Lögberg-Heimskringla - 01.04.2012, Page 2

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2 • Lögberg-Heimskringla • April 1 2012
News
The Guttormsson Family Foundation announces the winners of their 2012 Annual
Snorri Scholarships.
Julie Summers of Lopez Island,
WA, and Amanda Allen of Seattle,
WA, are the winners of $2000 each
toward their costs with the Snorri
Program this summer.
Amanda Allen is a 28-year-
old photographer, videographer
from Seattle. She hopes that, by
visiting Iceland, she can enrich her
knowledge and connection with a
family heritage only heard about in
stories and imagined since she was a
child. Growing up, the only tangible
kinship she had to her Icelandic
ancestors was through Christmas
stories from her grandparents
and aunts, attendance at the Free
Unitarian Church in Blaine, WA that
was founded by Icelandic settlers
in 1929, and through making a
traditional vínarterta every holiday
season with her mom.
She hopes that the beautiful
surreal nature of Iceland’s icy and
volcanic landscape will help her
expand her photographic portfolio,
and documentary travel videos.
She also hopes to gain experience
and better knowledge of farming
practices and techniques, and food
cultivation and the rich culinary
heritage of Iceland.
Her family lineage is pretty
diverse, but she has always felt most
akin and interested in her Icelandic
heritage.
She found out about the
Snorri Foundation opportunity, only
five days before the application
was due and she was not financially
prepared for taking a trip of this
nature so soon, but decided she must
take the chance and apply as this is
only available to people 21-28 years
of age and she would be turning 29
this coming year.
Julie Summers is a 23-year-old,
summa cum laude graduate from
Corban College. She has completed
her AmeriCorps term at the Lopez
Island Family Resource Center in
August 2011 and currently works
as a part-time employee (office
assistant/publicity manager) at the
Lopez Island Prevention Coalition.
Her Icelandic heritage stems from
her maternal afi, Oscar Westford who
grew up on a farm in North Dakota.
His parents were Helga Benson from
Seyðisfjörður and Sveinn Westford
from Barðarstrandarsýsla.
Julie and her siblings have
been “proudly aware of their
Icelandic roots.” She has poured
over notebooks of family history,
“following twisting branches of the
family tree back hundreds of years.”
Sounds like she has the “old peoples
disease” – Genealogy.
Julie has been dreaming of
traveling to Iceland all her life
and “now has the opportunity to
experience her heritage in a full and
authentic way.”
The GFF funding this year was
obtained from Dr. Steve and Rosemary
Guttormsson, Bishop Stefan T.
Guttormsson, Paul Guttormsson Esq.,
Harvey Thorleifson PhD Univ. of
Minn., and Jeff and Pam Furstenau.
We thank you all for your
continued support of this unique
program. There is no other country
that reaches out to their “diaspora”
like the Icelanders. We should all be
proud to be Icelanders.
Courtesy of a press release from
the Guttormsson Family Foundation
Guttormsson Family Foundation
Snorri scholarships announced
At their most recent regular monthly meeting, the Vatnabyggð Icelandic
Club of Saskatchewan members
voted to have their club events
transferred from video tapes
to DVDs. The club has a large
collection of videos, including
several years of þorrablót, the
installation of the memorial to
Icelandic pioneers, and the visit
of President Ólafur Ragnar
Grímsson in 1999.
The idea arose when one
of the club members obtained
a business licence from the
town. “These are all personal
videos that I am transferring,”
said Audrey Shepherd. “People
bring me family videos – there
is no copyright on them. I had
videotaped most of the ones
for the club, so that’s OK. I
couldn’t transfer ones that
were copy-protected.”
Too much of the club
history is on video and would
be lost, members agreed. The
videos date from about 1990
to 2004. The decision was also
simplified because the club had
already received a donated TV
and bought a DVD player for
their club room in the basement
of the Unitarian church in
Wynyard.
The purchase of the DVD
will also allow the club to
become part of the INL of
NA movie project, but as a
beginning, over coffee at the
end of the meeting, members
enjoyed watching a DVD of the
installation of the memorial. “It
took about three hours,” said
Audrey Shepherd, who did
the transfer. “The DVD is 23
minutes long. You have to get
the right pieces of the event – I
wanted just enough so that peo-
ple could see the entire process.”
Vatnabyggð club saving history
Christie Dalman
Wynyard, SK
Julie Summers
Amanda Allen
ARBORG PHARMACY
Store Hours: Mon. - Sat. 9 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Fri. 9 a.m. - 8 p.m. Sun. noon - 4 p.m.Pharmacist: V. T. Eyolfson
Box 640, Arborg, MB R0C 0A0
Ph: 204-376-5153
SHared wiSdoM • SHared coMMitMent • SHared valueS
Hallgrimsson ...from 1
Since 2008, Benedikt
has served as Senior
Associate Dean, Education
in the Faculty of Medicine
and is currently Chair of
the Academic Programs
Committee. He holds an
appointment ‘with tenure’
in the Department of Cell
Biology and Anatomy,
and Adjunct appointments
in both the Faculty of
Veterinary Medicine’s
Department of Comparative
Biology and Experimental
Medicine and the Faculty
of Arts’ Department of
Archaeology. He served as
Assistant Dean and founding
Director of the Bachelor of
Health Sciences program
from 2001 and Associate
Dean, Undergraduate
Science Education from
2004 to 2008.
Dr. Benedikt
Hallgrimsson was born in
Iceland in 1967, came to
Winnipeg in 1975 with his
parents, Dr. Hallgrimur
Benediktsson and Guðrún
Jörundsdóttir of Calgary,
went back to Iceland in
1981, and moved to Calgary
in 1985. He received his
undergraduate education at
the University of Alberta
(Governor General’s Award)
and obtained a PhD in
Physical Antropology from
University of Chicago.
Used with permission,
University of Calgary