bønding asserts that “myths as instantiations of cultural memory shared by a group
… serv[e] two possible
functions”: they either establish a sense of continuity between past and present or
highlight
a discontinuity, namely by “presenting the present as deficient in comparison to an
idealised, glorious past” (784). “Gunnarshólmi,” though drawing on legend rather than
myth, utilizes both functions. In terms of discontinuity,
Hallgrímsson uses the surrounding area of Gunnarshólmi to show a break between past
and present, contrasting the vitality of the autonomous Commonwealth Period with the
deterioration caused by foreign leadership. In terms of continuity, through the saga-site,
Hallgrímsson creates the sense of an innate, empowered, and patriotic national character
consistent with a past golden age. He also implies that this golden age—despite temporary
stagnation—remains a part of Iceland’s destiny. As the lieu de mémoire conveys a distinctive
Icelandic spirit as well as the need for political change for Iceland to fulfill its
national destiny, Hallgrímsson’s instrumentalization of Gunnarshólmi links the call
to nationalism to a sense of place as well as to a sense of shared national history.
The nationalist discourse located within Gunnarshólmi not only helped mobilize the
Icelandic people to support increased Icelandic sovereignty and persuade Danish officials
of Iceland’s right and need for this sovereignty but also had a lasting impact on
the construction of Icelandic character well into the twentieth century and even today.
Furthermore, Hallgrímsson’s cultivation likewise had a lasting ideological impact
on the site itself, with the poem of “Gunnarshólmi” becoming as inextricable from
the location of Gunnarshólmi as even Gunnarr. In this,
the poem in question had an even more salient effect on Gunnarshólmi than “Ísland”
and related poems did on Þingvellir, the former site almost purely dependent on Hallgrímsson’s poem for its continued
political significance. Despite Gunnarshólmi’s clear relation to Brennu-Njáls saga in local memory prior to Hallgrimsson’s poem, it only rose to prominence as a national,
and even touristic, site following—or because of—the poem’s publication and popular
reception. In a sense acting as a recapitulation of Gunnarr’s supposed act of patriotism, Hallgrímsson’s
nationalistic composition overlays, or certainly amplifies, the ideological power
of Gunnarr’s return to the extent that the lieu de mémoire functions as an encapsulation
of the patriotism expressed by both saga hero and national poet, the physical location
of Gunnarshólmi and its toponym having become synonymous with Icelandic nationalism.
In the summer of 1841, Hallgrímsson travelled extensively throughout Iceland conducting
research for a project on the “Description of Iceland” funded by the Danish government.
During this time, he visited Snæfellsnes, the peninsula
in which Eyrbyggja saga is set, and wrote “Aldarháttur” [On the Spirit of the Age] (1845), a short poem
in skaldic meter “kveðið á reið fyrir neðan Fróðá” [composed while riding down below
Fróðá] (1989, 133; Ringler 202). Echoing “Ísland” and “Gunnarshólmi,” in this poem, Hallgrímsson juxtaposes past and
present through the synthesizing site
of a saga landscape in order to provoke his contemporaries into revitalizing their
nation. Likewise, he reinvests an Íslendingasaga and a saga landscape with new ideological importance in the process, though recontextualizing
Eyrbyggja saga rather than Brennu-Njáls saga in this case. Interestingly, however, in contrast to his previous poems, beyond referring
to the saga stead’s name, Fróðá, Hallgrímsson makes no other direct reference to his
saga of interest: he does so in order to use the lieu de mémoire of Fróðá to prompt
active participation in Icelandic cultural memory and elicit a conscious sense of
membership and belonging among his contemporaries to their nation. In Hallgrímsson’s
poem, Fróðá becomes a site of nation-building, not just an element of Icelandic history
and culture, but a reflection of national consciousness.
Known best from
Eyrbyggja saga as the site of a number of supernatural hauntings, Fróðá was the farm of Þuríður
Barkardóttir, who was not only involved in causing these hauntings but also partook
in an affair with Björn Ásbrandsson. The first part of Hallgrímsson’s poem draws upon
a specific episode in
Eyrbyggja saga when Björn, on his way to Fróðá to visit Þuríður, must take shelter in a cave after
he is assailed by a storm conjured by a sorceress at the behest of Þuríður’s husband.
Hallgrímsson describes Björn’s encounter with the storm:
Hingað gekk hetjan unga
heiðar um brattar leiðir,
fanna mundar að finna
fríða grund í hríð stundum (1989, 133)
[The young warrior went here over the steep paths of the heath, in a blizzard sometimes,
to meet a lovely “ground of the ‘snows of the hand’” [silver > woman].]
