The Icelandic Canadian - 01.12.1979, Page 37

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
35
I REMEMBER LONI
by Lillian Olson Lane
Mrs. Lane shared first prize — $50 — in
the Islendingadagu rin n Reminisicences
Contest at Gimli, Manitoba, 1979 with
Hallgerdur G. Schneider. Mrs. Schneider's
story will be published in a later issue of
the Icelandic Canadian.
In my memory of Loni, the old family
homestead, the sun is always shining.
Granted, night must have fallen regu-
larly, even in summer: I recall grand-
motherly warnings of the dangers of the
“night air”, invoking visions of evil spirits
which might attack the unwary child who
ventured outside. I even remember rainy
days spent among books and other treasures
in the roomy attic. There were times, too,
when the wind swept through the trees and
churned up waves on the lake.
Nevertheless, like the constant sun in a
child’s drawing, whatever the scene de-
picted, an aura of warmth and light bathes
the recollection of that early childhood
period.
The Sveinsson farm was situated on the
lakeshore north of Gimli, on the long shal-
low bay defined to the north by the rocky
treed point which hid from sight the
neighbouring farm of “Birkinesi”. The
name “Loni”, meaning an inlet of the sea,
would be far more relevant to the home our
grandfather left in Iceland than to this lake-
side property; however, as a child I always
thought the “Ion” was the stream which
wound through the pastureland to the west,
fed by artesian wells, passed behind the barn
and widened into a deep pool when it
reached the sandy beach. This pool, reedy,
red with mineral deposits, full of tadpoles
and frogs in season, emptied slowly —
helped or hindered as dammed or redirected
by childish hands — through the sand into
the lake.
In the early twenties the hard pioneer
years — though not the lifetime habits of
hard work — were well in the past for our
grandparents, Gisli and Margret Sveinsson.
They had achieved a measure of prosperity,
their property extending westward from the
lake — beyond where a small child might
ramble — over pastureland and grain fields,
probably to the northern road, where they
had donated land for the town cemetery.
There were also haylands to the south of
town, at Willow Point.
By this hime, I believe, grandfather had
long since stopped combining fishing with
farming, and concentrated on his herd of
dairy cattle, horses and poultry, with all the
associated activities of mixed farming.
Small sections of his land were sold from
time to time to “city people” for summer
cottages — a process now, it seems, com-
plete — and these cottagers (or “campers”,
as they were called) became customers as
well as friends, arriving on warm summer
evenings with their jugs for fresh supplies of
milk and perhaps some new-laid eggs, and
stopping to chat.
The house “afi” had built a good many
years before was a spacious frame structure,
three storeys and a cement basement. There
was a big screened-in porch at the front,
with a sleeping balcony over it, overlooking
the water. Downstairs there was a small
parlour at the front, separated by sliding
doors from the central dining-room. There
was a winter kitchen and a big summer
kitchen at the back, each with an adjoining
pantry. A small bedroom opened off the
dining room, but of course the main sleep-
ing quarters were upstairs.
There was a wall telephone in the winter
kitchen, and a sink with a pump to draw up
water from the cistern in the basement. I