Lögberg-Heimskringla - 28.04.1995, Blaðsíða 3

Lögberg-Heimskringla • Föstudagur 28. apríl 1995 • 3
lcelanders Will Go Out Of Their Way For Ghosts
By Richard Wallis
Reykjavík - Iceland’s president
tells visitors about her chats with
a ghost that haunts her official
residence.
In addition, in this North Atlantic
island of 250,000 people, roads have
been diverted to avoid disturbing “elf
mounds” and a quarry stopped work
for a few weeks to give fairies time to
move out.
In Iceland the supematural is taken
so much for granted that so-called
“invisibles” rate the same matter-of-fact
entries in the local road guide asi
geysers, monuments or waterfalls.
Even foreign diplomats succumb to
Icelandic ghosts. The British Embassy
says John Greenway, envoy from 1950-
53, made the government sell his home
because it was haunted. The town
council now gives parties there, but no
one sleeps in it.
The ghost said to haunt the official
residence of President Vigdís
Finnbogadóttir is called Apollonia
Schwartzkopf. She died there of a bro-
ken heart in the early 18th century,
rejected by her fiancee, the govemor of
Iceland, then a Danish colony.
“I hear her at night, pacing the halls
and going from room to room,” says
the president. “Sometimes she comes
up the stairs and walks in the corridors
outside my room. And I say to her:
‘Please, Apollonia dear, be very wel-
come.”
A 1974-75 survey showed that five
per cent of Icelanders claimed to have
seen “invisibles”, says Erlendur
Haraldsson, a researcher in parapsy-
chology at the University of Reykjavík.
“We are not trying to hide our
beliefs, but is there really anything
unique about Iceland?” asks Snæbjöm
Jonasson, the islands director of roads.
In his job he often has to deal with
very real problems caused by belief in
ghosts and elves.
When his department wanted to
build a road near the northern town of
Akureyri, a biologist objected it would
cut through an elf community and
Bessastaðir, the residence of the president of lceland.
Bessastaöir gets a facelift
Over the past six years Bessastaðir, the official residence of the president
of Iceland, has undergone a facelift. The cost incurred in renovations,
repairs and archaeological excavation is over USD8 million.
In addition, an estimated USD5 million will be required in the next few
years in order to complete that which was begun in 1989.
According to Helgi Bergs, director of the committee overseeing the project,
the cost has greatly surpassed the original estimate because the state of the
buildings was much worse than originally thought. The first surprise came
when the condition of the 200-year-old reception house Bessastaðastofa was
examined and it transpired that the house had to be almost completely rebuilt.
A pleasant side-product, however, was that beneath the floor was buried a
wealth of archaeological artefacts. Excavation was begun immediately and
according to Guðmundur Ólafsson, who supervised the excavation, it came as
a surprise to discover what a large settlement — about which there is no written
documentation — had existed at Bessastaðir, reaching all the way back to the
first settlement of the country.
A museum has now been set up in the cellar of Bessastaðastofa, with the
artefacts attractively displayed.
Upon examination, the other houses were all more or less found to be in a
state of serious disrepair as well, and have been restored. It has also been decid-
ed to build a completely new presidential residence, with Bessastaðastofa to
serve as a reception area.
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Sports for All - Are you Game? Cont’d. from page 1
Disabled Icelandic athletes have
over the past years achieved outstand-
ing results in Iceland as well as
abroad, breaking Icelandic, Nordic,
European, Olympic and World
records and thus won a large number
of medals in international competi-
tions.
The Special Olympics Inter-
national was founded in the United
States in 1968 by the Kennedy family,
with Eunice Kennedy Shriver as one
of the chief instigators from the begin-
nin^.
IF became a member of the Special
Olympics Int.. in 1989, the main rea-
son being to increase the variety in
sports for the mentally disabled. The
goal of the Special Olympics is to
offer and organize sports for the men-
tally handicapped in all age groups
according to individual needs. In that
spirit, the competition rules of the
Special Olympics are unlike tradition-
al competition rules where only the
best win medals. The motto of the
Special Olympics is: Let me win - but
if I cannot win - let me be brave in
the attempt. As previously stated the
mentally disabled from various parts
of the country have been chosen for
participation but it has been the ambi-
tion of IF to enable as many as possi-
ble to have the opportunity.
