Lögberg-Heimskringla - 01.04.2012, Page 13

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Lögberg-Heimskringla • 1. apríl 2012 • 13
EVENTS
Saturday 14 April
Markerville, AB: Fensala Hall Spring
Concert. Gary Fjellgaard in Concert. 7
p.m. Tickets are available at the Creamery
Parlour Office or Call Joyce Johannson at
(403)728-3536. $25 per person.
Thursday 19 April
Selkirk, MB: 119th Annual
Sumardargurinn Fyrsti held by the INL
Bruin Chapter. Please join us for the First
Day of Summer Concert. Doors open 7
p.m., concert 7:30 p.m. Selkirk Legion,
403 Eveline St. Entertainment, raffle, food,
silent auction, fun, fellowship. Collection
at door. Everyone welcome.
Friday 20 April
Winnipeg, MB: The Icelandic Canadian
Frón is hosting its wine pairing dinner
featuring wine expert Campbell Alexander
at the Scandinavian Centre, 764 Erin
Street, 6:30 p.m. Chef Michael of Bonne
Cuisine will again be catering. For tickets
contact Judy Bradley, gjbradley@shaw.
ca phone 488-3076 or Kendra Jonasson,
kensuloa@mts.net phone 770-3618.
Saturday 28 April
Winnipeg, MB: The Jon Sigurdsson
Chapter IODE will hold its Spring Bridge
and Whist Luncheon at Betelstaður, 1061
Sargent Avenue at Erin. Bake Sale starts
at 11:00, Luncheon at 11:45, followed
by card playing. Prizes. Admission $12.
Tickets at the door. Proceeds go to support
the annual IODE Scholarship Program.
Everyone is welcome.
Sunday 29 April
Winnipeg, MB: Come join us for a delicious
Sunday Brunch at the Scandinavian Centre,
764 Erin St., hosted by the Icelandic Cana-
dian Frón from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Cost is
$13.50 for adults: $6 children 8-12; children
ages 7 and under free. Everyone welcome.
May 3 – 6, 2012
Brandon, MB: 93rd INL of NA Convention
Hosted by the Icelandic Canadian Club
of Western Manitoba. Embracing Our
Icelandic Culture at the Victoria Inn, 3550
Victoria Ave. Registration forms, hotel,
transportation and program information
are on the INL of NA website and Facebook
(http://www.inlofna.org/).
Saturday 5 May
Markervile, AB: The Saga Of Grettir
The Strong; 16 storytellers from across
Canada share the performance of one of
Iceland’s best loved tragic heroes – Grettir
the Strong. Storytelling goes from dawn
until dusk with feasting and dancing
between scenes. Fensala Hall. For tickets
and information contact Karen Gummo
karengummo@shaw.ca.
ÞORRABLÓT
Saturday 14 April
Toronto, ON: Annual Þorrablót Dinner at
the Estonian House, 958 Broadview Ave.
6 p.m. Cash Bar, 7 pm. Free parking.
Silent auction. Icelandic Canadian Buf-
fet, Kalt Borð. Kolaport Markaður, fam-
ily photo booth, children’s games. Viking
challenge, try some tasty hákarl (putrified
shark), hrútspunger (soured in whey rams
testicles), svið (roasted sheeps head) and
chase it down with Icelandic Beer. $2 per
taste, or 3 for $5.Tickets online www.icct.
info. Tickets $45, Youth under 13 – $25,
Child under 6 – $10.
Wynyard, SK: Vatnabygð Icelandic Club
of Saskatchewan’s annual Þorrablót.
Wynyard Civic Centre. Catered supper,
entertainment, dance to the music of the
Better ‘N Nothing Band. Cocktails: 6 p.m.,
Supper: 7 p.m. Entertainment to follow.
Advance tickets $25/person; $50/family
(children living at home). Dance only: 9
p.m. tickets at the door - $15. Icelandic
lunch during the dance. More information
contact Christie Dalman, 554-2267 or
dalman@sasktel.net
ICELANDIC CLASSES
Mondays, April - June 11
Toronto, ON: Adult Icelandic beginner
and Intermediate Classs. 8 consecutive
Mondays, 7:30-9:30 p.m. (not May 21).
Morningside Park Presbyterian Church,
4 Morningside Ave. To register contact
Arden Jackson at thorrablot@icct.info or
online ICCT website.
