Jón Bjarnason Academy - 01.05.1935, Blaðsíða 34

That year saw the first flour ground from wheat grown in
the district. Other crops were fairly good. The winter %vas
mild and passed without hardship. A brighter day appeared
to he dawning.
But the period of trial was not yet over. The summers of
1878 and 1889 were wet, the land was unfit for cultivation,
crops of hay were small and many cattle starved during the
winters. Many of the settlers began to despair of success in
this new Iceland of theirs and an exodus from the settlement
began. The Icelandic settlements in the Counties of Pembina
and Cavalier in North Dakota date from the fall of 1878 and
succeeding years saw their steady growth.
The year 1880 was a year of floods; in the spring the waters
of Lake Winnipeg were unusually high and another wet sum-
mer lay ahead of the settlers. Late in the fall the lake over-
flowed its banks, flooded the log cabins near the shore so that
Ihey had to he abandoned, and carried some of the haystacks
out into the lake. Severe frosts set in with the receding of
the flood waters and that winter the cattle were fed on frozen
hay. In 1881 the exodus from the district became general.
That year saw the beginning of the prosperous settlement in
Ihe Argyle district in Manitoba and a large influx into North
Dakota.
So passed the seven lean years of the Icelandic settlements
in America from 1873 to 1880. They were years of hardship
and suffering, of cold and hunger and disease and pestilence
and death. But better years were to come.
My story is almost finished and I do not intend to tire
you with further details of hardship. You are all more or
less familiar with the struggles of the pioneers.
Although many left the New Iceland during the years
1878 to 1881, their places were taken by new arrivals. The
immigration from Iceland continued until the close of the last
century. Since then it has been intermittent. It is rather
difficult to ascertain the total number of Icelanders who have
come to this country, hut I think I might perhaps be safe in
saying that there are now in America between 30,000 and
40,000 people of Icelandic origin.
In all the letters which the early pioneers wrote home to
Iceland there appeared one outstanding feature, and this
same feature I have attempted to emphasize in my address to
you, viz: the desire to establish a New Iceland in America,
where all Icelanders could live in peace and happiness with-
out severing the bonds which tied them to the old land. There
was no intention then to take any part in the formation of a
new country or the development of a new nationality. The
new settlement was to be a part of Iceland and they were to
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