Today's episode delves into the fascinating story behind Iceland's national anthem, "Lof Songur," which was originally written to commemorate the millennium of Icelandic settlement. The episode explores the intriguing history of the poem's author, Matthias Jocumsen, and the composer, Sveinbjörn Sveinbjörnsson, highlighting their contributions to Iceland's cultural heritage. We learn about the anthem's roots in the peaceful nationalist movement of the 19th century and how it emerged as a symbol of identity during a time of significant political change. The episode also touches on the anthem's lyrics, which reflect deep religious themes, and discusses how these themes resonate in modern Iceland, a country that has become increasingly secular. Join us as we uncover the connections between music, history, and national identity in this captivating exploration of Iceland's anthem.

Please read more about Iceland and go there if you can. Sorry about the cars in background here and there. My road is crazy busy, I have no closets, and wasn't planning a podcast when I bought the place.

1. Sverri Hólmarsson, ed. (2007). Icelandic-English Dictionary. lofsöngur = hymn, song of praise
2. Evans, Andrew. "Is Iceland Really Green and Greenland Really Icy?", National Geographic (30 June 2016).
3. https://mapfight.xyz/map/us.ky/#is 
4. Pieter Dhondt (25 November 2011). National, Nordic Or European?: Nineteenth-Century University Jubilees and Nordic Cooperation. BRILL. p. 7. ISBN 978-90-04-21694-5.
5. Jakobsson, Sverrir; Halfdanarson, Gudmundur (2016). Historical Dictionary of Iceland. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 175. ISBN 9781442262904.
6. Hálfdanarson, Guðmundur (2006-09-01). "Severing the Ties – Iceland's Journey from a Union with Denmark to a Nation‐State". Scandinavian Journal of History. 31 (3–4): 237–254.
7. Hálfdanarson, Guðmundur (2000-06-01). "Iceland: A Peaceful Secession". Scandinavian Journal of History. 25 (1–2): 87–100.
8. https://icelandictimes.com/matthias-jochumsson-poet-and-writer-of-icelands-national-anthem/ 
9. McCall, Chris (June 27, 2016). "Iceland's national anthem was written in an Edinburgh house". The Scotsman. Edinburgh. Archived from the original
10. https://www.naxos.com/Bio/Person/Sveinbjorn_Sveinbjornsson/21549 
11. https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/learning/hall-of-fame/hall-of-fame-a-z/sveinbj%C3%B6rnsson-sveinbj%C3%B6rn 
12. http://www.musik.is/Baldur/TsagaRvk/1800-1900/til1900_7.html 
13. http://www.musik.is/Baldur/TsagaRvk/1800-1900/til1900_8.html 
14. https://www.encyclopedia.com/places/germany-scandinavia-and-central-europe/scandinavian-political-geography/iceland#HISTORY 
15. https://www.cmuse.org/characteristics-of-romantic-era-music/ 
16. https://www.schoolofrock.com/resources/vocals/how-to-find-your-vocal-range 
17. Silk, Mark (July 1, 2016). "Go Iceland!". The Gazette. Colorado Springs. Religion News Service.
18. https://web.archive.org/web/20170425194349/http://gazette.com/go-iceland/article/1579461 

Hello and welcome to the Anthems podcast. Today we are on the other side of the world and on an island that's like real close to Canada, but is still part of Europe.

I don't know if I understood geography better, then maybe I wouldn't be doing a podcast that involves learning so much of it. Hopefully you're gonna learn something here, too. Maybe you're learning right now. I don't know. Regardless, thank you for joining me. A small note.

On my last episode, I did in fact pronounce subsistence as sustenance every single time I said it, so I apologize. But at least I was consistently wrong. Today's anthem is Lof Songur, or hymn more fully.

The millennium hymn of Iceland is brought to you by me asking my daughter what to do next. She actually answered something completely different, but that was a country that I'm not ready to do yet for reasons.

And she wanted to know how the country got its name, and Iceland is the country she said she is second most curious about. So to satisfy her second most curiosity, I have something that's kind of sad.

A Viking named Floki Vilgorsson was the first norseman to intentionally sail to what would be called Iceland, and it didn't really go well for him. His daughter died on the way there, and on arrival, the livestock that they brought also all died.

So he forlornly climbed a mountain and observed a fjord full of icebergs. I'd like to think that he dramatically raised his fist and said something. Something like, curse this land of ice, this Iceland.

