THE A ME RICAN-SC AN DIN AVIAN REVIEW 
553 
language is so peculiarly well adapted to poetic expression as Ice¬ 
landic. It is remarkably euphonious, highly inflected, and conse¬ 
quently most pliable. \ ou can bend each word half a dozen ways 
to make it fit into strange and ingenious verse patterns. But playing 
with alliteration and intricate verse forms does not make poetry, and 
Icelandic verse has been weakened by too high finish. The younger 
poets are masters of their craft, but they do not display any of the 
tiresome parlor tricks which have spoiled so much of Icelandic poetry. 
When I say this I am touching on the faults of the older school. I have 
no room to dwell on its great merits. The Review has received some 
translations from the recently published book of poems by Kristian 
X. Julius, the North Dakota farmer, who writes under the initials, 
K.N., and whose bright genius has but recently received the recog¬ 
nition it deserves. “K.N.” is a wit, a caustic philosopher, finely sea¬ 
soned. At his best he reminds me of Heine. He has a delightfully 
swift and light touch, and while he has written much that will soon be 
forgotten, many of his verses will outlive the more ambitious outpour¬ 
ings of his contemporaries. He leans perhaps too much toward cele¬ 
brating his jousts with Bacchus, but he is never coarse and never 
offensive and nearly always amusing. Of late he has been engaged 
heroically in breaking his good lances against prohibition windmills. 
He is now an old man, and his whole life has been sacrificed in hard 
manual labor. He is Iceland’s Bobby Burns. 
Iceland to-day has a population of probably a little more than 
ninety thousand. It can boast at least half a dozen poets, who if 
they wrote in English as well as they write in Icelandic, would be 
figures of distinction in the English speaking world of letters. The 
real measure of Johann Sigurjonsson’s tragedy, Eyvind of the Hills , 
has yet to be taken. When the play was presented in New York city, 
it was described by one critic as “a minor European masterpiece.” I 
am inclined to believe it will some day be acknowledged as a major 
masterpiece. Einar Jonsson’s sculpture has received wide acclaim, 
and he is still a young man. 
In the United States and Canada there must be between thirtv 
and forty thousand persons of Icelandic birth and descent. They 
are successful farmers, merchants, lawyers, physicians, teachers, etc., 
but thus far they have not picked up in the Western World the tools 
of their ancestors. They have not begun to create. Was the gift lost 
in the process of transplantation, or has not the second generation 
caught the genius of the English language ? I believe there are to-day 
some tow-headed youngsters, whose grandparents emigrated from 
the saga island, running around on Saskatchewan or Minnesota farms, 
who inside of fifteen or twenty years will be piping some interesting 
lays in the language of this land. 
