Saga - 1999, Blaðsíða 179

VINNUAFLSSKORTUR OG ERLENT VERKAFÓLK Á ÍSLANDI1896-1906 177
applied to the Icelandic government for a grant to travel to the north of
Norway as an envoy in order to encourage people from the region to emi-
grate to Iceland.
As a result of his trip, two groups of Norwegian fishermen came to
Iceland in 1905. Fifty of them were employed in the south-west on decked
sailing vessels. Soon, these men got into disputes both with their employ-
ers, who were dissatisfied with the way they worked, and with the
Icelandic Deckhands' Union, Báran, which opposed immigrant workers
for taking jobs for lower wages and suspected them of being drunkards.
Three hundred Norwegians were hired in the East brought their own
boats with them. Unfamiliar working practices and a breach of contract
on the part of their main employer made the trip to Iceland less than
successful. More Norwegian workers came to work in Iceland in the follow-
ing year, but their fortunes were no better.
The Agricultural Society of Iceland (Búnaðarfélag íslands) made various
attempts to hire Norwegian, Faroese and American labourers of Icelandic
origin to work on farms but they failed because the Society was unable
offer competitive pay and conditions.
After 1906, the idea of publicly supported immigration of foreign work
ers and settlers was largely abandoned, although many still clanged to the
idea for some years of persuading Icelandic settlers in North America to
return to Iceland. Later large-scale land reclamation projects in the south
led groups in Denmark and Germany to discuss the possibility of settling
some of their farmers in Iceland.
During the Second World War, competition for Icelandic labour intensi-
fied when the British and later American occupation forces tempted
Icelandic workers away from the countryside. As a result, the Icelandic
government and The Agricultural Society of Iceland looked to the Faroe
Islands for additional labour but with limited success.
After the war, people from the Nordic countries, especially Denmark,
flocked to Iceland in search of work, but only a small number sought
employment in the agricultural sector. In 1949, around 300 Germans,
mostly women, were brought in to work on farms. It was hoped that they
would settle and that more Germans could be brought in later if all went
well. In order to ensure that these German workers remained on the
farms, those seeking better-paid jobs in the towns were threatened with
deportation. This experiment was not repeated, but during the 1950s The
Agricultural Society succeeded in getting several hundred sons of
Danish farmers to work temporarily on Icelandic farms.
12-SAGA