Lögberg-Heimskringla - 14.06.1991, Page 3

Lögberg-Heimskringla • Föstudagur 14. júní 1991 • 3
Laufey Ólafsdóttir, Hoople, N.D., remembers life wasn’t easy
growing up the daughter of a farmer in lceland.
Over coffee she says: “From thetímeíwasa títtle girl Iwas always
dreaming of this country. Things were supposed to be so rosyhere,
you heard that. I remember I was a títtle kid and two or three of us
slept in the same bed and I was aiways praying under the bedcovers
andaskingtheLord, ‘GetmetoAmerica.’Iwantedtogeta two-story
house, that was my prayer, and I wanted to have one baby, a boy,
preferably, get married, and I swore thatifl evergot to the position
that I would be running something andl had hired help, I swore on
the book that Iwasgoing to begood to them. Becauselhave worked
some places in Iceland where people have not been niceto me. ”
The two-story house is just west of Grand Forks, and she and her
son farm 800 acres, and she has tried to be good to the help.
By Lmnco Nlxon
The hands are the things you notice
fírst — big, northern hands bom to
hard work and handy at many things.
“Oh, those Viking hands,” Laufey
Olafsdóttir Aaland says. “I think I have
enough bones for two. I used to think
my hands were so terrible, I used to sit
on them all the time or hide them
wherever I could. And then one day I
thought, Oh, my God, if the Lord
thought this was good enough for the
ends of my arms, why in the world
would I be sitting on it?”
‘You used to leam those kinds
of things growing up
in Iceland’
Hers are hands good for swinging a
scythe or a rake during haymaking, or
for spinning wool or notching a sheep’s
ear. You used to learn those kinds of
things growing up in Iceland. Her fa-
ther rented a farm called Álftarhóll in
Austur Landeyjar. It was a little way
inland from Iceland’s south coast.
“He was not a big farmer, he was a
small farmer. We had horses and cows
and sheep,” Laufey says. “The farming
in Iceland is altogether different, there’s
just the stock farming. There isn’t any
grain farming anywhere.”
This is a long time ago that she is
remembering. She doesn’t say exactly
when. She doesn’t want to tell her age.
“As Iong as people think you are
older than they, you get respect,” she
says.
“Straight south of where I was born
and raised are the little islands,
Vestman Islands, Vestmannaeyjar,” she
says. “That’s where my dad used to go
in the middle of the winter. A lot of
farmers would go there in January and
February to work until the spring work
started at home. They worked in the
físhing. There’s a fishing industry there.
“He went there when I was 14 years
old, and I took the farming over for
him. He had intentions of being back
before the sheep came in. He fell off a
truck and got injured very badly, he
was in a hospital for many months.
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eyau
“That’s how it came about, when
the sheep came in, lambing, that I had
to take care of the lambs.
“There were less than a hundred
sheep. Lambing wasn’t so bad until it
came time to mark the ears on the
lambs.
“There were three different marks
that we had on the ears. There was one
on the right ear and two on the left, and
I had to start with that one little slit on
the left ear. Just so you knew who
owned the sheep.
“Later in the spring when we started
taking the wool off the sheep, which
was not until in June, I think, then you
catch the lambs again and do the final
marking.
“It seemed simple enough to make
one mark, but it wasn’t so easy.
“It’s funny, I’m kind of scared of
blood,” Laufey says. “It was scary the
Joirt ...
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first time I had to take a knife along and
cut the ears on the lambs. I had no
problem running them down because
they were pretty fresh.
“I think I tore a little bit the ear of
the first one I did. I was going to do it
so gently, so I wouldn’t hurt the lamb,
and I was doing it wrong. But then I
quickly leamed how to do it. I was to
snap it off real fast.”
Her two older brothers were work-
ing in the Westman Islands that year,
too. The oldest of them came home
about May 9, to help with the spring
work.
“By then I think all the sheep had
come in, all the lambs were bom and I
had plowed up all the vegetable garden
by hand — it was all done by hand, we
had no other equipment to do it—and
probably was a long way planting po-
tatoes. It was potatoes and rutabagas
usually that we had. Then, of course,
we had to fertilize the area where we
would do the main haying for the cows,
the best haying area. That I had been
doing, too, before my brother came.”
Her father stayed in the hospital in
Vestmannaeyjar until into the sum-
mer, but the farm managed without
him. There were four brothers and eight
sisters, and they knew how to work.
“ We all grew up kind of fast, I think, ”
Laufey says. “There was always some-
body coming and asking my dad or
mom, ‘Can you lend me this one or lend
me that one to work?’ We went all over
doing gardening, doing housecleaning,
working where there was a baby to be
born. We never got any money. We got
the enjoyment of doing it.
“My mother always used to say to all
ofus, ‘Rememberwhen youstartwork-
ing for other people, you work as hard
as if you were doing it for yourself, or a
Everyone worked
hard to live
little better. A little better,’ she would
say.”
It was good advice. Laufey remem-
bered it when she started working dif-
ferent jobs later on in the town of
Selfoss.
She worked once for a dressmaker
named Magdalena.
“A friend of mine had seen that she
needed somebody to do some sewing,
just for the springtime. She said, ‘You
go to her and tell her I sent you.’
“I remember I was so shy I could
hardly look up. I went there and I told
her I had seen that she needed some-
one to do sewing. She was very stem. I
was scared to death of her.
“And she said, ‘Have you learned
any sewing?’
“I said, ‘No.’
“ ‘Oh, that won’t work then.’
“And I said, ‘Well, I would like to try
anyway.’
“ ‘Oh, it’s no use.’
“And I said, ‘Can’t I just try? I’ll
work two weeks, and I won’t charge
anything if it doesn’t work out.’ “
But it did work out. Laufey learned
quickly, and she and Magdalena be-
came fast friends, and one day
Magdalena told her something. She
had a way of reading what was coming
from the grounds in the bottom of a
coffee cup.
“I would drink the coffee, and then
you’d kind of shake it all out and tum
it upside down and let it dry, tum it on
the saucer. And then she would take it
when it was dry and look in it, and this
is what she was telling me. I was in my
twenties, anyway, twenty-something.
“She said, ‘You know, Laufey, I see
you going to another country, and it
looks like you’re just not going to come
back again. I see you go, but you’re not
going to come back to live in Iceland.
You’re going to come to visit, butyou’re
not going to come back.’
“And I said, ‘Magdalena, you’re
crazy. That is just a stupid thing to say
to me. You know I would never leave
my country. You know how loyal I am.
You know that, Magdalana.’ “
She smiles.
“My country was so important to
me. I knew I would never leave my
mother country.”
No, of course not.
But that’s another story.
Courtesy of Grand Forks Herald