The Icelandic Canadian - 01.03.2004, Qupperneq 12

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THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 58 #3
Background
When Icelanders immigrated to
Canada in the 1870s, they left behind a
country gradually advancing in its national
independence campaign against Denmark.
Most people in the country were still
locked in a struggle to survive the poverty
and starvation induced by a feudal-like
farm economy and an over-exploited
Arctic environment. For some, political
reforms were too slow in coming. There
was an outbreak of sheep pestilence
between 1856 and 1860; then the volcano
Mount Askja erupted in 1875. There had
already been years of poor fodder growth.
Optimistic stories of good wages, fertile
plains and bountiful rivers and lakes were
carried in letters and newspaper articles by
Nordic emigrants to North America, and
found an increasingly receptive audience in
Iceland.
Great Britain had been taking an
increased interest in Iceland during the
nineteenth century, as one small extension
of its colonial reach throughout the world.
The trade monopoly imposed by the Danes
was loosening, enabling British fishers to
land on the coast of Iceland to process their
catches. Great Britain was in a better posi-
tion than Denmark - the latter had been
politically paralyzed since its defeat by
Prussia and Austria in 1864 - to take
advantage of the socio-political and demo-
graphic upheavals rupturing Icelandic soci-
ety (Brydon 1995). Britain’s ruling majori-
ties preferred northern Europeans to settle
the colonial frontier, and even if Icelanders
were few in number - in 1870 the popula-
tion was 47,000 - it still proved profitable
to run a steamship between Scotland and
Iceland to transport the men, women and
children seeking freedom from debt and
the paternalism of the farm household.3
Optimistic tales were poor solace
when the realities of frontier life brought
settlers face to face with destitution and
death. Icelanders were ill prepared to make
adroit decisions when they landed in
Canada, and they had to modify or invent
new stories about themselves to sustain
their emotional well-being in a foreign and
seemingly wild place.
Until recently, popular knowledge
about the reserve granted Icelanders by the
Canadian government has been based more
on a small handful of secondary sources,
now decades old, rather than on the plenti-
ful archival documents which largely
remain unexamined. The story of the
Icelanders’ first meeting with John
Ramsay, most likely Saulteaux (although
others argue he is Cree), has not been
reassessed since its inscription 80 years ago
by an Icelander writing in Icelandic.
Nearly all published histories of Icelandic-
Canadians have been written by authors of
Icelandic descent; even their more scholar-
ly endeavours typically show the imprint
of socialization into a standard and limited
historical narrative of community victory
over adversity. Many of these accounts are
competent and informative, but if we
examine their occlusions and exclusions we
find intriguing aspects of Icelandic ethnici-
ty that have not been publicly discussed. In
private, I have been told contrary versions
of the standard historical narrative during
the 16 years I have conducted research in
the community. This study emerges from
the context of public versus private stories
and the pervasive discomfort some people
show when discussing the celebratory, at
times self-congratulatory, official narra-
tives.
Social and ideational forces have
shaped and selected the memories on which
Icelandic-Canadian histories have been
based, and their nostalgic narration at times
glosses over less palatable behaviours and
events. Interpretation of the past has been
shaped by the hardships faced by the new
settlement, the experience of nationalist
aspirations in the homeland, and a forceful
nineteenth-century Icelandic world-view
imbued with ghosts, trolls, hidden people
and the persuasive power of dreams. The
hardships have long since passed, but some
stories persist as accepted truth, shutting
out other possible understandings of the
past.
The narrative account of John
Ramsay’s ghost as definitive of Icelandic-
Aboriginal relations can be fruitfully exam-
ined as part of the complex process of mak-
ing history liveable; the process is a strate-
gy to suppress, displace and transmute