Lögberg-Heimskringla - 11.02.2005, Blaðsíða 10

10 • Lögberg-Heimskringla • Friday 11 February 2005
Silent Flashes provides
new insight into what it
means to be Icelandic
PHOTO COURTESY OF CLAUDIA PRATT
Bill Holm is no stranger to Hofsós, Iceland. Along with Mani-
toba author and professor David Arnason, he has hosted sum-
mer writing workshops in the northern Icelandic community
for the past few years.
Bill Holm
Minneota, MN
On July 2, 2004 in Hofsós,
Iceland, a new exhibit opened
in Frændgarður, one of the three
exhibition halls at the Vesturfar-
asetrið. Visitors who arrived to
hear complementary speeches
and enjoy a glass of wine af-
ter the ribbon-cutting found
themselves ushered into a cen-
tury-old world of brown-toned
pictures of emigrant Icelanders,
bonneted, bewhiskered, unsmil-
ing — the faces of the ancestors
of any modern Icelander. This
is what we look like now in the
new world, those faces say. The
three hundred odd faces in the
exhibit become emblems for the
20,000 faces that left between
1870 and 1914. What do these
lost Icelanders have to say for
themselves? What can they say
to us today?
The exhibit “Silent Flashes”
takes its name from a romantic
poem by the emigrant poet Jón
Runólfsson, who left the beauti-
ful east Iceland farm of Gilsár-
teigur in 1879 at 24. Jón became
a teacher in the United States
and in Canada until his death in
1930. His only book, Þögul lei-
ftur (“Silent Flashes”) was pub-
lished in Winnipeg in 1924, but
his poems had even before that
become popular enough to eam
him the nickname “Swan of the
West.” Like so many emigrants,
Jón was clearly haunted by im-
ages of Iceland until his dying
day. Now he retums in this ex-
hibit inspired by the spirit of his
poem.
But the exhibit is the brain-
child of Nelson Gerrard, a
teacher in Arborg, Manitoba,
and one of the most leamed
and distinguished genealogists
of Icelandic family history. Be-
tween teaching and writing his
lANKKKS N TkaI'I k-
Jeff Kristjanson
Private Insurance Broker
HOME • AUTO • COMMERCIAL
10203-139 Street
Edmonton, Alberta T5N 3W2
Telephone (780) 451-5755
Fax (780) 451-5110
www.bankersandlradcrs.com
many books, Nelson has spent
25 years colleqting photographs
of emigrants taken by, among
others, 16 emigrant photogra-
phers. After the quarter-cen-
tury of gathering, thinking and
imagining, Nelson offered his
scheme for the exhibit to the
directors of Vesturfarasetrið,
Valgeir Þorvaldsson and Win-
cie Jóhannsdóttir, and with their
help and cooperation — and
two years of work — the idea of
“Silent Flashes” became a reali-
ty. Many patrons and many car-
penters, costumers, translators,
framers, etc. contributed gener-
ous help, but “Silent Flashes” is
primarily the creation of Nelson
Gerrard’s passion, imagination
and long labour.
Nelson might be embar-
rassed by this praise, but as it
comes from the pen of another
descendant of Icelanders, he’s
going to have to accept it. He has
invented a remarkable room, a
small world of its own that tells
us an enormous amount about
ours. Let me take you on a little
tour of it — always remember-
ing that the real experience is to
see it complete in Hofsós, this
lovely north Iceland town, de-
voted now to honouring the his-
tory of the emigrants.
You enter into this world
with Jón Runólfsson’s poem
— another noble Icelandic tra-
dition honoured here.
Nú fellur vængjum aftans af
í alkyrð húmið grátt;
og leiftrin þögul líða hjá,
sem lifa í vestur-átt;
þau bruna Ijósfleyg austur um
hinn endalausa geim
sem sálir Ijóss, er sjafnaifund
nú sœkji í austurheim
Now from the wings of waning
day
dusk’s stillness is descending;
and silent flashes drift awáy,
the westward storm is ending.
These glimmers eastward fly
apace,
like souls of light — now
yeaming —
through lofly halls of endless
space,
their longing, homeward turn-
ing.
