"A Stranger in a Strange Land": A Translation of “An Icelandic Driver,” a Short Story by J. M. Bjarnason, with Analysis and Introduction to the Author

Abstract

This thesis explores the motifs of national identity, imagined communities, and anti-Jewish sentiments in the short story "An Icelandic Driver" (Íslenzkur ökumaður), which was written at the turn of the twentieth century by the Icelandic-Canadian author Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason. The story is remarkable within the context of Icelandic immigrant literature in North America at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries as it does not conform to the main shared narrative about this Icelandic migration: is not a story of Icelanders in a rural Icelandic "ethnic settlement." The narrator, in fact, is the only obvious Icelander in this story, which describes a multicultural community in Nova Scotia's capital, Halifax. Curiously, all of the story’s characters are not "just" Canadian—they are fellow immigrants, "hyphenated Canadians," and Jews. While the story masterfully describes urban life and the multicultural composition of the city, at the same time, it offers a very limited view of it. All Haligonians in the story are either European immigrants or are Canadian-born with European heritage, and the story's Jewish characters are described in a highly stereotyped way. This thesis is divided into two parts. The first part provides context for the story and consists of two chapters: firstly, an introduction to the author, J. Magnús Bjarnason, and his writing, as well as an overview of existing English translations; secondly, an analysis of the aforementioned topics and motifs in the story (national identity, imagined communities, and antisemitism), as well as a brief discussion of them within the larger context of Bjarnason's writing. The second part of the thesis is a commentary on my translation of the short story, which has not been translated into English before, i.e. an analysis of the particular translation challenges, as well as approaches and solutions employed. The complete translation is included as an appendix.