But clearly that is just speculation and probably false. Just like the idea that the Vikings called the place Iceland to discourage visitors from its bountiful lands.

It's not a spoiler for me to tell you that yet again, my lead in has absolutely nothing to do with the anthem that we're going to spend the next roughly two minutes and 40 seconds listening to. You will hear me again at the other end of the thing. My first impression, it's essentially a hymn.

I could have heard it at a catholic mass growing up. Despite being less than a three minute song, it felt like it took a very long time.

There are some interesting musical bits hanging out in here, and unless you know icelandic, and if you do, that's actually very cool, the lyrics will probably be a surprise to you when we get there. They were to me. One thing I do notice, though, is that there is a large vocal range for the singers in this thing.

This is another one of the good ones for me. It's not exciting in any way. But I do enjoy the song.

Remember the last time I said I was bad at geography when I was talking about the last country we were doing? Well, I thought that Iceland was a tiny landlocked country in northern Europe, and it's definitely not.

Like I said, it is an island and it is the 18th largest island in the world, although it is part of Europe. So it's partially correct if I'm being particularly magnumonious.

But it sits just barely on the non arctic side of the Arctic Circle, about 750 km, or 405 nautical miles due north and a little bit west of Scotland.

It strikes me as just barely european, and if history had been a little bit different, it'd be considered part of North America, especially since its very closest neighbor is in fact Greenland. The bulk of the country's 40,000 sq mi are a single island that is just slightly smaller than Kentucky.

Again, differently shaped, the country is full of fjords and is very geologically active since it sits on something called a subaerial plume that results from the roughly 18 million year old icelandic hotspot on the mid atlantic ridge.

So under the air, climate wise, Iceland is what I'd call consistently chilly with 65 degrees fahrenheit in July being a balmy day, 14 or 15 in Celsius. Fun fact, there are many geysers on Iceland, including the one named geysir, from where the english word geyser is derived.

Something youll notice if you keep listening to the show is that there are certain historical spawning grounds for national anthems, nexus points, so to speak.

What I mean is that there are some generally tumultuous points in history where lots of sovereign nations are born or perhaps become independent, having already been there. And one of those spawning grounds is the fallout from World War two.

And we've already run into two of the current countries that were born in that era, North Macedonia and North Korea. Iceland is another one of them. It's a kind of a slow burn revolution. I'm not sure what the real historian term is for that.

If there is one, it's not really a revolution at all. It's an independence movement, but there's no battles, no wars.

But the beginning of our story is going to pick up right where the independence movement began, with something called the old Covenant.

The sources about why they agreed to this are sagas. So there's really a ton of ambiguity and straight up storytelling, but they're really fun to read.

For most of that time, there was no real independence movement to speak of in the sources, although I can't imagine there was no dissension at all in the country, because humanity.

Unlike all of the nationalist movements on continental Europe, Iceland's movement was completely peaceful.

Historians think that it's a combination of most Icelanders kind of being on the same page about things, Denmark being unwilling to commit to any show of force that required them to go across the whole ocean to be repressive. So peaceful transitions are nice to see. Most of them are definitely not that.

I only really have space for mention of him, but do read about this guy. He has a really wild story that is also in some way really mundane.

He never was arrested, he never called for full on independence during his life, and basically lived off of danish government research grants at universities that he worked at.

But he was absolutely essential to the eventual independence of the country in an intellectual respect, even if I'm not going to mention anything else about this guy again, because at this point in the story, our composer and our poet have both arrived and been born. There's certainly more germane to the tale than even an essential revolutionary that inspired the movement.

Maybe somebody will talk about him on a historical podcast and it'll get recommended to me. We will start with the poet, a guy named Matthias Jocumsen, mostly because he was born twelve years before the composer.

It performed to critical acclaim and essentially began the modern icelandic drama.

Joachim was a pretty religious guy and after graduating became a priest for some time, but he was also a very liberal guy and left the priesthood for some time to be an editor because he had some issues with how they're very vague, but he had some social issues with the religion. But he was eventually drawn back into the role of priest after he joined a reformist religious movement.

Mattius was also a translator of works into icelandic, real prolific at that.

What made him famous though, was all of the poetry that he wrote, mostly religious stuff like hymns and elegies with a christian tilt, but also a fair number of epic narrative stuff in icelandic. But his most famous poem is the millennium hymn of Iceland, and it is also literally the reason why I'm talking about him right now.

The enormous popularity of Mattias work helps explain why one of his songs was picked up as the national anthem. Now let's go back and catch up.

