Strange, the things we care about. Some people care about the fate of the timber wolf or the prairie gopher or the red legged wombat. Others care about historic events, are fixated on Napoleon and the battle of Waterloo. Others are passionate about Mediterranean frescoes. There
When our Icelandic ancestors were faced with starving to death or risking their lives immigrating to North America, they had little idea of what they were getting into. An entire continent covered in endless forest. Just the size of North America was beyond comprehension. In place of valleys and mountains, there were days of traveling through dense forest. Winter, in Iceland, could be bitter, but not with the temperatures of the prairies.
The immigration agents came. There were brochures. There even may have been some letters from people who left early. But nothing prepared them for what was to come. The Canadian government was not soliciting immigrants for the benefit of the immigrants. They wanted immigrants to produce goods and order goods that would be transported on the railways. Politicians and businessmen wanted immigrants because they could make money on them.
There were no preparatory classes. No one said
Photo courtesy of: http://blessiblog.blogspot.ca/2012/11/have-icelandic-will-travel.html
How hard was it for your ancestors to get from their farm to the harbour where they would meet the ship that would take them on the first leg of their journey to Amerika?
Rodwell was in Iceland, the summer of 1879. He describes his trip. He’s traveling at the same time as some of our ancestors were making their trip over the mountain passes, through the lava fields, past the glacier covered mountains, over the bogs. Unfortunately, I don’t have a diary from my Great Grandparents describing their journey. However, I have Rodwell’s report in Nature.
This is what he says:
Climate.
J
For a very long time in Iceland there was little art. It wasn
It was cold.
Heritage is a funny sort of thing. It turns up in strange places and in strange ways.
Yesterday, I took cousin Dilla and JO for supper to Amma
It snowed last night. The morning was pristine white. The snow here is soft, fluffy, dry unlike the wet heavy snow of the West Coast.
The sky was white, fading into blue and everywhere there were blue and grey shadows and by early afternoon the low spot at third and centre was filled with water. Trucks and cars going through it went splash, splash and the water rushed away in little waves.
At the lake’s edge there was wind, cold enough to make me wish I
The Victoria of 1897.
Bob Asgeirson once told me that he was working in Winnipeg when he took the train to Vancouver for a holiday. He left in a blizzard and when he got to Vancouver, a gentle rain was falling and everything was green. He immediately booked a ticket back to Winnipeg, quit his job and moved permanently to the West Coast.
When I first arrived
It is 1892, my lang amma has been in Canada for 17 years. She is married, very Icelandic but has chosen an Englishman, an army officer, the son of minister who has a master
