Tímarit Þjóðræknisfélags Íslendinga - 01.01.1962, Side 81

ON THE EBBING TIDE
63
ing in the neighborhood, soon ar-
rived to wish the family a Merry
Christmas. They were given a warm
welcome. Delicious refreshments
were generously provided. No one
was as jolly as the master of the
house. He was the perfect host. He
saw to it that everyone had a good
time and no one was neglected. The
evening passed quickly with feast-
ing, merriment and song until the
guests left and the rest of the family
retired for the night, leaving Solveig
and Ofeigur alone downstairs.
Solveig now went from room to
room tidying up here and there after
the party. But Ofeigur went into the
sitting room where fire still burned
in a heater. He sat down in an easy
chair before the fire, stretched out
his legs, and allowed the warmth to
stream over his limbs. He was dead
tired from the burdens of the day
and the merriment of the evening.
He sat there staring into the fire,
watching large sticks of wood flare
up, turn to glowing embers and
finally fall in great heaps of cold
ashes. And it occurred to him that
the trees were returning the sun-
shine of a whole lifetime which
they had borrowed to keep alive.
Would he live long enough to do
likewise, he wondered.
EDITOR'S NOTE
Guðrún Helga Finnsdóttir (Mrs. Gísli
Jónsson) was bom at Geirólfsstaðir in
Skriðdalur in Iceland on the 6th of
February in 1884. In 1904 she emigrated
to Winnipeg where she lived until the
day of her death, the 25th of March,
1946.
In 1920 Guðrún Finnsdóttir published
in this periodical her first short story
“Landskuld”. During the next quarter
of a century she wrote several short
stories, both for our “Tímarit” and one
of the Icelandic weeklies in Winnipeg,
“Heimskringla”.
Her first collection of short stories,
“Hillingalönd”, fourteen stories, was
published in Reykjavík in 1938. Eight
years later, and shortly after the author’s
death, the second collection “Dagshríðar
spor” was published in Akureyri. Finally
in 1950 the third book “Ferðalok” con-
taining some of Guðrún Finnsdóttir’s
public speeches and lectures, and also
articles and poems on her life and works
was published by her husband, Gísli
Jónsson, in Winnipeg.
It would be an understatement to say
that Guðrún Finnsdóttir’s short stories
vvere well received. They won, indeed,
great acclaim and were highly praised
by literary critics on both sides of the
Atlantic.
A critical analysis of her works will
not be attempted here. It is, however,
interesting to note that all of Guðrún
Finnsdóttir’s stories deal with Icelandic
pioneer life in America — a period of
Icelandic-American history which she, in
her best stories, may be said to have
immortalized.