Lögberg-Heimskringla - 15.10.1982, Side 5

WINNIPEG, FÖSTUDAGUR 15. OKTÓBER 1982-5
Ingolf's
Pillars:
The changing Icelandic House
Continued from page 4
ranean structure equally appropriate,
but settlers rarely transplanted the old
house forms.
In 1878 S.B. Olsen emigrated from
Iceland to Nova Scotia, then in 1885
he moved to a new settlement in the
Thingvalla District. In his little book,
Pioneer Sketches, Olsen remembered
that his father first cut logs from his
own land and built a log house, which
burned almost immediately in a prai-
rie fire. Then his father made an ex-
cavation of the south side of a hill.
The walls were seven feet high at the
front. The facade was sod, and the
roof was poplar poles with sod on top.
Several other Icelandic families
erected the traditional semisubterran-
ean hut, but without the stable
beneath. But Olsen notes that in this
"thoroughly Icelandic settlement,"
"nearly all the houses were built of
logs, chinked, plastered, and white-
washed." A few Icelanders experi-
mented with log houses with turf
built up around the outside — an in-
genious way to circumvent the disad-
vantage of the herringbone turf pat-
terns used in the traditional passage
house.
Sigurbjörg Stefánsson, whose
parents settled near Wynyard,
Saskatchewan, writes: "The earliest
lodging followed no traditional pat-
tern, but was largely shaped by
poverty, lack of tools and materials,
and the urgency of the moment . . .
As soon as possible all such housing
was replaced with wooden dwellings,
mostly either in cottage style or high,
narrow two-story frame houses." Her
remarks are perceptive, but the ques-
tion remains of why other immigrant
groups, both in United States and
Canada, facing the same pressures
and environment conditions, did not
build log cabins, preferring instead to
retain traditional house models, how-
ever inappropriate.
Shelter and imagination
Rapoport's basic hypothesis is that
"house form is not simply the result
of physical forces or any single causal
factor, but is the consequence of a
whole range of socio-cultural factors
. . . What finally decides the form of a
dwelling, and moulds the spaces and
their relationships is the vision that
people have of the ideal life." This
history of Icelandic vernacular ar-
chitecture in the old and new world
bears out this thesis in a general way,
but the relationship between house
design and culture is more nebulous
than it first appears, and the question
of immigrant housing is particularly
complex. Religion, for example, was
an influential factor in the architec-
ture of some immigrant groups. Cer-
tain proscriptions in the Mennonite
religion, such as separation of the
sexes, shaped the interior arrange-
ment of their homes and that plan did
not change when they migrated to
Canada. The Doukhobers' belief in
communal social organization led to a
particular layout of village set-
tlements. But although most Icelan-
ders were devout Lutherans, nothing
in their beliefs influenced their dwell-
ings. Their social organization appar-
ently could be carried on as effective-
ly in a one-room cabin as in a one-
room loft house or the badstofa of a
passage house.
The "vision of an ideal life" is
similarly elusive when applied to
domestic architecture. If the ideal life
includes a disregard for material
culture, the house itself will provide
little material evidence. Icelandic
people emphasized the mythical
world — they wrote about it, they
carved it, and, it a sense they lived
Continued on page 6
Útför Dr.
Kristjáns
Framh. af bls. 1
Guðmundsdóttir einleik á fiðlu,
Máríuvers eftir Pál ísólfsson, en eft-
ir ræðu hans var sungið Island
ögrum skorið.
Þeir sem báru kistuna úr kirkju
voru Gunnar Thoroddsen forsætis-
ráðherra, Jón Helgason forseti sam-
einaðs alþingis, Bjarni Vilhjálmsson
þjóðskjalavörður, Guðmundur
Magnússon háskólarektor, Hannes
Eldjárns
Pétursson skáld, Þór Magnússon
þjóðminjavörður, Andrés Björnsson
útvarpsstjóri og Logi Einarsson
forseti hæstaréttar. Flutt var
Chaconne um stef ur Þorlákstíðum
eftir Pál ísólfsson.
Fyrir kirkjudyrum var
þjóðsöngurinn leikinn, en lögreglan
og skátar stóðu heiðursvörð. Jarðsett
var í Fossvogskirkjugarði.
• GFr.
An Icelandic wood carving from the nineteenth-century depicts
life in the badstofa, or common room. One family member read
aloud while others spun, wove, knitted, carved, and repaired equip-
ment. Tools hung from the walls and ceiling..
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