In this portion of the poem, Hallgrímsson characterizes Björn—a renowned warrior and
poet—as willing to sacrifice his safety for his lover. Hallgrímsson reimagines this
figure as a representative of an Icelandic golden age, both supposedly marked by heroism
and vigour. He abruptly contrasts the grandeur of this Icelandic past with the coarseness
and passionlessness of his own day:
nú ræðst enginn á engi
(í ástarbáli fyrr sálast),
styttubands storð að hitta,
stýrir priks yfir mýri. (1989, 133)
[Now no “steerer of the unshod stick” [man] (formerly one died in the fire of love)
undertakes to meet an “earth of the skirt-tie-up band” [woman] over the swamp on the
outfield.]
While initially Hallgrímsson avails himself of the site of Fróðá to evoke a supposed
Icelandic golden age, he goes on to use it to catalogue Iceland’s decline. Giving
the saga-site a national dimension, he saps the setting of its former dignity and
vitality and exposes the deterioration of the present. As Dick Ringler suggests, “the
disparity between past and present ages is not only asserted through outright
statement but is also suggested—quite wittily—at the level of style” (Ringler 204).
In order to reflect his nation’s enervation and degeneration in the modern day,
Hallgrímsson substitutes elevated diction for informal, prosaic language, shown, for
example, in the shift from “young warrior” to “steerer of the unshod stick [man].” Similarly, his choice of kennings mirror this shift. While Hallgrímsson uses a more
refined, classical kenning to denote “woman” in the first portion of his poem—“ground
of the ‘snows of the hand’” [silver > woman]—he instead chooses his own invented,
mundane kenning when describing
his own time—“earth of the skirt-tie-up band” [woman]. Through content and form, Hallgrímsson
illustrates how his contemporaries
have exchanged a heroic, glorious past for a sobering and unromantic present.
Nonetheless, although Hallgrímsson suggests that Iceland’s Saga Age has disappeared
and expresses disillusionment with his own time, paradoxically, through the site of
Fróðá—“a landscape enlivened by the old stories” and one of the “farms … still carrying
the same names as in the Saga Age” (Halink 2018, 807–8)—he implies that Iceland’s
golden age still imbues its present and has the potential
to shape its future. The site of Fróðá thereby accesses both past and present simultaneously:
even while the present can be observed in all of its lackluster disappointment in
the landscape, Eyrbyggja saga—Iceland’s noble and invigorated past—superimposes itself, its memory inextricable
from its site. Infusing the lieu de mémoire of Fróðá with not only just cultural but
national significance, Hallgrímsson uses references to the saga stead as a reminder of past
national greatness and heritage as well as of a persistent, admirable Icelandic identity.
At the same time, Hallgrímsson also implies that without a national revitalization,
Iceland’s glory will continue to deteriorate. He suggests that Icelanders must live
up to the glory of their inheritance by exhibiting the same passion, nobility, and
heroism, perhaps through a passionate and heroic commitment not to a lover but to
their nation and its political plight.
Such nation-building is arguably apparent in Hallgrímsson’s attempts to instrumentalize
the saga-site to re-establish feelings of national belonging. As stated, nowhere in
his poem does Hallgrímsson actually discuss Eyrbyggja saga directly; he refers only to Fróðá in his subtitle. As Brian S. Osborne argues, place-names
are not only “prompts and vehicles for the telling of” stories, but “an expression
or manifestation of cultural identity and belonging” (80). In alluding to Fróðá, Hallgrímsson
not only “prompts” cultural memory of Eyrbyggja saga but attempts to make Icelanders “aware that they constitute a community,” a national
one (Bønding 784): Icelanders by means of being Icelanders—privy to their own unique
national history,
saga tradition, and territory—are meant to understand Hallgrímsson’s references through
the signifier of “Fróðá” alone and, thus, feel a sense of national cohesion and belonging.
In essence, through
Hallgrímsson’s cultivation, the text of Eyrbyggja saga, its physical saga-site of Fróðá, as well as the site’s toponym all become signs
of shared Icelandic nationality. Though Hallgrímsson’s reinterpretation of Fróðá perhaps
had a less insistent ideological impact than his reinterpretations of Þingvellir and
Gunnarshólmi in the long term, the sense of national unification, cultural homogeneity
even, engendered through Hallgrímsson’s instrumentalization of this site and others
like it was significant both in encouraging support for the Icelandic nationalist
movement and in justifying Iceland’s right in becoming a more self-governing nation-state,
as both Danish liberals and Icelandic nationalists at this time believed a people’s
sense of shared culture and identity should constitute its nationhood.