Wednesdays
Gimli, MB: Kaffitími (coffee time) in Gimli
takes place at 3 p.m. each Wednesday,
meeting at Amma’s Tea Room at the Gimli
Waterfront Centre. There is no signup and
no teacher. Anyone is welcome to drop in;
the only fee is the price of your cup of
coffee. There is only one rule – you need
to talk Icelandic in order to participate in
the chat around the table. If you just want
to listen at first that’s fine too!
Thursdays
Calgary, AB: Please join the LEIC once a
month, 1:15 p.m. in the Saga Room for
more Thursdays in the Library. A number of
new items have been added to the library
collection. For more info about the sessions,
contact Christine (403) 244-1560.

GENEALOGy
Sundays
Victoria, BC: The first Sunday of each
month the Icelanders of Victoria are offering
a genealogy night open-house style at Fred
Bjarnason’s. You will have the opportunity
to use his collection of genealogy books,
use his password to a variety of databases
and have an experienced hand to guide
you in your quest to find your Icelandic
ancestors. Please join us from 6-9 p.m.
Fred Bjarnason (250) 477-3535.

LITERATURE
Lestrarfélagið Gleym-mér-ei
April 18: The History of the INL – $5
May 31: Ice Land – Betsy Tobin
MUSIC
John K. Samson & The Provincial Band
April 1: Seattle,WA –Tractor Tavern
April 2: Portland, OR – Doug Fir
April 5: San Diego, CA – The Casbah
April 6: Los Angeles, CA – The Troubadour
April 7: San Francisco, CA – Bottom of the Hill
April 13: Calgary, AB – The Palomino
April 14: Saskatoon, SK – Amigos Cantina
FILM
Icelandic Film Showing in N.A. Festivals
In a Heartbeat, a seven minute film from
Iceland has been featured in 25 film
festivals around the world, winning five
awards. Coming soon to the following:
Until April 1: Cleveland, OH – Cleveland
International Film Festival.
13 - 20 April: Vancouver, BC – Real 2
Real International Film Festival
15 - 21 April: Halifax, NS – ViewFinders:
Inter-national Film Festival (Atlantic Film
Festival)
10 - 22 April: Toronto, ON – TIFF - Kids
(Toronto International Film Festival - Kids
More info and trailer at:
http://www.artiofilms.com/in-a-
heartbeat/
Events
Icelandic lasses
Genealogy
Þorrablót
Music
Literature
Send information to appear in the Calendar of Events
to catherine@lh-inc.ca.
Please include date, place, time and other particulars.
For more listings, visit our website at www.lh-inc.ca.
The Lögberg-Heimskringla
CALENDAR OF EVENTS
Film
S.E. Waller is a young English artist. He doesn’t have much money but is
determined to go to Iceland to
sketch and paint the scenes of
Njal’s Saga. He has had some
hard riding before he reached
Eyrarbakki but he finds there
wonderful accommodation and
kind hosts.
With his three horses and
his guide, Bjarni, he leaves
for Oddi which is thirty miles
away. However, because of the
bogs and heaths, the need to
cross a river, the distance they
have to travel is sixty miles. It
becomes the hardest journey
they have had so far. Bjarni
nearly is killed when he rides
into some quicksand. However,
his horse manages to thrash his
way out of it.
The river Thjórsá is in flood.
It is so wide at this time of year
that it takes them more than
an hour to cross it. It is hard to
imagine today what it must have
been like to travel where there
were no roads, only trails, over
land so treacherous, filled with
hidden dangers, that, time and
again, a local guide had to be
hired to show the traveler how
to cross a river.
They start the crossing
of the Thjórsá by going from
sandbank to sandbank. To make
matters more dangerous, most
of the sandbanks are under
two or three feet of water. The
horses wade and even swim for
twenty minutes to get to the
middle of the river. Here they
stop on a gravel bank that feels
like it could suddenly disinte-
grate. They are now surrounded
by water. Ahead of them is deep
water, a half-mile wide. The
melting snow in the interior has
turned the river into a torrent.
In the distance, they can
see a boat coming toward them.
Some drovers are bringing over
a herd of horses. As the boat and
horses come closer, he can hear
how frightened the horses are as
they swim across the current.
Once the boat arrives, they
put in their saddles and baggage.
They tie ropes to the horses
and Bjarni takes two ropes and
Waller takes the other. Waller’s
self-confidence is not increased
by Bjarni saying that horses are
often lost while crossing a river.
They reach the other side,
after which they have to cross
two smaller rivers on their own.
They left Eyrarbakki at half-
past twelve in the morning and
don’t reach Oddi until half-past
eight at night. Waller is delight-
ed that the priest has some good
pasture and allows the three
horses to graze there.
