Gripla - 2019, Blaðsíða 36
GRIPLA36
tales.87 Albert’s manuscripts demonstrate that the same can be true for
scribes.
Albert’s scribal methods do not make it easy to identify his exemplars.
In the section below, the focus is expanded from Albert to the Hecla Island
settlement, and one manuscript (SÁM 35) in particular.
The Hecla Island scribal community
Hecla Island, a large island not far off the southwestern shore of Lake
Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada, is situated within the traditional home-
lands of the Cree and the Anishinaabe. Ryan Eyford’s research on the
history of New Iceland demonstrates that a group of Cree from Norway
House, Manitoba, had wanted to establish a reserve at Grassy Narrows
in 1875, the marshy mainland to which Hecla Island today connects via a
man-made causeway built in 1971. The Canadian government refused this
due to the Icelanders’ interest in the same territory, illustrating how land
was often apportioned in ways that prioritized European settlers over
Indigenous communities.88
As Eyford documents, New Iceland was the product of a Canadian
government policy of reserving large areas of land for settlers of a specific
European ethnicity, actively encouraging immigrant groups to settle in
close proximity to each other in the hope of attracting friends and fam-
ily members from Europe and thus speeding up the settlement process.
Under the terms of Canada’s Dominion Lands Act, Icelanders moving to
New Iceland could apply for a section of land within the reserve from the
Canadian government, the only cost to the applicant being an administra-
tion fee. The claimant would receive the deed to the land after fulfilling
standard requirements, including building a home on the property. Thus
it was that Hecla Island, an island two hours’ drive from Winnipeg, at the
midway point of the North American continent, was rapidly settled by
a group consisting almost exclusively of Icelanders. Many came directly
from West or Northwest Iceland.
87 Rósa Þorsteinsdóttir, Sagan upp á hvern mann: Átta íslenskir sagnamenn og ævintýrin þeirra
(reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum, 2011).
88 Ryan Eyford, White Settler Reserve: New Iceland and the Colonization of the Canadian West
(Vancouver: UBC Press, 2016).