The Icelandic Canadian - 01.09.1981, Qupperneq 45

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
43
cabin on Matheson Island. When the novel
ends, the family is breaking up, Stephanie
and the girls to live in Gimli, Jon to work as
hired help for a rival fishing company. And
yet, they have grown closer and have ex-
pectations of a more secure future. I hope
their story is continued.
These opening and closing chapters
dominated by the Paulsons serve to unify
what would otherwise have been a series of
short stories. Each intermediary chapter
concerns one person, occasionally a Paul-
son but mainly other people of Icelandic,
Indian or mixed blood. This format works
well, disclosing the silent, private reaches
of each person’s mind as well as variations
on how these individuals are seen by the
others. Not only is each character mar-
velously realized but, in the process, com-
munity and cultural ceremonies also
emerge: a Christmas party, a square dance,
an Indian funeral, the commingling of all
ages and ethnics. Each chapter is introduced
by a stunning line drawing by Virginia
Krueger Woltzen, the author’s daughter-in-
law.
Here are some of the extraordinary people
readers will meet: Helga is a lonely young
widow with two small sons who feels guilt
because she had enjoyed her husband’s ab-
sence during a fishing expedition from
which he never returned; an attractive
bachelor renews her interest in life, and
Helga anxiously waits during the fall freeze
to learn whether he will return. Ben Mober-
ly, a Saulteaux Indian youth, who mourns
his best friend, a white university student
washed overboard during a violent storm;
Ben is obsessed with recovering his friend’s
body. This is the most powerful and estheti-
cally satisfying chapter of all. Other charac-
ters include a demented Indian trapper;
Ben’s mother, who is perpetually pregnant,
and a childless storekeeper’s wife, unsatis-
fied by her husband, who enjoys a brief,
passionate interlude with a virile stranger.
Sigrid Johannesson has skillfully blended
time and place and character into a mem-
orable whole; her stories are dramatic, her
descriptions poetic. “Break-up time arrived
. . . The large terrifying ice floes crashed
against one another . . . Lumbering masses
of ice were hurled about — merging into
sparkling, jagged peaks against the April
sky ... It was a time of creation and de-
struction — life springing up from roots in
the ground, or death appearing when a child
lay ill, and it was impossible to cross the
lake for help.”
There is a legend about a man named
Leifur, trapped during the spring break-up
within sight of land. “The vigil on the shore
continued long after the sun set, and the
following morning the lone figure had dis-
appeared. Each year the story grew, and
each spring islanders with overworked
imaginations saw the figure of Leifur stand-
ing frozen in one of the ice blocks.”
In a sense, Johannesson’s characters are
like that: timeless, recurrent, caught forever
now in the crystalline blocks of her prose.
As Thomas Berger wrote of King Arthur,
they are not “historical” but everything
they do is true.
—Jo Modert, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Sunday, January 11, 1981
IN THE NEWS
Icelandic Canadian Club
of Western Manitoba
The annual meeting of the Icelandic Cana-
dian Club of Western Manitoba was held on
May 24th at Redeemer Lutheran Church.
New executive elected: Harold Vidal,
President; Elin Hood, Vice-President; Susan
Thorsteinson, Secretary; A1 Gordon, News
Letter and Membership; Lilja Martin, Pro-
gram Chairman; Jeanette Holm, Social
Convenor.