Douglas Island news., 1919-06-13
ICELAND HAS OLD
 CIVILIZATION The Only Country That Has Pre- served Its Language Pure Down
 Through the Ages

sued by the Mcrgcnthalor Linotype Co., which builds the typesetting machines that arc used all over the world in modern printing offices:
 Iceland has liuotypes. IT news papers had reached the simple per lection of yer fibre, this simple re- mark would be the whole story. Something more, however. seems to be required and therefore as a train. SO Co speak. to the majesty Of the plain announcement, we add that lceland's linotypcs are not operated by polar bears or the aurora bore alis. but by operators who put it over" all other composing rooms in the world 80 far as classic purity Of composition is concerned lf New York or Chicago or San Francisco operator were setting his lintoypc matter in the Saxon of King Alfred. or competitors of France Italy and Spain were linotyping pure Gothic, they would be doing something to vie with those lcelandic men. They are linotyping in pure saga language and why this is so is explained in the following interview with Vil- hjalmur Stcfansson, the famous Are tie explorer and cthnologist.
 There are no elementary schools in Iceland. There hardly arc what we should call high schools. lt would follow. apparently that the per centago of nlitcracy is immense. The exact contrary Is the fact In this lonely sca-cagcd place just under the Arctic circle there is absolutely no illiteracy at all. There never has been any. Even tho Dark Ages did not cclipe Iceland as completely as they cclipsod the rest Of Europe. |, There has been so sustained a preservation of knowledge that to- day there is no farm, however lone ly that does not possess inmates competent to educate the children. Some worker always is compcent to act as tutor and every Icolandic father and mother is competent as a matter of course.
 Not a single farm lacks books. Nearly every farm has books in more than one language. and most lee laudlc households have books in at least three lcclandic, of course; Danish( which is not Icelandic); ; and books in English or German, or both.
 Thus Iceland's youth not only is thoroughly equipped to enter the College Of Iceland or colleges Of the outer world. but tho love for lit- craturc which has flourished for. a thousand years gives the people of the little country a rich and unique possession. They own today the beautiful wild sagas in their orig naI purity. or an ho lands on earth. Iceland is the one, and the only one. that has preserved its or iginal language.
 It Is literature alone that stabilizcs language. Literature fled from Flu rope during tho Dark Ages, but never has there been a time in Ice land when lt lacked men and women with the knowledge, the passion and the power to teach the sagas in un- marred purity and truth These Sagas were. and they are, the un- failing springs on which folk-cdu- cation has fed. When the Icelandic viking ships were feared on every coast. the best joy of the roycrs still was Co sit amid Icelandic house holds and hear the Skalds sing the songs that gradually became the Sagas or succeeding generations lo- day their peaceable descendants love best Co work the years yield Of wool i'm the long winter nights while chosen ones read or recite to the gathering.
 So stabilized. the Icelandic lam guago is as pure today as 1t was a thousand years ago. In that long period. all the languages of Europe have suffered many and violent changes. Gohic has vanished. Latin has become a dead language Saxon and kindred tongues have passed from England, Norman remains only as a ghost, and even Chaucer's Eng fish is hidden within a new cdidcc