Baldur's Song: A Saga by David Arnason (review)

David Arnason's novel has covers showing a guitar in shades of grey and dun, giving little indication of the colourful story awaiting the reader; it brings home the old adage that one should not judge a book by its cover. Yet it is entirely appropriate as it foregrounds the importance of the main character's musical talent—an uncanny aptitude for whistling, even in infancy, and later for singing as well as playing the accordion and the guitar. This talent opens to him a number of unexpected doors in places high and low. But the musical reference also suggests the social and historical importance of the author's cultural enterprise as he joins the voices of his Icelandic "family" with Canada's multicultural chorus.

History has a strong presence in this novel. It is made concrete and visible in shades of greys in the numerous photographs that are credited in roughly equal measures to the Manitoba Archives and the author's family album. But the characters are so boldly drawn and with such vitality that before long you are convinced that the black-and-white eyes in the photographs sparkle life, colour and energy. After making a brief autobiographical start, describing his entry into the world in Gimli Hospital in Manitoba, Arnason asserts that he cannot continue with his own story until he has paid due homage to his "ancestors who suffered mightily" so that he could be born in Canada (4).

Told by Arnason, past events assume mythic, tall-tale, comic proportions. His ancestors back in Iceland were lovers who would climb every mountain, ford every stream—or else wait and suffer—until their stars were uncrossed; wizards who knew when to quit passing on the family tradition of conjuring; and sisters and brothers so tall and strong that they had difficulties finding their match in life. Arnason explains, "People live a long time there, and memories are passed from generation to generation, as if they were still fresh" (14). Arnason's Icelandic ancestors were also "named for someone else, because that's one way of keeping the dead alive" (12). His great grandmother "gathered up all the lonely and abandoned ghosts in Iceland and brought them with her" to Canada, and "she never looked back" (13).

The quiet center of the book is Baldur, the main character of the main story, who has an uncanny memory and an early ability to communicate with the dead. He is born and raised in Gimli but spends most of his adult life in Winnipeg. Through his consciousness, from infancy through maturity, Arnason provides us with an overview of the history of Icelanders in Manitoba: the early difficulties when smallpox struck the New Iceland settlement and decimated nearby Indian settlements; the fileting and preparation of fish for market in Gimli; work on the railways and sewers and construction of apartment blocks in Winnipeg; life in the Winnipeg Flats, in seedy side-streets, as well as in affluent homes. Without prejudice, Baldur observes and accepts people from all walks of life, and receives many a windfall by catching and running with the opportunities when they come his way rather than pursuing them single-mindedly.

In Winnipeg, Baldur meets a number of historical persons, including Lord and Lady Governor General Stanley of Preston and the Right Honourable John Sparrow David Thompson, Prime Minister of Canada. In Boundary Creek and Gimli, he meets Arnason's legendary great-grandfather and entrepreneur, Captain Baldi Anderson, and, in Iceland, he meets yet another Arnason relative, Thorarinn Kristjan Eldjarn, father of the third President of Iceland.

On the surface it would seem that Baldur's Song is the family saga of the Arnason clan; the author tells us that Baldur is his great-grandfather and there are certainly clear and visible historical traces of Arnason and his family. But above all this is the saga of the rebirth or revival of the "family" of Icelanders in their new homeland. Baldur says...