Through his re-establishment of sagas-sites such as Þingvellir, Gunnarshólmi, and
Fróðá as lieux de mémoire, Hallgrímsson defined and elevated his nation by its unique
and impressive lands, legends, literature, and history. He not only exposed a supposedly
inherent Icelandic spirit but reaffirmed its distinctiveness and worth. Furthermore,
through saga landscapes, where past and present, material and symbolic meet, he demonstrated
that an Icelandic golden age characterized by patriotism, affluence, vitality, and
autonomy needed to be, and was destined to be, regained. In doing so, Hallgrímsson
contributed to the nationalist ideology that would propel the Icelandic independence
movement. According to Guðmundur Hálfdanarson, “what makes the Icelandic nationalist
argumentation worthy of note is how successful
it was in convincing the people it needed to convince,” both Icelanders and their
foreign ruler (2006, 238). Since the majority of Icelanders, including intellectuals,
upper classes, and farmers,
despite their class differences, felt that they shared a common history, territory,
and cultural background, Hallgrímsson could draw on these elements through recontextualizations
of saga-sites to convincingly shape a proud and united national identity and mobilize
widespread support for Icelandic nationalism among the Icelandic population. This
was further made possible by the popularity of the sagas in Iceland in the nineteenth
century as well as by the fact that Iceland also had a history of glorifying its legendary
past, which may have also made nineteenth-century Icelanders more receptive to this
argumentation.
Hallgrímsson also furnished Icelandic politicians with justifications for increased
Icelandic independence that would appeal to Danish officials. Hallgrímsson’s creation
of a national golden age parallels other European cultural productions in service
of nineteenth-century nationalist movements. However, what sets the Icelandic independence
movement apart to a certain extent, was the receptiveness on the part of some Danish
officials to the cultural arguments for increased autonomy advanced by Icelandic nationalists
and their supporters. Cultural justifications for Icelandic autonomy arguably proved
convincing both for reasons that align with the Romantic nationalist ideology sweeping
Europe at the time and for others that are quite unique to this particular case, namely
the “transculturality” of Old Norse collective memory (Erll 10).
On the one hand, it would have been difficult for Danish politicians and authorities
to completely disregard Iceland’s claims to increased self-governance based on the
fact that Danish nationalists subscribed to much of the same liberal and Herderian
philosophy as Icelandic nationalists at this time: “Both groups considered the nation-state,
unified on the basis of common culture and
language, as the state form of the future while complex monarchies, mixing people
of various cultural backgrounds under one government, were linked to absolutism and
the reactionary politics of the past” (Hálfdanarson 2006, 242). The premier Danish
Romanticist, Adam Oehlenschläger, projected notions of an innate
Danish spirit, for instance, in “Guldhornene” [The Golden Horns], which appeals to
a golden age of Denmark’s past—symbolized by two ancient golden
drinking horns found in Danish farmland—to encourage the Danish people to regain their
supposedly “lost identity” and glorious destiny (Felcht 107). Oehlenschläger’s construction
of a distinctive Danish identity based on the memory
of an impressive collective past can be seen—like the work of later Danish nationalist
N. F. S. Grundtvig—as creating the foundations of the nationalist ideology later implemented in the
shift from absolute to constitutional monarchy. Such ideology is evident, for example,
in the argumentation of Danish liberal politicians who, “inspired by the spirit of
the French Revolution and romanticism of the time … emphasized
cultural separateness of the Danish nation, which directly because of its uniqueness
should gain self-authority by democratic representation” (Bergmann 39). Yet, by reaffirming
the notion that each nation innately possesses a distinct character,
that state and spirit are intrinsically tied, and that a nation’s progress depended
upon its self-governance, Oehlenschläger not only helped form the basis of Danish
nationalism—these notions becoming widespread in Denmark over the course of the nineteenth
century—but inspired Icelandic poets such as Hallgrímsson to use native myths and
legends for a similar purpose and even in much the same way. Significantly, when Icelandic
politicians such as Jón Sigurðsson echoed and implemented the nationalist, Herderian
sentiments expressed by poets like Hallgrímsson, arguing that Iceland’s “particular
nature and conditions” entitled it to greater sovereignty and that “the country should
be allowed to govern itself as much as possible, in order for the
great energy, which is inherent in the country but lies dormant, to be revived and
to mature,” the majority of Danish politicians and officials—who depended on these
notions for
their own sense of nation—were amenable (Hálfdanarson 2006, 246).
