The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1982, Síða 23

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
21
this attitude, he must die, Illugi laughed
and said, “Now you have chosen what is
more to my liking.”
Iceland is bigger than Ireland. It contains
some 40,000 square miles but only about
one fifth of this area is capable of sup-
porting human life, the rest is covered with
ice, rock, lava and volcanic ash. Thus Ice-
land can sustain a very limited population.
In 1875, one of her numerous volcanoes
errupted, laying waste large areas of farm-
ing and grazing lands. Many Icelanders had
to seek new homes beyond the seas. Some
came to Canada.
With help from the federal government,
a colony, named the Republic of New Ice-
land, was established on the banks of Lake
Winnipeg, beyond the northern boundary
of the Province of Manitoba, which was
then known as the postage stamp province.
Late in the fall of 1875, 285 Icelanders,
including seventy young children, arrived
to take up residence in New Iceland. They
named their principal settlement Gimli;
which proved to be no paradise for those
early settlers. They encountered sub-zero
weather which they had never experienced
in Iceland because the warm waters of the
Gulf Stream keep Iceland’s temperature
fairly moderate. Sub-zero weather holds no
terrors for those who know how to meet it;
but for those who are exposed to it for the
first time, ill-housed, ill-clad and ill-fed,
there is nothing that can match it for dis-
comfort and misery.
In her interesting book, Icelandic Settlers
in America, Elva Simundsson quotes from
a letter which a Gimli colonist wrote to a
friend in Iceland, in 1876: “However
suitable the name Gimli may be here or
whether it was first named as a joke, or in
earnest, I do not know, perhaps it is for the
same reason that Erik the Red named
Greenland, saying that more would seek to
go there if the name were attractive.”
In the spring of 1876, another group of
settlers from Iceland, about 1200 in all,
arrived to make their homes in the wilder-
ness of New Iceland. Farming and fishing
were the occupations at which they were
hoping to make their livelihoods. Things
seemed to be proceeding well, when
tragedy struck. In the winter of 1876,
smallpox raged through the community.
One seventh of the settlers, most of them
children, fell victims to this scourge.
How did the inhabitants of Manitoba
react to the misfortunes of the Icelandic
settlers? By sending them medicines, warm
clothes, good food, in a spirit of Christian
charity. Not a bit of it. Their reaction was
quite different. They quarantined them.
They posted armed guards at the northern
boundary of Manitoba to isolate the settlers
in their own bailiwick. Next spring the
settlers were not able to visit Winnipeg to
buy seed for the crops they had hoped to
grow.
But the Icelandic settlers could not deny
what destiny had in store for them in their
new homeland. They were destined to
triumph over all the odds that faced them,
including a hostile attitude on the part of
the older settlers. And it did not take them
long.
In explaining the rapid rise of Icelandic
Canadians to eminence in every phase of
life in Canada, Judge Walter J. Lindal once
said that they did it by proving that they
were just a little better than the next fellow,
that they gave to every task which they
undertook just an ounce or two more of
extra effort. He was not speaking with a
large chip of conceit on his shoulders. He
stood upon firm ground. He was speaking
the literal and the exact truth.
In forging ahead on all the practical
fronts of life, the Icelandic Canadians were
not deaf to the claims of the spirit. The
pens were always active. On this score, one
who has earned the right to be heard, Dr.
Watson Kirkconnell, has written: “The
pioneer generations of the English and
French in Canada were practically in-