A celebration of cultural inheritance and the evolution of language.
Mapping the language, literature, and history of Icelandic immigrants and their descendants, this collection, translated and expanded for English-speaking audiences, delivers a comprehensive overview of Icelandic linguistic and cultural heritage in North America. Drawn from the findings of a three-year study involving over two hundred participants from Manitoba, North Dakota, Saskatchewan, and the Pacific West Coast, Icelandic Heritage in North America reveals the durability and versatility of the Icelandic language.
Editors Birna Arnbjörnsdóttir, Höskuldur Thráinsson, and Úlfar Bragason bring together a range of interdisciplinary scholarship to investigate the endurance of the “Western Icelander.” Chapters delve into the literary works of Icelandic immigrant writers and interpret archival letters, newspapers, and journal entries to provide both qualitative and quantitative linguistic analyses and to mark significant cultural shifts between early settlement and today.
Icelandic Heritage in North America offers an in-depth examination of Icelandic immigrant identity, linguistic evolution, and legacy.
Authors
- Pages
- 328
- Published in
- Winnipeg, CA
- Rights
- The Authors
Table of Contents
- Cover 1
- Contents 6
- Foreword 10
- Introduction 14
- Chapter 1. Moving a Language between Continents: Icelandic Language Communities 1870–1914 45
- Chapter 2. Icelanders and America: What is it to be Vestur-Íslendingur? 63
- Chapter 3. Acculturation on Their Own Terms: The Social Networks of Political Radicals among Icelandic Immigrants in Canada in the Early Twentieth Century 83
- Chapter 4. The Barnason Brothers in Nebraska: Two Pioneer Farmers 103
- Chapter 5. Ralph E. Halldorson and the Great War 121
- Chapter 6. Icelandic Immigrants, Modernity, and Winnipeg in Einar Hjörleifsson Kvaran’s “Hopes” 139
- Chapter 7. Another Emigrant Ship Crossing the Atlantic: The Poetics of Migration in the Poetry of Undína and Stephan G. Stephansson 156
- Chapter 8. The Young Icelander Grows Up: Nationalism and Ethnic Identity in Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason’s Life and Work 174
- Chapter 9. Icelandic-Canadian Oral Lore: New Life in a New Land and How the Women’s Tales May Shed Light on the Classification of the Edda Poems 189
- Chapter 10. Raven Tracks across the Prairies: Icelandic Immigration and Manuscript Culture in the Canadian West 208
- Chapter 11. Word Meanings in North American Icelandic: More North American or More Icelandic? 225
- Chapter 12. Understanding Complex Sentences in a Heritage Language 245
- Chapter 13. “And the Dog Is Sleeping Too”: The Use of the Progressive in North American Icelandic 265
- Chapter 14. Language and Identity: The Case of North American Icelandic 284
- Chapter 15. The Heritage Language Project: Impact and Implications 305
- Acknowledgements 320
- Contributors 322