Nonetheless, it was not just the acknowledgement of Iceland’s unique national spirit
that caused Danish politicians to sympathize with Iceland’s cultural justifications
for sovereignty. Arguably, the principal factor was a shared sense of Old Norse memory
between the nations and, concomitantly, Denmark’s investment in Iceland’s cultural
contributions, its language, its manuscripts, its myths and legends, and even its
land. The Old Norse sagas and Eddas were recorded by Icelanders, written in Old Icelandic (a language closely resembling
Modern Icelandic), and preserved in medieval Icelandic manuscripts. Yet, these texts
reached back into the legendary history of not only Iceland, but all of Scandinavia.
Danish nationalists—as well as other Scandinavians—relied upon materials such as the
konungasögur, fornaldarsögur, and Eddas for their own “cultural vindication” (Loftsdóttir 92) and to prompt their own political shift towards increased representation. As such,
Danish politicians highly respected Iceland and its cultural contributions, and the nation’s land was even seen as an access point to a shared Scandinavian golden
age.
In fact,
prior to Hallgrímsson’s work, Adam Oehlenschläger approbated Iceland’s connection to a
glorious past in works such as the aforementioned “Island” [Iceland] (1823), and
prominent Danish politician Orla Lehmann—who played a major role in Denmarkʼs
transition into a constitutional monarchy—extolled Iceland in 1832:
Men ligesom indefroset mellem hine fjerne Iisfjelde, hvordan Tidens Storme ei naaede,
vedligeholdt det [Oldtidens Liv] sig i næsten uforandret Reenhed paa Island, saa at
vi i det see en levende Oldtid, et talende Billede af Fortidens Liv—Derfor maa det
islandske Folk være hver Skandinaver kjært, og vi ville i de nuværende Islænderes
Characteer, Levemaade og Sædvaner vist kunne finde Træk af vor Oldtids Physiognomie,
som vi forgjæves ville søge i vor Hedeolds henmuldrede Ruiner eller livløse Annaler.
(Lehmann 1832, 7, 524, cited in Oslund 327)
[But, as though frozen among these distant icy mountains, where the storms of time
never reached, it [ancient life] is preserved in Iceland in an almost unaltered purity,
so we can see there a living past, a rich picture of past life. Therefore the Icelandic
people must be dear to every Scandinavian, and we will find in the present-day Icelandic
character, lifestyle and customs, the trace of our past physiognomy, for which we
would look in vain in our own moldering ruins and lifeless annals.] (Oslund 327)
For Danish nationalists such as Lehmann—as well as for figures like Oehlenschläger—Iceland’s
landscapes and culture kept the glorious “Oldtidens Liv” [ancient life] of Scandinavia
alive, acting as a reminder of a past Scandinavian golden age even
while Danish landscapes had deteriorated in his own day. The Danish state’s indebtedness
to these distinctly Icelandic traditions and their vision of Iceland as a pipeline
to Denmark’s golden age arguably made Danish politicians and authorities more easily
persuaded by cultural arguments for Icelandic self-governance and more prone to concessions
as the Icelandic nationalist movement built on such argumentation was instrumentalized
by Icelandic figures such as Hallgrímsson and Jón Sigurðsson over the course of the
nineteenth century.
The first Danish concession, King Christian VIII’s restoration of the Alþingi in 1843,
reflects the significance of cultural considerations in the Icelandic nationalist
movement. As early as 1840, the king—who was “suspected of liberal tendencies”—expressed
the desire to offer a “gesture towards the remote speakers of the ancient Danish language”
through the re-establishment of the Alþingi at Þingvellir (Karlsson 2000, 205), as
was called for at this time by the Fjölnismenn. Despite the potential risk of
offering a concession to one dependency while the Danish duchies Schleswig and Holstein
experienced unrest, the king nonetheless elected to make this allowance out of respect
for an idealized Icelandic past and culture rather than out of any necessity. A later position taken by Lehmann likewise reveals the impact of cultural justifications
on the gradual development of Icelandic independence. Perhaps unsurprising given his
interest in a more democratic government in Denmark, Lehmann outspokenly supported
further concessions of increased Icelandic autonomy. In a 1869 parliamentary debate,
he argued that due to “the appreciation for what all the Nordic people owe them for
faithfully preserving
the remnants of the past, from which we all must obtain our future hope,” Iceland
deserved “a status in the state to which it would be difficult to find any parallels”
(Hálfdanarson 2006, 244; Lehmann 1869, 51–52). Lehmann, like many Danish politicians,
did not support full independence for Iceland
in part due to “pride” (Karlsson 2000, 216) and the fact that Iceland “seemed to require
substantial financial aid from Denmark” (Hálfdanarson 2006, 245). Nonetheless, based
on cultural argumentation, namely Iceland’s unique character
as well as its preservation of and physical link to Old Norse literature and memory,
Lehmann—and, in fact, many Danish politicians and officials—believed that Iceland
had legitimate claims to increased autonomy. As such, the Danish state gradually granted
Iceland more autonomy: first, reinstating the Alþingi in 1843, then granting Alþingi
legislative power and a constitution in 1874, then increasing Home Rule in 1904, and
finally recognizing Iceland as a state in union with Denmark in 1918, though Iceland
only became a republic in 1944 during the Nazi occupation of Denmark.
