The Icelandic Canadian - 01.09.2003, Qupperneq 45

Vol. 58 #1
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
43
The back page
The statue on the next page was created by Hans Holtkamp of Saskatoon.
He has a Winnie the Pooh in the London Zoo. The design was created during a
Vatnabyggd meeting that Hans attended. The models were Stella and Eric
Stephanson's son, Scott, and Nanna Olafson's grand daughter, Lisa.
The statue was unveiled officially on July 11, 1998, in the midst of a massive
thunder storm. We had about 600 people for the unveiling, including TV cover-
age from Iceland.
As well as the statue, the site contains an information board designed to be
representative of a settler’s home. One side of the three-panel board features a
map of the Vatnabyggd area, pin pointing the schools and towns influenced by
early Icelandic settlements, and the names of about 350 of the early pioneers.
That list is by no means complete.
The reverse side is a three-panel mural by Kevin Meers of Wishart. From the
east, the panels show Iceland in the late 1800s, the volcanoes and the voyage to
Canada and the train across the country, and a collage of Vatnabyggd then and
now. The murals were officially unveiled during the June 17, 2002 Independence
Day picnic in Elfros.
All the money for the project was raised in Saskatchewan and all of it was
spent on Saskatchewan artists. The calligraphy of the names was done by B.J.
Wunder of Foam Lake. Eddie Gudmundson of our Club designed and built the
information board. Signage around the statue was done by a little foundry in
Saskatchewan. The concrete was poured and finished by an Elfros artisan. The
entire project cost about $60,000.
When Hans met us, incidentally, he said groups usually spent years raising
money which they gave to a sculptor who then went away to create something
they would all hate for the rest of their lives. Such was not the case with the
Vatnabyggd memorial to Icelandic pioneers.