The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1995, Síða 51

SPRING/SUMMER 1995
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
161
Gubrun, his wife’s sister and the daughter
of the Rev. Jakob Finnbogason at
Stadarbakki, who was considered to be
more gifted and desirable in most ways than
other girls of the district. Before long, our
friendship became more than that of mere
acquaintances. Gudrun had suffered from
poor health, and the medicines I provided
her with seemed to have helped her some-
what. We exchanged letters often, as was
to be expected, as she was very well-read
and wrote a better letter than any other
Icelandic woman I have known. One time
I had to ask Rev. Melsted to convey a letter
to her, but since custom required that our
communication be kept secret. I folded the
letter up as small as possible and placed it
in a medicine bottle upon which I wrote,
as was usual with medicines, “to be opened
carefully. Entire dosage to be consumed at
one time.” The following year, 1887,
Gudrun was all at once seized by the idea
of emigrating to America, a prospect which
enthused me little. A short time after she
had left, I told Rev. Melsted of our friend-
ship. He listened sympathetically and
would have had me remain there in case
Gudrun should decide to return. He of-
fered to teach me without remuneration,
to prepare me for school, but to no avail. I
was determined to go and seek my fortune,
which I had not expected to find in
America. In 1888 I journeyed to America,
against the wishes of many friends and re-
lations. I expected to meet my beloved
straightaway at an immigrant’s home in
Winnipeg and dwell in the city to begin
with. But things turned otherwise. Three
days later I was in the United States
(Hallson, Dakota) looking for work, of
which there was none to be found there.
After some time I received a telegram from
Winnipeg informing me that Gudrun was
dangerously ill in the hospital there, and I
set off on foot (from Mountain) and walked
all the way to Emerson, a town on the Ca-
nadian side of the border, which was a stiff
journey without provisions.
A few days later, I was offered work with
house construction in the village of Swift
Current, over 500 miles west of Winnipeg,
where I was until Christmas. All the carpen-
ters were Englishmen except for myself and
one other Icelander, Arni Long, a cheer-
ful and capable fellow. On Christmas Eve
we returned to Winnipeg without any
money, as wages were then usually paid
when an employer felt like paying. There
were no laws to protect the rights of work-
ers. That same winter, on January the 16th,
I married my beloved and we lived in a
house which we shared with Kristinn
Stefansson (a poet) and his wife Gudrun,
who for many years helped us out. There
was unemployment in the city, and practi-
cally everywhere in the region, in those
years. Around the middle of August, 1889,
I travelled south to Dakota to look for work
on a farm there. I worked for some time,
with two other Icelanders, for an English
bachelor, who was rather primitive in his
ways, his housekeeping, his drinking, and
so on. He was to pay us after the fall thresh-
ing was completed. From there we hired
on with an English threshing crew. Later
our former employer sent word to us that
we were to come and pick up our wages,
which we had long since written off, in the
village of Glasston. We took time off from
work the next day and arrived in the town
at the same time as our former employer
(whom we called Bill). He was in the best
of spirits and greeted us warmly. He had
come on horseback and proceeded to tie
his horse to a telegraph pole. He told us to
wait until he got in touch with a grain deal-
er’s agent and was paid for his grain. We
stood there in the meantime, like the old
woman with her eggs in the story, thinking
of all we could buy with the money Bill was
to pay us. After we had waited for some
time, a train pulled into the station from
the West, and we watched as Bill climbed
on board as the train was pulling out again.
And that was the last we saw of him. The
horse still stood, tied to the pole when we