Iceland took part in the Special
Olympics International Summer
Games for the first time in 1991 in
Minneapolis, U.S.A. with eighteen
participants.
Hossy Stelngrímsdóttlr (L), presldent of the New
York lcelandlc Soclety, enjoylng the Þorrablót In
New York wlth Inga Slgmundsson.
The Special Olympics will be held
this year in New Haven, Connecticut
July 1 - 9. It will probably be the
biggest international sports event
being held in 1995 with an estimated
6,600 participants, 2,500 coaches and
32,000 volunteer workers.
Iceland will participate in the fol-
lowing sports: football (soccer), bowl-
ing, swimming, athletics, table tennis
and weight-lifting.
The Special Olympics can be com-
pared with the regular Olympic
Games in magnitude and splendour.
Many of the greatest stars of the
entertainment world will perform at
the Opening Ceremony or escort the
teams when they enter the stadium.
The Opening Ceremony will take
place at the Yale Bowl Stadium in the
presence of the president of the
United States, Mr Bill Clinton.
Fortunately, the work of the ÍF has
been appreciated by.the Icelandic
nation and its efforts met with under-
standing by the companies which
have been asked for support and
financial aid. In addition to asking for
assistance of “Icelandic” companies,
both in Iceland and in U.S.A., IF pub-
lishes a magazine “Hvati” which is
about sports for disabled in Iceland.
On the occasion of the Special
Olympics in Connecticut, ÍF will be
selling porcelain broaches with the
logo of the games. These broaches are
designed and handmade by artist
Elínrós Eyj ólfsdóttir, and numbered
from 1 to 900. They will be sold at the
IF office, in sports clubs for the dis-
abled in Iceland and in Icelandic soci-
eties in the U.S.A. for US $40.
The motto of the Icelandic Sports
Association for the Disabled is
“Sports for All - Are you Game?” It
will be an unforgettable experience
for disabled Icelandic individuals to
participate in the Special Olympics in
Connecticut in July of this year.
Hopefully you will be be able to sup-
port us financially or psychologically
to participate in the games and thus
make it possible for disabled Icelandic
competitors to triumph hereafter as
up to now.
Further information about the ÍF
and the Special Olympics Int.. can be
obtained at the IF office, tel:
354-5686301 and fax: 354-568315.
drew up a map complete with the
elves’ harbor and town centre to prove
it.
The biologist’s objections were
overridden, but, Jónasson still has the
map which was published in a maga-
zine. “It is the only documented case
of an invisible city plan,” he says with
a twinkle in his eye.
His chief engineer, Jón Birgir
Jónsson, had a much more difficult
case to solve. When the road builders
tried to cut through the Pass of the
Giants in another northem fjord, local
people started having nightmares and
protests poured in.
As soon as bulldozers were tumed
toward a particular rock, they broke
down, Jónsson said. Eventually, the
road department was forced to investi-
gate the problem.
“A medium found out that a lady
had cursed the place so we had to get
her permission,” said director of roads
Jonasson.
The lady never appeared but her
permission was obtained after the
department agreed to build over the
rock rather than blast the top off, as
was called for in the original plans.
“Almost every farm has some curse.
In almost every Icelandic field there is
a patch where it is forbidden to cut the
hay. When the farmers spot our sur-
veyors, they tell us where the untouch-
able parts are and we just build the
road elsewhere.
“Our country is so open that it really
does not matter,” said Jónasson, who
Continued on page 4
IODE Winners
The Jón Sigurðsson Chapter
IODE would like to thank all
those who attended their
Birthday Bridge and Luncheon on
March 18 at Betelstadur,
Winnipeg, and helped to make it a
great success. Also a big thanks to
the ladies at Betelstadur who
helped us with our preparations.
The winners of the Bridge and
Whist were: Bridge - 1. Irene Ursell
and 2. Bob Moffat, Whist - 1. Irene
McDonald and 2. Hrund Skulason.
The winner of the door prize, a
gift certificate for The Round Table,
was Linda Giddings from
Minneapolis.
MESSUBOÐ
Fyrsta Lúterska
Kirkja
Pastor Ingthor I. Isfcld
1030 a.m. The Service followed by
Sunday School & Coffee hour.
First Lutheran Church
580 Victor St., Winnipeg, MB
R3G 1R2 Ph. 772-7444