Lögberg-Heimskringla - 05.11.1993, Page 6

6 • Lögberg-Heimskringla • Föstudagur 5. nóvember 1993
Reykholt í Borgarfiröi.
By Böóvar Guömundsson
Cont’d from last issue
The America let-
ters are filled
with amusing
peculiarities, which is
no wonder if we look
at the great number of
their writers. I earlier
mentioned Loftur
Jónsson in Utah, who
wrote to his friend,
Pall Sigurðsson, about
the good and easy life
in close connection
with the one and true
God in the valleys at
Salt Láke. In an other
letter, Spanish Fork
April 27th 1865, he is
still writing to Pall,
and he tells of the end
of the “bloody war”
which was fought out
by the godless “north
and south states?.'
Finally he tells of the
murder of Abraham
Lincoln:
Now they say that the long and
bloody war between the north and
south states has come to its end, at least
for a while, because these from the
south have given up. But a short .time
later those from the north states gave
dances and comedies, which they call
so, and in the theatre there was the
president, who they call so, that is to
say the highest one, just like a king over
the north states, and when the play was
at its height, there came in a man, close
to president Lynken, where he sat on a
chair, and shot him with a pistol right in
the head, and afterhaving shot him, the
visitor waved up his hand holding a big
knife and shouted loudly in the Greek
tongue: There he lies now, that blood-
hound, or something like that, and
thereafter he walked out, and just about
the same time he who was his next in
command was shot lying sick in his
bed, though they say he is still not dead,
three guards too who stood outside his
door, were shot, and his son. Though
they say that his son too is still not
dead.
Very special and amusing, bút
maybe a little sad too is a letter I
have 'from Mr. Oddur G.
Akraness, 1891 he writes from Geysir,
in Manitoba to his 'old friend in their
youth they used to write each other in a
secret-code, and they were fond of
runes too. He can’t refrain from playing
their old game. The letter starts in the
traditional way:
My dearest old friend!
I think I promised you to drop you a
letter from the West if I would still be
alive here a while, and now there are
gone three years and a half since we
saw each other. And to assure you that
this letter is from me, I will use the
ancient alphabet.
There follows a section written in
runes. This is perhaps the only
America letter written partly in
runes, as you can hardly call the
Kensington Stone an America letter.
As regards financial position I am
well my health is good I was well in
Iceland but I am better here I have now
been here in láland for two years and I
now own cows four moreover three
oxen and bull one and I owe no one a
penny
Earlier I mentioned briefly the
importance of the America letter
as a historical and linguistic
source. It is actually the detailed
descriptions that are so important when
we tiy to understand the general condi-
tions of the immigrant-s who left the
poverty behind and became financially
independent through hard work. They
often had to pay dearly for that inde-
pendence, and one topic in the
Icelandic America letters is more promi-
nent than in the America letters from
other nations I have seen. It is the
homesickness. The feeling that they
would never adjust to the new sur-
roundings, and still there is no way
back. Sigríður Jónsdóttir Olson emigrat-
ed to Canada 1893. Forty five years later
she writes to her relative in Iceland,
whom she never has seen:
June 23th 1938.
Beloved good Mundi.
My best greetings to you and you all.
My best and warmest thanks for your
good letter which I received April the
18th, it made me so happy. I am sure
that you don’t have the faintest idea of
what k7nd of sunbeams your letters
have brought along, both nowand earli-
er, because truly we are in exile here,
but maybe we would be in exile too if
we moved home, because everything
there is changed, except the mountains
and valleys.
Then I mentioned too letters from
women who emigrated to the
New World because they were
not allowed to marry the men they
loved. One of these women is Halldóra
Guðmundsdóttir who emigrated in the
year 1900. She was an excellent letter
writer for as an old widow she writes to
her brother in Iceland from her home in
Reston in Manitoba. Her last letter is
from 1957, then she was still living in
Reston. She died December 31st, 1963.
And this fine letter is written exactly
one hundred years after the first
Icelandic immigrants in North-America
wrote home for the first time. And it
might be one of the last America letters,
if we choose to defíne the genre as let-
ters from these who were in the big
stream of immigrants from 1820--1920.
