Iceland review - 2015, Qupperneq 62

60 ICELAND REVIEW
“I didn’t have many relatives in Germany.”
She and her mother sent letters and Hildur
visited her two times but she was never
tempted to leave Grjótnes for good. Soon
after she arrived, Hildur and the farmer’s
son Björn Björnsson got engaged. “It hap-
pened very quickly. They were all waiting
for the German girls,” she smiles. By 1952,
they were married.
Farm life suited Hildur well. “We had
300 sheep and two cows. I made butter,
which we sold, and I picked berries and
made juice.” The farm had some income
from picking eider down and collecting
eggs from seabirds. Food was never scarce;
the farmers caught fish in the spring. “We
had fish to last us the whole year,” says
Hildur. “We had two or three horses for
gathering the sheep in the autumn. We
were also responsible for the lighthouse
Rauðanúpsviti and had to ride the ten
kilometers on horseback.” a good athlete,
Hildur competed in sport. “It was a bit
primitive,” she laughs. “We were running
on a field and I stepped in a hole. It was
no smooth track.” Hildur came first in
women’s long jump at the national track
and field championship in 1955 and was the
highest-scoring female athlete. There were
other Germans in the region, who Hildur
met on occasion. “But ten kilometers away
isn’t exactly in the neighborhood,” she
points out. Friends and relatives some-
times visited. “My niece’s son stayed with
us twice; once for a whole month to help
out with the lambing. My husband and I
both had the flu.” The couple had a car and
could drive into town in Raufarhöfn, that is,
as long as they weren’t snowed in. “There
used to be much more snow here.”
long dark winter nights were ideal
for reading. “There were many books
at Grjótnes,” explains Hildur. Before
the national electricity grid reached
Melrakkaslétta, the farm produced its own
power with windmills and an oil stove was
used for heating. “It was always warm,” she
says. Gradually, farms in the vicinity were
abandoned and eventually the other family
at Grjótnes moved to the next village. The
childless couple were the only ones left,
but it didn’t occur to them to move. “We
didn’t want to leave.” In the end, though,
Hildur had no other option. “My husband
died in 2002 and I left the following year.
First I moved to Raufarhöfn and then I
came here,” she says of Hvammur. I ask
whether she never visits Grjótnes. “It’s
too cumbersome with the wheelchair. The
nurses planned a trip there and invited me
to come along but I didn’t want to. That
time is behind me now.”
aMoUr and adventUreS
“Gisela and I first met in 1950 or 1951,”
says Árni. “yes, it was at an exhibition open-
ing,” she adds. “Wasn’t it at a dance?” he
objects. “I happened to be in Selfoss with
some friends when the bus arrived with
the Germans destined for farms in South
Iceland in 1949. Having just graduated
from junior college, I knew some German
and, even though it wasn’t particularly
good, mine was the best so I was asked to
be an interpreter,” Árni recalls. “The expe-
rience made me interested in learning the
language better.” Árni was therefore happy
to make the acquaintance of Gisela and her
friends. The girls were adventurous and not
set on staying in Iceland after their two-
year contract was up. “Two of my friends
had left for africa and I and lydia were
planning to move to Canada. I was waiting
for a transit visa—I had to travel through
the united States.” In the meantime, Árni
returned from his studies abroad. “I got the
visa, but I never left,” says Gisela. “after
we started spending more time together—
not to mention after we started living
together—we were in constant struggle
over which language to speak. I wanted
to speak German and she Icelandic. She
won,” laughs Árni. He and Gisela went on
to marry and have three children. They
still live where they first started out, in the
house on laufásvegur where Árni grew up.
They have traveled to Germany on many
occasions, although Gisela lost touch with
her family after moving to Iceland. She hes-
itates when I ask if she’s more Icelandic or
German. “at least I don’t agree when they
talk about whaling—complain about hunt-
ing cute animals—then I’m not German,”
she quips.
In his 2008 book, Þýska landnámið, his-
torian and economist pétur Eiríksson
recounts the story of the German immi-
grants. Not all of them had as good an
experience as Gisela and Hildur. Many
of them were forced to work long hours,
didn’t receive the pay they were promised,
had problems integrating and suffered as
a result of the harsh climate, isolation and
often unsanitary and primitive conditions
of Icelandic farms. Some were even bullied
or subjected to sexual harassment. Still,
146 of the immigrants stayed on, and their
descendants now number around 2,000.
While the agriculture authorities conclud-
ed that the immigration “experiment” had
failed, as the hiring of the German labor-
ers proved costly, pétur points out their
positive influence on Icelandic society and
culture and that, “they integrated so per-
fectly … that they disappeared among the
Icelanders.” *
Sources:
‘Í Grjótnesi’ (1996), an article in Morgunblaðið
newspaper by Guðni einarsson;
Þýska landnámið (2008) by Pétur eiríksson.
Hildur Björnsson passed away peacefully
in her sleep at retirement home Hvammur,
Húsavík, on December 9, 2014.
hiStorY
“I traveled by train to Hamburg, by ship to Reykjavík, by bus to Akureyri,
by plane to Raufarhöfn and by motor boat to Grjótnes.”
Hildur Björnsson.