The Icelandic Canadian - 01.04.1988, Qupperneq 25

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
23
most of the windows faced the river. The
main doors were on the south side, and on
the north a staircase with handrails led
upstairs. Underneath half the house was a
cellar which had at first been deep but had
now collapsed and was never used. From
two or three places outside, it was possible
to crawl under the house (under the muddy
beams) into holes which had been formed
by the pressure of the flood in the spring of
1882 and had not yet been filled in or
covered up. The wind blew in there under
the floor and howled mournfully, often
keeping awake the people who lived up-
stairs. No one had lived downstairs since
the house began to lean. The windows
were nailed shut and the doors were locked.
My cousin and I walked up the stairs
into the crooked house. The stairs led up to
the balcony and the platform in front of
the entrance. They creaked and rattled and
the handrail trembled as we mounted.
Along the length of the upstairs was a
narrow, dark passageway which had six
rooms on one side and five on the other. In
between the second and third rooms on the
south, the side which had only five rooms,
was a space approximately ten feet in
width. There had once been a stair leading
up from the hall downstairs. Now boards
were nailed over the opening and various
kinds of rubbish were stored in that corner.
On the roof was a small window which let
in the only light when the rooms were
closed. Everything pointed to the fact that
very little care was given to the house. The
hall had certainly not been whitewashed
for a very long time. The plaster had fallen
off the wall here and there, and where it
had not fallen out, it had yellow streaks
and cracks and small stains everywhere.
Most of the doors were off their hinges and
locks were broken or something else was
wrong. I could see immediately that only
the poor lived here and that the rent would
be especially low. Of course, I found out
very quickly that it was indeed so. All who
lived there were newcomers to this land.
They were poor day-labourers, the Cinder-
ellas of mankind, men and women, who
had probably, in one way or another, suf-
fered the shipwreck of their hopes and had,
in their own land, been defeated in the
endless battle for every crust of bread.
“These are my rooms,” said my cousin.
She pointed to four doors on the left side as
one entered the hall. Then she showed me
the rooms. They were all quite clean and
bright and the windows looked out on the
river. But the plaster on the walls was
broken in many places and in some had
fallen off. Mother and daughter had one
room as their bedroom, another was used
as a kitchen, pantry and laundry, the third
was the dining and living room. The three
men whom Solrun called her boarders
slept in the fourth room.
“It is now five-thirty,” said my cousin.
“I must hurry to prepare the evening meal
as my boarders will soon be home.”
In a few minutes, she had changed
clothes, made a fire in the stove and had
begun to prepare the meal. She beckoned
me to a chair in the kitchen and although
she had much to do and was in constant
motion about the room, she never stopped
talking. She told me why she and her late
husband tore themselves away from a
good farm in Iceland in the spring of 1874
and moved to Kinmount, Ontario, and
how it came about that they left there for
New Iceland the next year. She told me of
all the disasters that befell her during the
two years she spent in a remote log cabin in
the bush. There she lost her husband and
two sons, all from smallpox. She told me
how she and her daughter managed to get
away from there to Winnipeg, and how,
after she arrived there, she had to struggle
along to make a living for the two of them,
and how she had triumphed over all hard-
ships and had now set aside so much
money that she would soon be able to
invest in a small property on Point Doug-