My dearest brother.
My warmest thanks for your letter. I
felt as ifl was young again when I read
the description ofyour tour to the valley
on the mountain road and our home in
old days. Often I think of home,
although we didn’t havé much fun, and
we had to work hard every day and if
we went to church on Sunday we had
to walk and hardly had clothes enough
for a change. Well, this all is gone like a
dream.
Nqw I have not so much news to
write, I am getting old and weak. StiII I
usually have some work to do. The
house is too big for me alone so I very
often rent the rooms upstairs. Nowfora
while I have had 3 lodgers and therefore
I have much laundry. The bed linen
must be changed often and the towels
as well. I have myselfa room beside the
kitchen, there I feel comfortable, it is so
convenient to Iight the fire in the mom-
ing...
Now most of the people I originally
got to know in this CQuntry are dead,
both Icelanders and foreigners. I feel
like I am alone in the world. I am not
able to travel alone any more and I like
best to be at home here in my own
house. Last Easter my best friend died,
she wás 90years old...
There are no Icelanders around any
more, so I almost never speak Icelandic,
except when Stelia, mydaughter, is on a
visit and we are left alone. I buy the
Icelandic newspapers that are printed in
Winnipeg...
Soon there are the days of sheep
gathering at home, and I can see in my
mind’s eye the sheep coming down the
hills. The day ofsheep gathering vas like
a festival for us in these old days. Here
there is no one I can have a conversa-
tion with about the old times. In my
solitude I often feel sad. My neighbours
are good people but I don’t visit them
veryoften...
I bless my native region and the peo-
ple living there now walking on the
earth that I took my fírst steps on. My
best greetings to those who still remem-
ber me, and my
warmest greetings to
my brothers and sis-
ters...
Ihave here tried to
describe the Am-
erica letter as a
genre, its characteris-
tics, its topics, its
influences and the
attitudes to it. The
majority of the Ice-
landic America let-
ters, all the Canadian
letters from 1870 and
up to our time is still
unpublished. There'
waits a great, thank-
ful and interesting
task for someone. It
does not matter who
will work on it if only
the work will be done
by faithfulness and
love for the subject.
Many Canada- letters
are lost forever of
course, and that lóss
will never be compensated, or as Erik
Helmer Pedersen says in the preface to
the Danish America letters, Breve fra
Amerika:
From the scholar’s point of view, it is
a great loss that the America letter so
seldom was kept after the recipient had
opened it and read it. The letters we
now have in our hands can hardly be
more than a few thousandths of the mil-
lions that were sent across the Atlantic.
And then there is the other question, if
there is preserved one single letter
which went the other way.
Obviously the America letter is of
greatest historical value for those who
want to draw as good and thorough a
picture as possible of the emigration of
Europeans in North- America. The
Icelandic Canada letter therefore is of
most value for the Canadians and espe-
cially the descendants of the Icelandic
immigrants in Ganada. But finally I
want to ask you tö think kindly of us,
the descendants of those who wrote let-
ters to be sent the other way. The letters
from home. So far as I know nothing
has still be done to collect these letters
and keep them safe. They are naturally
in great danger, because the connection
of the present day Canadians to the lan-
guage of many of their ancestors is natu-
rally fading away, although the descen-
dants of the Icelandic immigrants have
kept the language of their great-great-
grandparents marvellously long and
carefully. Therefore I wish to end this
lecture by asking you, who listen to me,
for a favour. If you are in possession of
old letters from Iceland, then give them
to some libraiy or archives, for instance
to the library of the University of
Manitoba. If you think the world of
these letters and you can therefore not
give them away, then give a copy of
them. And I repeat, that by doing so you
are absolutely not being unfaithful to
the people who once wrote these letters.
In my opinion you will be doing fair
honour to these people who took a pen
in their tired hand and more than often
spent their precious time of rest and
sleep to write news from home to rela-
tives and friends, knowing they would
never see them again in this life.
End of a series.