Þorleifur Jóakimsson made a great achievement with his work Landnámsaga New Iceland in Canada. These are actually three publications, and the first, Brot af Landnámssago Nýja Ísland, was published in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1919. Frá Austri Til Vestur was published there in 1921, and the third part, Framhald á Landnámssago Nýja Íslands, was published the same year he died, 1923. He had been working on the history of Icelanders in N. Dakota for some time, had collected a lot of material and wrote about it. His daughter Þórstína took up the gauntlet and finished the work in 1926. Þorleifur’s good friend the artist Percy Grainger wrote about his friend’s work at the time and got Þórstína’s permission to publish it in his publication. The Icelandic translation was done by Einar Benediktsson. (JÞ)
”Percy Aldridge Grainger’s opinion of Þorleif Jackson, as a writer.
(Translated by Einar Benediktsson.)
“The work that Þorleifur Jackson has written about the life history and subjects of Icelandic settlers in Canada and the United States is, in my opinion, one of the greatest masterpieces in the literature of our time. It is singularly valuable for two reasons, firstly for literary genius, that inspiration of love for truth, which is the guiding star of all art, and secondly for a counter-examination and description of the special branches of human virtue, the moral and economic health of such countries as the Western World, Canada and the Eyjálfu must be vitally based on the leadership, bravery and perseverance of the farmer. Patriotism, success and a spiritual future depend on living this way, which is told in these life reports. The literature of all times depends on the attributes that Þorleifur Jackson shows so abundantly in this work, gave concisely, nurtured with the story details that describe the spirit, the humility of the creative, humble author, who is forgotten and lost, and that is precisely why himself in the joy of describing the lives of others, but it is a special talent, which grows of itself by unceasing, accumulating experience in his own school. It is an extraordinary art, full of action, of organic force, that sings a hymn to the energy of our existence as it is, to the vastness of the land as it is, to the evidence of the everyday practice of human activity as it is, and it is also for satisfaction over the fundamental laws of life as they are. Icelandic literature has, since Saga began, always had this powerful, main character, the level of heroism, love of freedom and desire for truth. Because of that, many among us judge that they are the highest in the world. What is new in this work by Þorleif Jackson, is its alignment, on such a basis, with the overview and organization of history in the new world. When Walt Whitman wrote about great poems from other countries, which over the centuries spread and overwhelmed the West – “were any of them harmonized with these countries, or did they naturally relate to them as they are and should be? Are any of them such that they are not based on denial and insults against the republic?”, is stated by Þorleif Jackson, where the exploits of everyday life are left as story material, and where the author sets himself a no higher goal than to tell the truth clearly, bluntly and audibly. Jackson has combined the best replica of Icelandic family history with the noblest spirit of American patriotism. His daughter, Thórstína Jackson, went to complete of the volume of work, which was unfinished at the time of the author’s death, with such devotion to her father’s memory, to his ideals, experience and determination, that there was complete harmony with the spirit of the work as a whole.”
Sig. Percy Grainger
20 June 1925
English version by Thor group.