Waller says, “The little
house at Oddi was exceedingly
comfortable, the food good, the
bed clean, our host kindness it-
self. All this we were very grate-
ful for; but to make the evening
complete, I found, to my in-
tense joy, a Shakespeare lying
in a dusty corner. I had brought
no books with me, fearing they
might tend to idleness, so that,
on discovering this treasure, my
delight was great.”
Rain pours down during the
night. He hopes that the morning
will bring clear skies but, instead,
it is still pouring rain. Since there
is little he can do, he tries to learn
some Icelandic. Bjarni helps him
learn some Icelandic words. He
says, “I made desperate efforts
to talk with the son of our host,
who was physician to the district
and had spent some years in
Copenhagen. He was exceedingly
good -natured over my blunders,
and produced a Danish-English
phrase-book, which helped us
along considerably.
“I shall always remember
the kindness of both father and
son. They begged me to stay a
week with them, an invitation I
was very sorry to refuse. When
leaving on the Friday morning,
Sr. Jonson positively refused to
allow me to give compensation
to any member of his house-
hold.”
On Friday, the weather is
good so Waller decides to stay
at Oddi all day and travel at
night. All morning he works on
a sketch of their white horse,
then a view of Thryhriningr.
Their next destination is Kross,
on the extreme south coast.
The hardship, the danger,
the weather, the dangerous riv-
er crossing, are nothing excep-
tional in Iceland in 1874. These
were the conditions everyone
encountered. People buying
and selling horses or sheep
experienced these difficulties.
Farmers and their families, their
workers, faced these conditions
on a daily basis.
In Independent People, Bjar-
tur of Summerhouses goes search-
ing for sheep. He gets caught in a
blizzard, “but still the blizzard as-
sailed him with undiminished fury
when he reached the next ridge,
clawed at his eyes and the roots
of his beard, howled vindictively
in his ears, and tried to hurl him
to the ground ... he forced his way
at first with lowered head against
the storm, but when he reached the
ridge above the gully, he could no
longer make any headway in this
fashion, so he slumped forward on
to his hands and knees and made
his way through the blizzard on all
fours.”
In Indridason’s novels,
the main character Erlender is
obsessed with the loss of his
younger brother in a storm. He
realizes that with the bogs and
quicksand that his brother could
simply have disappeared and his
body would never be found.
The weather, in every
traveler’s book, is front and
centre. It determines what can
and can’t be done. It brings
good grass or no grass, a full
belly or starvation. There is no
escaping it. Even if people are
at a farm, it imprisons them just
as it imprisons Waller. Once a
journey has begun, it can, as
with Bjartur, bring the traveler
close to death or to death itself.
A ten-day journey, sleeping
in churches, farmhouses, tents,
even in good weather, was de-
manding. As Waller discovers,
as-the-crow-flies meant nothing
in terms of the distance to be
covered for bogs had to be skirt-
ed, rivers crossed where there
were ferries or fords.
No wonder Icelandic fami-
lies were used to getting up at
any time during the night to
provide refuge for a traveler.
Their farm may have been the
only place of shelter in the area.
When Bjartur finally makes it
to Brun, it is night, everyone is
in bed, but the farm wife hears
someone groaning, hammering
on the door. They go to the door
with a light and Bjartur topples
in. He’s covered in ice.
This is later in the season
but the weather that Waller and
many others describe during
June, July, August, can be as
deadly. That makes the welcome
that Waller has had at Eyrarbakki
and Oddi all the warmer, all the
more appreciated, all the more
remembered. What feels better
than to be safe in a warm house
as a storm rages outside.
(Quotes from Six Weeks in the
Saddle, S. E. Waller, 1874)
Waller gives the priest’s
name as Sr. Jonson but there
are many Jonsons. Nor does
he give the name of the priest’s
son who is the doctor for the
district. If anyone reading this
knows who these two were,
would you please write to let
me know. If they are relatives,
I’d like to hear about that.
From wdvalgardsonkaffihus.
blogspot.ca used with
permission
On To Oddi, Waller, 1874
W.D. Valgardson
Victoria, BC
Grant a. StefanSon
B.a., LL.B.
2200 – One LOmbard PLace
WinniPeg, mb r3b OX7
TeL 204.925.5376
main 204.942-2271
FaX 204.943.4242
e-maiL gstefanson@darcydeacon.com
D’ARCY & DEACON LLP
BArrIstErs AnD soLICItors