Lögberg-Heimskringla - 03.06.2005, Qupperneq 8

8 « Lögberg-Heimskringla » Friday 3 June 2005
PHOTOS: STEINPÓH GUÐBJARTSSON
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Markerville, Alberta has a special chapter
in the lcelandic-Canadian history. Steinþór
Guðbjartsson visited the site with Stephan
G. Stephansson’s grandson, Stephan Vilberg
Benediktson. Stephan V. spent his roughly
half-century career as a Petrolium Engineer in
the oil and gas industry all over the world, but
Markerville has a special place in his heart.
One gets a special feeling
walking around where
Stephan G. Stephans-
son homesteaded in Alberta,
and being inside the Stepha-
nsson House with the poet’s
grandson. The history means so
much to him and he has done
much to preserve it. “The scen-
ery in the mountains is some-
thing else, this is good farmland
and a great area. It was pleasant
growing up in Alberta,” says
Stephan Vilberg as he looks
west to the Rocky Mountains.
His words echo what his
grandfather said roughly a cen-
tury ago. In an adress delivered
at Markerville August 2, 1904,
Stephan G. recited the fol-
lowing poem, which he wrote
(translated by Bjorgvin Sigurd-
son):
Copes wood dot the blue hazed
lea
Frame the verdant meadows
As far as human eye can see
West to the mountains’ shad-
ows.
Abundant growth enhances the
scene
Season’s clement weather
Sunny fields so lush and green
Up to the distant glacier.
Steel-grey peaks, their crown
in blue
Bask in sunshine glowing.
Iceland, here’s a toast to you
From goblets overflowing.
Rosa Siglaug Benediktson
(nee Stephansson) and Sigurður
“Siggi” Benediktson first met
at the Stephansson homestead.
They got married in 1928 and
had four children before Sig-
urður died suddenly in 1942.
“We grew up on the Bene-
diktson homestead, halfway
between Dickson and Marker-
ville,” Stephan V. recalls.
“Dickson was a Danish com-
munity, Markerville the Icelan-
dic centre. The Danish people
were very good farmers and de-
voted Lutherans. They went to
church every Sunday, whereas
in Markerville the Icelanders
were known to drink a little
and argue a little bit.That was
quite a contrast and father said
that we lived halfway between
heaven and hell.”
Tough life
The Benediktson home-
stead was about a mile south
of the Heckla School, where
Steve and his sister Helga Iris
started their formal education.
Because the family moved,
they graduated from the Tin-
dastoll School. “Iris could not
speak English when she started
school,” Steve says,
They had two younger
brothers, Conrad Benedikt Jon
and Sigurdur Theodor Olafur,
who have passed away. “The
schools were one-room schools
and we rode horses to school
most days. I started when I was
five, took two grades in one
year once and finished grade 9
when I was thirteen.”
When Siggi died, Rosa was
left with four children to sup-
port. In her book Stephan ’s
Daughter, Joanne White writes
that in an effort to stay out of
debt, Siggi made the decision
to sell his parents’ homestead
in 1942. “He bought a bare
quarter section east of the Tin-
dastoll School. In his memoirs,
Stephan V. recalls that in the
fall of 1942, ‘my father, with
the help of my bachelor cous-
in, Steve Stephansson, a good
carpenter, built a 24 by 30 foot
shell of a building to live in on
the otherwise bare land. Father
said it would become a chicken
coop after he built my mother’s
dream house on the hill.’”
According to Stephan V.,
the circumstances were dif-
ficult. “Father just got started
on the new development when
he passed away” he says, “so
we were left with very diffi-
cult circumstances. Winter was
coming on, the house was un-
finished and we had very little
money. Nobody had money af-
ter the 1930s. Things got better
after the war, although life was
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