Reykjavík Grapevine - 08.11.2019, Qupperneq 26

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Polish-Icelandic:
A Society Emer!es
Iceland’s Polish community is finally making
their presence felt
Words: Valur Gunnarsson Photo: In Touch
Film
In Touch is showing in Bíó Paradís in
Polish with English subtitles.
Poles are by far the largest immi-
grant group in Iceland, and it was
high time someone made a mov-
ie about them. So Pawel Ziemil-
ski did. The result is an hour-long
documentary, not just about Ice-
land’s Polish diaspora, but also
about those who stayed behind,
and distance in the virtual age,
when keeping in touch is easy, but
loved ones can still be agonisingly
far away.
From Poland via Skype
Equally as interesting is the story
behind Iceland Pole's, related by
the director after the premiere,
fittingly from Poland via Skype.
Just as Iceland has its own origin
myth, that of Ingólfur and his col-
umns, and Icelandic-Canadians
have theirs, about drifting over
Lake Winnipeg to found Gimli, so
the Poles here have the makings of
their own origin story.
Sometime in the late-70s, an
Icelandic sailor by the name of Val-
di found himself in Poland. This
was the era of Prince Polo, when
Iceland traded a lot with the East-
ern Bloc, leading not only to the
advent of the beloved chocolate in
Iceland but also to more personal
connections between Iceland and
that region. On his trip, Valdi met a
Polish woman and stayed in touch
with her, but after exchanging
three letters she suddenly broke
off.
Finding love
Undeterred, Valdi returned to War-
saw and took a taxi to Stare Juchy,
which he assumed to be a suburb
of the capital, but is
actually a small vil-
lage some 300 kilo-
metres away. There,
he found that his
love interest was al-
ready married, but
her sister, Jasia, was
not. A courtship
en sued bet ween
Valdi and Jasia and
eventually the pair
married and moved
to Iceland. Geopol-
itics mingled with
microhistory, and ten years later
the Iron Curtain came down and
the communist government in Po-
land collapsed.

This was a mixed blessing for
the inhabitants of Stare Juchy, an
industrial town whose commu-
nist-era factory was soon closed.
Faced with mass unemploy-
ment, Jasia’s relatives eventually
moved to Iceland, followed by other
villagers. Eventually, around 400
people, or a third of the village’s
inhabitants, moved to Iceland and
none of them have returned to Po-
land. While this may be a small
share of the roughly 20,000 Poles
living in Iceland today, it is pro-
portionately high for one small vil-
lage. As you may know, Icelanders
are fond of thinking in terms of
‘per capita.’
Polish style sausage
In Touch showcases some of the de-
scendants of Jasia and Valdi, one of
whom is an Icelandic policewom-
an. Iceland’s Polish community is
finally making their presence felt
culturally, with regular screenings
of Polish films in Bíó Paradís and
shops selling Polish foodstuffs ex-
clusively. There is even Polish-style
Icelandic sausage.
As Polish-Iceland-
ers will continue
to hand down their
t rad it ion s f rom
one generation to
the next, it will be-
come increasingly
important to doc-
ument where it all
came from, as the
saga writers of old
knew. To call Pawel
the Polish-Icelandic
Ari Fró!i might be a
stretch, but he is in
some ways serving the same func-
tion in the internet age. And that
is to be applauded.
Art
"To call Pawel
the Polish-
Icelandic Ari
Fró!i might be
a stretch, but
he is in some
ways serving the
same function."
The Polish diaspora is finally given its moment
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