The composer Zvien Bjornsson's father was the chief justice of the Supreme Court in Iceland, but that is actually not what his family is known for. He's part of a dynasty of prominent icelandic actors, artists and entertainers. Just a whole bunch of really talented people in that bloodline.

Zven, who I'm going to refer as Zven to lessen the number of things I pronounce poorly, went also to the prestigious latin school.

When he graduated, it was expected that he would continue on a path to become a priest, which apparently you have to be 25 to do in the Church of Iceland.

But Sven surprised everybody when he said he was going to get a civil service degree and jumped on a ship to Copenhagen so he could study music and make a living playing piano.

The journey took an extra two months because the poor guy was so susceptible to seasickness that he needed a like break in the middle of the journey in order to finish it. And Iceland to Denmark is not super far. I'm not sure where they stopped. It's not clear about that.

But at the end of that he spent a couple of years getting an excellent musical education in Copenhagen and then somehow landed in Edinburgh and became a rather popular piano instructor and did just fine for himself in Scotland, purchasing a home, marrying and having some kids. Another thing that he did was work on his own compositions and singing.

Many of the songs that he composed were for icelandic poetry that was brought to him by people that happened to be in Edinburgh in a situation similar to the italian anthem. Although no one here is a revolutionary. Zven was approached by Mattius to compose music for an icelandic hymn.

In this case, it was destined to become the hymn that used to celebrate the granting of a constitution to Iceland. And that coincided with their thousandth anniversary of the first settlement.

He was apparently resistant to the idea, having never had composed a song with lyrics written in his native tongue. But the priest was a very persistent guy.

Like I mentioned earlier, some of the sources say that Mattius was staying with Zven when he wrote the lyrics. But historians now generally believe that he arrived with a hymn basically written already.

At any rate, the two collaborated and they put together O God of our country.

At one point the economy in Scotland kind of collapsed, so the family moved to Canada and the plan was to retire in Iceland on the generous state pension that they granted him, in a similar manner to Mattius. But he got super bored there for the same reason that he left in the first place.

Iceland just did not provide a rich musical life and Zven wanted a rich musical life. So he moved back to Copenhagen and he literally died playing the piano when he was 79, right on stage.

Zven helped a write a song so popular that it became a national anthem 70 years later. People loved this song so much, and Iceland made the creators into national historic figures.

So how did lufts Unger become the national anthem of Iceland? The shortest answer is the nexus point known as the end of World War two. But that is also the most boring answer. It brings up another question.

How is a country that had no military at all figure into World War two? Not really all that much, actually. But Denmark was super occupied by, you know, the Nazis. Literally occupied by the Nazis.

So they were doing none of the international relations or military affairs that were part of the personal union and the pact. Iceland did not, however, choose to be a neutral party in the war and established diplomatic relations with the United States and the United Kingdom.

I don't know, that seems like maybe they should have redone it. But one of the provisions in that constitution was for the country to choose a national anthem.

And by popular acclaim, they chose the most popular song in the country, which was o God of our country. So that's how they got the anthem. It's the actual making of the song into the anthem is not the exciting part of the story. So onto the song itself.

Lof songr is an example of hymnal music from the romantic period, essentially the second half of the 19th century. It was tied in with the romanticism movement in general.

In many ways, the pieces were often inspired by or intended to get you to think of nature, literature, poetry, fine arts, or some kind of supernatural thing. It's also a fairly common type of music for national anthems because the 18 hundreds were a time when a lot of nationalism was developed.

They don't even have an army. It is no less a nationalistic song than something like God save the queen. You'll hear it in a little bit.

Sven's music teacher in Leipzig, Germany, that was his last educational stop before settling into Scotland, was one Karl Renaik.

He was not the most influential of the romantic composers, but when your contemporaries are people like Beethoven and Rachmaninoff, what are your chances at being the big fish there? Anyway, he was a good teacher and he had an outsized influence on Sven's compositional style. It strikes as very romantic, period appropriate music.

If you listen to more of his work, you should. It's pretty good stuff as far as classical goes, especially if you like stuff like Beethoven.

But now, one really prominent thing that we should note about oh God of our country, I alluded to it before, is that it is a fiendishly difficult thing to sing because there is a nearly two active vocal range that it requires for the more musically knowledgeable folk. Listening is a minor 14th interval, or 22 half steps, the same number of frets on my guitar.