In a sense, Hallgrímsson not only cultivated lieux de mémoire in Iceland but exploited
the vision of Iceland as a lieu de mémoire for Denmark. The power of the resulting
nationalist ideology engendered by his work can thus be seen as depending upon, or
at least reflecting, the idea of memory as transcultural, or as “continually moving
across and beyond … territorial and social borders” (Erll 2011, 10). Moreover, as
previously suggested, in this case, memory can also be seen as “multidirectional”
(Rothberg 10). Chiara De Cesari and Ann Rigney explain that multidirectional memory
“reveals how the memory narratives central to the identity of one group can, in travelling,
help model the narrative of another group in a manner that is mutually-supportive”
(10). In the eyes of Danish nationalists, Iceland’s cultural memory constituted not
only
its own self-image, but part of Danish cultural memory and a Danish self-image as
well. This in turn caused these Danish figures to recognize and validate a worthy
and distinctive Icelandic identity. Icelandic nationalists such as Hallgrímsson further
cultivated this notion of a worthy and distinctive Icelandic identity but instrumentalized
Iceland’s unique national consciousness and its impressive attributes—its land, literature,
and history—in service of greater Icelandic sovereignty: he infused his countrymen
with nationalist sentiment and drive and, in effect, also capitalized on the shared
cultural memory between Iceland and its foreign ruler and Denmark’s consequent respect
for Iceland to render Danish officials sympathetic to the Icelandic cause. Though
it took time, when Icelandic politicians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
utilized the nationalist rhetoric and cultural justifications that Hallgrímsson helped
create, they were eventually successful in persuading Danish politicians and officials
to grant Iceland greater self-governance.
Significantly, nationalists in countries such as Ireland who cultivated similar cultural
arguments for independence from England proved convincing only to domestic populations.
Figures such as Easter 1916 insurrectionist Pádraic Pearse and, less radically, literary
revivalists W. B. Yeats and George William Russell engendered an empowered and separate
sense of Irish identity through the revival of the Irish language and Celtic legend.
Yet, while their works helped mobilize local support for Irish nationalism—in Pearse’s
case, even prompting rebellion—their cultural argumentation failed to resonate with
their foreign ruler. Unlike the Danish state, which relied upon Icelandic culture
for its own nation-building, England had no such investment in its dependency’s cultural
accomplishments and heritage. This discrepancy may account for why the English government
was less prone to granting Ireland increased sovereignty, failing to grant concessions
or to implement Home Rule even after finally passing the Home Rule Act in 1914, eventually
resulting in the Irish War of Independence. The transcultural memory shared between
Iceland and Denmark, in contrast, produced a certain amount of sympathy and respect
lacking in the Irish case and, thus, the unique circumstances necessary for a peaceful,
gradual shift towards Icelandic independence.
By re-establishing the saga-sites of the Íslendingasögur as lieux de mémoire, Hallgrímsson helped create the nationalist ideology that precipitated
political change for his nation in the nineteenth century and beyond. In vitally contributing
to the ideological stages of his country’s nationalist movement, Hallgrímsson partook
in a process observable in other European nations at around the same time, including
even Iceland’s foreign ruler. What is unique about the Icelandic case, however, is
not that Danish Romantic nationalists directly influenced Icelandic Romantic nationalists,
that they both recontextualized medieval texts for nationalist purposes, or that they
both ascribed to similar Herderian philosophy. What is unique is the fact that both
instrumentalized Old Norse cultural memory that was felt to be preserved in Icelandic
materials—namely, its manuscripts and landscapes—for their nation-building processes
and that Denmark’s dependence upon Iceland for its own self-image and nationalist
movement in turn affected the success of the Icelandic independence movement. Other
European nationalists using cultural justifications for their independence movements
found considerably less success when appealing to foreign rulers who had no personal
investment in their cultural attributes. The transcultural memory imbued in Iceland’s
landscapes and literature, and glorified by Danish and Icelandic Romantic nationalists,
was one of the key factors that made the difference.