The Schemers and Viga-glum - Tapa blanda

George Johnston, renowned for his fine translations of Old Icelandic tales such as The Saga of Gisli and Thrand of Gotu, takes a look at two orally-preserved stories from the middle of the ninth to the eleventh century. The first, `The Saga of the Schemers', is unique in that the work is wholly imaginative and its mood is comic whereas most are weighted on the side of passion and tragedy. The second, `The Saga of Viga-Glum', leans more traditionally on the story of a known Icelandic chieftain of the tenth century. Yet it cannot be read as history; fictional and folktale motifs have been worked into reports of actual events, and supernatural elements, belonging to pagan mythology and worship, have held their place in the telling. This is an accurate and thoughtful translation executed by a master.

When war was declared, he joined the RCAF and served four and a half years, including thirteen months as a reconnaissance pilot in West Africa. He returned to Canada in 1944, married Jeanne McRae, and completed his MA at the University of Toronto. In between, he taught two years (1947-49) at Mount Allison University, and in 1950, having found teaching to his liking, accepted a post at Ottawa's Carleton University where, for twenty-nine years, he was a charismatic and much-loved professor of Old and Middle English and Old Norse. His first book of poems, "The Cruising Auk, " written during the war, was not published until 1959, when he was forty-six.

Sabbatical years were decisive in Johnston's life. During his first, 1956-57 at Dorking in Surrey, he met Peter Foote of the University of London, who taught him Old Norse, and began translating "The Saga of Gisli" in collaboration with him. A second sabbatical, in 1967-68, was spent in Denmark and included the discovery of modern Faroese poetry and the first of four visits the Johnstons made to the Faroe Islands. A last sabbatical, 1974-75, spent mostly in Gloucester, England, included a three-week visit to Iceland.

After "The Cruising Auk, " Johnston published four more poetry collections before the appearance of "Endeared by Dark, " his Collected Poems, in 1990. A man whose diverse interests included calligraphy, bell-ringing, wine-making and beekeeping, who kept up a wide correspondence and enjoyed reading the classics aloud with his wife, Johnston retired from Carleton in 1979. He died in August of 2004.