So I have come to learn that it's not really a gigantic range by modern professional singer standards. Somebody like Mariah Carey is five octaves and Mike Patton is six.

For an untrained singer like me, it can be completely out of the question, and if I would try to sing a song like that, it would not be good.

It's one of the criticisms that is lobbed at Lufts Unger, but it rings as a hollow criticism to me because the song was written to be sung by a choir in a church to celebrate a thousand year anniversary. He had no idea it was going to become pop music and then a national anthem. Trust me, you're going to hear some even stranger choices.

If you keep listening to this show, we will move on to the translation. I've been using the literal translation so far in my analysis, but I'm going to break from that here. Thankfully, I have an evolving format.

I can break from whatever I want. There is a reason, though, I said earlier, this song is a straight up hymn written by a man that was an actual priest.

As such, it is a very praise heavy to the Lord God song, which is fine, but it makes for repetitive podcasting when two thirds of the song is praise. So we are going to use poetic translation because there is nothing lot of subtlety to parse out in this thing.

At least that way it will sound prettier than usual in English.

The anthem is as our country's God, our country's God, we worship thy name in its wonder sublime the sons of the heavens are set in thy crown by thy legions the ages of time with thee each day is as a thousand years each thousand of years but a day eternity's flow with its homage of tears that reverently passes away Iceland's thousand years Iceland's thousand years eternity's flower with its homage of tears that reverently passes away our God, our God we bow to thee our spirits most fervent we place in thy care Lord God of our father from age unto age we are breathing our holiest prayer we pray and we thank thee a thousand years for safely protecting we stand we pray and we bring thee our homage of tears our destiny rest in thy hand Iceland's thousand years Iceland's thousand years the hoarfrost of morning which tinted those years thy sun rising high shall command our country's God our country's God our life is a feeble and quivering reed we perish deprived of thy spirit and light to redeem and uphold in our need inspire us at morn with thy courage and love and lead through the days of our strife at evening send peace from thy heavens above and safeguard our nation through life Iceland's thousand years Iceland's thousand years o prosper our people diminish our tears and guide in thy wisdom through life like I said, it's a hymn. And it's an extremely religious hymn at that.

In fact, it's so religious that it has received some criticism in what is a quite secular modern Iceland. Despite the small matter that they still have in official church.

Which, if you're curious, is a type of evangelical Lutheranism, if you want to read more about it. To be fair, there are a ton of religious overtones in many anthems. Because they're written by people who happen to be really religious.

And large swaths of humanity put that in the songs that they write. They're products of their times and their places. That's fine, but they're just usually not actually something written for a church.

I haven't checked after that. The lyrics, in addition to being very religious in nature, are well in line with what romantic music was all about. Mattius just wasn't any guy.

He knew exactly what he was doing. And as such, he was absolutely cognizant of his audience.

A focal point of the romantic era in poetry and literature was the focus on the sublime throughout the writing, Lofsanger certainly passes muster for that.

A crown set with a thousand suns and the Lord living Iceland's thousand years as a day is about as sublime a couple of opening lines as you could think of.

The poet then goes on to praise their God and their country while running down a virtual checklist of romantic era themes along with a focus on the sublime. This piece is typical of romantic poetry in being not so intellectually focused.

I'm not saying that it's anti intellectual, it's just that romantic poetry was emotional and supernatural almost all of the time as part of a deliberate move away from and growth in addition to the neoclassical tradition. And I remembered that from my 400 level english class, so some of that stuff is still in there.

I think a real in depth analysis of the lyrics that goes past the broad contextual considerations that I have made thus far would be to do something of a disservice to this song.

The imagery and intention of the piece stands fairly well on its own, just like that, and I dare say it doesn't really require any explanation from me to get its point across in a really pleasing way. What we're left with is the wrapping up part of the show.

It's a little bit shorter than the other ones, but again, I don't have a format, but we're following from it's kind of an odd story about a nation that quietly lived for a millennium, and then somebody wrote a song to celebrate that. The song went on to become, in a really odd way, a hymn that turned into a pop song, and that's interesting stuff.

So the writing, recording and production for the show are done by me. I also wrote and played the intro and outro music. The music was used by me with my permission unless otherwise noted.

The anthems I play are public domain stuff. My sources and other tasty bits I find are contained in the show notes.

The most direct way to get to those show notes is@anthemspodcast.com you can find me on Facebook and WhatsApp as the anthemspodcast. I'm not going to bother to get on any social media other than that. Yet.