Step up into the Winnipeg
studio of eminent photographer
Jón Blöndal in 1900. Here is
Jón’s camera, a wooden box on
a wooden tripod, now an antique
but at the tum of the century it
was state-of-the-art. Here is an
appointment and accounts book
in a contemporary photogra-
pher’s own hand. Here are the
brass-hooked, oversized, floral
Victorian photo albums, show-
ing you what your picture will
look like. Here on the wall are
advertisements (in Icelandic)
for Jón’s services and a formal
portrait of him — a handsome,
mustachioed fellow in a vested
suit.
Sit down in the Victorian
chair in front of a pastoral back-
drop. Rest your elbow on the
little carved table. Look straight
ahead. Don’t smile or blink.
There’s Jón himself, risen from
history (he died in 1938), about
to take your picture. Don’t imag-
ine you are having a tme Icelan-
dic ghost experience, though it
will seem a bit like that. Jón is
an astonishingly life-like man-
nequin, brown suit, straw boater
and all, looking exactly like his
photo on the wall.
Jón was only one of 16 emi-
grant Icelandic photographers,
but he was the most prolific and
probably the best known. You
can find work by all 16 here,
with studios in every region
where Icelanders settled: Utah,
Winnipeg, Mountain, Minneo-
ta, Washington Island, Seattle
— and on. Continue strolling as
the gallery of brown-toned faces
looks down to follow your prog-
ress. The photos are ingenious-
Minnist
Remember
BETEL
í ERFÐASKRÁM YÐAR
Please send Donations to:
Betel Home Foundation
Box 10
96 l st Avenue
Gimli, MB ROC ÍBO
ly arranged by category rather
than geography. Brothers and
sisters, mothers and children,
family portraits, confirmation
and wedding pictures, soldiers,
craftsmen, poets, matriarchs,
patriarchs, many more, all
caught by the camera with great
formal dignity — no digital
snapshots of Susie falling out of
the tree. Everyone is dressed in
their Sunday best — no ripped
levis and halter-tops here. Some
faces are lovely, but among the
old we can trace lines of hard
labour, little money, the grief of
emigration to a strange land.
I’ll give four examples of
my favourites, two beautiful
women and two old, much-used
men. You will find your own fa-
vourites in this rich and varied
collection. Three of mine are
from Minneota — like every
Icelander, I am a local patriot.
Freda Gilbertson, daughter
of Sturlaugur Guðbrandsson,
was photographed in 1913 at
about 20. I knew her as an old
lady with white hair, wife of the
Minneota druggist Frank Le-
land. Looking at that delicate,
lovely face with the elegantly
piled hair reminds me of what
time does to all of us. Yet that
beautiful girl was still alive in-
side Freda at 80.
The unidentified “young
mother with child” haunts me.
Her face so wistful and sad,
the child so clearly terrified by
the camera. She could be Mary
holding a nervous Jesus. What
became of the two of them?
Only the wind knows.
In the group of “Vikings of
the West” I found the heavily
bearded, long face of Jón Þor-
varðarson, farmer at Papey, an
island off the southeast coast.
He emigrated at 68 (!) to Min-
neota in 1882.1 knew his grand-
children, a tough and long-lived
lot. I see them in his face. I’ve
been taking Minneota visitors
to his tombstone for 40 years,
one of the few in Westerheim
graveyard carved with correct
grammar.
Finally, my own great-
grandfather, Jóhannes Sveins-
son Holm, appears among the
“Pioneers.” He’s about 70 in the
picture but looks even older. A
rich crop of chin whiskers but a
poor crop of teeth. He farmed at
Kóreksstaðir north of Eiðar, and
left from there in 1885. My boy-
hood bedroom was in a house
he built on a hill north of Min-
neota. He looks sad and tired,
thick in his homespun suit. And
I am his great-grandson.
Come see this wonderful
exhibit. It will be in Hofsós
only a few years, then will travel
probably to Reykjavík, possibly
to North America. Hofsós is the
right place to see it on a sunny
summer day in the months of
long light. Step back a centuiy
for a few hours, then out to the
fjord, the mountains, the crying
sea-birds that are the scenes all
those faces had to leave forever.
“Silent Flashes” should provide
some new insights into what
it means to be a descendant of
Icelanders, and more than that,
to be human. We all owe Nelson
Gerrard our gratitude for this
fine exhibit.
Visit us on the web at http://www.lh-inc.ca