Lögberg-Heimskringla - 10.03.2006, Qupperneq 8

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David Jón Fuller
Einar and Rosalind Vigfus-son have both made great contributions to the Ice-
landic culture in North America,
and now they’re getting ready to
do it again.
Readers of L-H will re-
member that Einar has become
known for his wood sculptures
of wild birds, and that he has
shown his work in Iceland. As
for Rosalind, she was the orga-
nizer of the New Iceland Youth
Choir, which she orchestrated
and wrote music for, and which
toured Iceland to wide accalim
in 2003. Now, as all of the origi-
nal members have grown older,
she is putting together a “New”
New Iceland Youth Choir.
The origin of the fi rst choir
was in 1999, when Iceland’s
young adult choir, Gradualekór
from Langholtskirkja, per-
formed in North America. Ro-
salind and Einar’s son Kris, who
was 13 at the time, was taken
with their music and remarked,
“If we lived in Iceland, I could
be in a choir like that.” Rosa-
lind took his words to heart, and
began putting together a youth
choir that autumn. Their fi rst
performance was at the Arborg
þorrablót in 2000.
Rosalind, whose fi rst lan-
guage was Icelandic and who
still speaks it fl uently, taught the
young singers the songs in Ice-
landic, using a phonetic-English
spelling she devised. “By the
time we went to Iceland with
the choir, they didn’t require this
phonteic stuff any more,” she
says. “They preferred to just read
the [original] Icelandic text.”
Of the music they performed,
some were traditional Icelandic
songs, and around six or seven
were pieces that Rosalind com-
posed, using Icelandic poems
such as Böðvar Jakobson’s
“Minni Íslands.”
Now that the original mem-
bers have grown up, a new crop
of aspiring singers is fi lling the
ranks, forming a completely new
choir. “I was amazed at the in-
terest that was out there still. So
we are now 21 members, and we
may have a couple more join up,
and everyone is welcome,” says
Rosalind. “Right now the oldest
ones are 13 years old. It’s a much,
much younger choir. We have
members from Gimli, Riverton
and Arborg, which is a nice rep-
resentation of the area, and one
young man from Hecla.”
Rosalind’s training was orig-
inally as a nurse, but she grew up
around music. Her father, who
was a talented violinist, also di-
rected a choir. “I’ve been very,
very enriched by knowing all
these young folk, because they
make life interesting — they
keep your own thoughts young.”
Einar is modest about his
facility with Icelandic, but he
spoke it well into his teens, and
surprised friends at school with
his knowledge of Shakespeare’s
Julius Caesar and Conan
Doyle’s Hound of the Basker-
villes, which he had experienced
only in Icelandic. He recalls that
as he was growing up, church
and Sunday School were con-
ducted in Icelandic, as were a
weekend Icelandic school and
choir practices.
Einar and Rosalind still prac-
tice their Icelandic in addition to
their involvement in music and
the arts. They hold an informal
conversation class in their kitch-
en, during which Icelandic texts
are read and diffi cult words are
highlighted for further study.
Einar will teach bird carving
Iceland this month. Although
skilled carvers abound in Ice-
land, they are not generally in-
volved with realistic wildfowl
carving.
Einar was artistically in-
clined in his 20s, taking an art
course and doing a lot of sig-
nage work in Arborg and the
surrounding area. But, he says,
“I got into the carving of birds
by accident. I saw somebody
that had done it and had a dis-
play of it, and he let me take les-
sons from him in how to do it.”
The artist was James Russell in
Winnipeg’s St. Boniface area.
The biggest challenge, Einar
says, is that “birds don’t stay
still!” But he has taken photos
and video of his subjects for ref-
erence. He says a sculpture of
even a very small bird such as a
wren can take up to 40 hours.
Rosalind and Einar live on
the homestead Einar’s parents
farmed, and where his grandpar-
ents also lived. (Rosalind was
born on a farm in Geysir; her
parents were Johannes Palsson
and Olga Holm.)
The farm is called Drang-
ey, named after an island in
Skagafjörður in Iceland made
famous for its association with
Gréttir’s Saga and a nearly im-
possible swim. Einar’s father
was Johann Vigfusson from
Arnarnes and Höfn. His mother
was Emily Baldvinsdóttir Jóns-
son, whose parents were from
Skagafjörður.
Einar’s grandmother Ingib-
jörg missed Iceland so keenly
that when her husband was
clearing the land, he left a bluff
of trees standing because it re-
sembled Drangey as she has seen
it at home. “There was a picture
of Drangey in their bedroom all
their years here,” says Rosalind.
“When our farm was a hundred
years old, we gave it this name.”
8 • Lögberg-Heimskringla • Friday 10 March 2006
PHOTO: DAVID JÓN FULLER
Einar and Rosalind Vigfusson travel to Iceland this month.
Carving birds and singing
Vigfussons keep in touch with their Icelandic heritage
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