Wakeful Nights: Stephan G. Stephansson: Icelandic-Canadian Poet

The age of ideals has passed…” declared poet Stephan G. Stephansson with prophetic insight in the year 1900. “The age of violence has taken its place, and I have no use for such business.” An atheist, pacifist, egalitarian, socialist, and above all a critical and philosophical poet, Stephansson expressed strong ideas and ideals relating to nature and the environment, culture and multiculturalism, the immigrant experience and politics – many of which are as valid today as they were 100 years ago. Born on a small poor farm in the North of Iceland in 1853, Stephan G. Stephansson immigrated to the New World in 1873 with family and friends. In 1889, after 16 years in Wisconsin and Dakota Territory, he settled in Alberta, Canada, where he remained until his death in 1927. In addition to homesteading three times, this remarkable pioneer played primary community roles – as a leader in education, a driving force in local initiatives, a speaker and humorist, and as Justice of the Peace. Most notably, he found time to compose more than 2,000 pages of intricately crafted poetry and a substantial body of prose, thus becoming a leading literary figure in the Icelandic language while resident in Canada. Five of his six sizeable volumes of poetry were published during his lifetime, and in 1917 he was invited to Iceland in grateful recognition of his outstanding literary contributions. With only the rudiments of a traditional home education, Stephan G. Stephansson pursued a life-long trajectory of learning inspired by the lively literary culture of his homeland. He identified confidently as a self-educated farmer and demonstrated rare assurance in his own profound philosophies that set him apart as a man ahead of his times. "A beautifully crafted narrative about a turn of the nineteenth-century poet whose life on, and of, the land challenged him to hold to his roots in Iceland while yet wrestling with the vicissitudes of transplantation to the emerging cultures of North America. This book is as much about the transformative particulars of place as it is about the man whose extraordinary poetic record of them reveals a soul torn by alternating turmoil and peace." - John H. Wadland, Professor Emeritus, Department of Canadian Studies, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario. About the Viðar Hreinsson, an independent literary scholar, grew up on a farm in the North of Iceland. A lecturer on various aspects of Icelandic literary and cultural history at universities in Iceland, Denmark, and Canada, he also acted as general editor of the acclaimed five-volume series The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, published in 1997. His two-volume biography of Icelandic-Canadian literary giant Stephan G. Stephansson was published in Icelandic in 2002 and 2003. Volume I was nominated for the Icelandic Literary Prize in 2002 and the completed work received the 2003 Award for Excellence in Scholarly Writing. An outspoken environmental and political activist and former Director of the Reykjavík Academy, Viðar Hreinsson has since written two biographies and worked on developing new and critical approaches to Icelandic literary and cultural history.