Lögberg-Heimskringla - 01.03.2009, Blaðsíða 10

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10 • Lögberg-Heimskringla • 1 March 2009
This used to be a very Icelandic area,” laments Stella Stephenson at her home in Elfros, Sakatchewan. “Now
you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who
speaks Icelandic.”
Stella’s remarks are borne up by such
sources as the website Wikipedia, which
tells us that, though Elfros was original-
ly settled by Icelandic immigrants, only
23.95% of the present-day inhabitants are of
Icelandic origin. As the population is hover-
ing somewhere around 110, that makes a
total of just over 26 people of Icelandic
blood – not much for an area that used to
be crawling with them.
Along with her late husband Eric
Stephanson, Stella was one of the founders
of the Vatnabyggð Icelandic Club, a social
and cultural organization serving the Sas-
katchewan area once known informally as
“Red Square” for its progressive grassroots
politics. The club was founded in May of
1981 on the principle, says Stella, that
“There should be something”
to mark the Icelandicness,
or at least the former Ice-
landicness, of the area.
Officially, the club’s
manifesto is “To foster
and promote Icelan-
dic cultural heritage
and har-
m o n y
and co-
opera-
tion be-
t w e e n
all cul-
t u r a l
groups.”
The Elfros area
was settled by a
quintet of Iceland-
ers and their fami-
lies in 1903, and the
town itself was incor-
porated almost exactly
one hundred years ago. It
was known for, among
other things, establishing
and maintaining an amal-
gamation of two separate faiths,
Scottish Presbyterians and Icelan-
dic Lutherans, which did not in-
dividually have enough members
to thrive. The combination was
known as The Union Church, and
stands as a great example of the
progressive nature of the area.
A celebrity author moved to
Elfros in 1922. Johann Magnus
Bjarnson had
been born in
Iceland and had
emigrated to Nova Scotia at the age of nine,
and then had grown into a celebrated author
of fiction. His novels, written in Icelandic,
included titles such as Eirikur Hanson and
Braziliufararnir, or Adventures in Brazil.
He wrote several other novels in addition
to this, along with short stories and fables.
He and his wife lived happily in Elfros until
their deaths in 1945; she passed away first
and he followed less than a month later. A
monument was erected to his memory and
unveiled in July of 1945.
That is not the only monument in El-
fros. In the late 1990s, the Vatnabyggð
Club decided to create a tribute to the area’s
pioneers, but sensibly decided against the
typical earnest depiction of an exhausted
sodbuster wiping his brow while staring off
into a middle distance meant to represent the
future. Instead the club recruited Saskatoon
sculptor Hans Holtkamp, who dressed mod-
els Lisa Strozen and Scott Stephanson – son
of Eric and Stella – in period costume and
fashioned their likeness in bronze. Reads a
plaque, “The statue depicts the dedication
to the arts, to literacy, to education and to
family life brought to Canada by the Icelan-
dic pioneers.”
Stella Stephenson is not herself of
Icelandic descent, but if anyone out there
is an honourary Icelander, it is she. Her
husband Eric was the first president of the
Vatnabyggð club, serving as such from its
inception to 1998, but Stella has long been
the organization’s secretary. She remem-
bers Eric’s mother, Thorbjörg Stephanson,
“A very progressive woman,” Stella says.
“She drove a car, which was unusual at the
time, and picked up the ladies who were
part of the Icelandic Ladies’ Aid Society –
a dozen or so ladies who got together, had
coffee, made lunches for funerals and that
sort of thing.”
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Above: Stella Stephenson
at home.
Right: A maquette of the
Vatnabyggð club
statue.
Novelist Johan Magnus Bjornson, who
lived out his last, happy years in Elfros.
Continued on page 13
Saskatchewan town heads
into its hundredth year