The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.2004, Side 44

190
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 58 #4
Utah and Brazil in the 1850s and 1860s. He
then describes the beginning of migration
to the United States, early attempts at set-
tlement in Canada, and the founding of
New Iceland on the shores of Lake
Winnipeg in 1875. The tragic events of
1875-1880 are then chronicled including
the Icelanders’ difficult apprenticeship at
fishing on the lake, the crippling smallpox
epidemic, and finally the flooding, religious
discord and widespread dissatisfaction that
led to an outpouring of population to
Dakota and Argyle by the end of the
decade. Along the way we get to know
some of the main actors in this part of the
story, from the fiery and somewhat delud-
ed nationalist Jon Olafsson, who dreamed
of an all-Icelandic Alaska, to Sigtryggur
Jonasson, Canadian government agent and
tireless leader of the New Iceland colony.
However, the two men Thor tells us the
most about are the opposing religious lead-
ers: Jon Bjarnason and Pall Thorlaksson.
This is not surprising since Thor’s 1980
Master’s thesis, “A Religious Controversy
among the Icelandic Immigrants in North
America, 1874-1880”, was largely devoted
to these two men. The thesis is the heart of
chapter seven, which in terms of original
research, quality of analysis and sheer read-
ability, is the strongest part of the book.
We are left with a clear sense of the theo-
logical spat that drove a wedge between the
former friends, and how it was the related
to their parishioners’ struggle for survival
in the Canadian Northwest. Thor clearly
sympathizes with Pall Thorlaksson, a man
who was treated as an outsider—almost a
pariah—by many of his own countrymen
as a result of his connections to the
Norwegian-American Synod and his
opposition to the choice of New Iceland as
a colony site.
New Iceland is in fact central to Thor’s
main argument. He believes that even prior
to leaving Iceland, the emigrants shared a
dream of founding an isolated settlement
where they could preserve their national
language and culture for all time (p. 16). He
argues that this ever-present dream cloud-
ed their judgement, and resulted in the
leaders, particularly Sigtryggur Jonasson,
choosing a poor location. In Thor’s view,
the Icelanders only began to succeed as set-
tlers when the dream of ‘New Iceland’ was
crushed by the realties of poverty and dis-
ease in the fledgling colony, and the settlers
recognized the importance of assimilation
to North American norms. Thor returns to
this theme throughout the book. The lead-
ers of the New Iceland colony are por-
trayed as being sadly fixated on isolation,
even when they should have realized their
plan was doomed to fail.
This portrayal of the New Iceland
colony is unfair, particularly if we look at
its founding from different perspectives.
Government documents in the National
Archives of Canada detail how the plan to
settle Icelanders in a bloc ethnic colony in
the Northwest was initiated by the federal
government—not by the immigrants—as
part of the overall strategy for settling the
west. Government land agents also encour-
aged the Icelanders to settle by Lake
Winnipeg based on the belief that they
would succeed best in an area where they
could carry out both fishing and farming.
In the original handwritten report, one of
the reasons the Icelandic deputation cited
for agreeing to the site was the fact that it
was located on a major waterway and was
close to the proposed route of the
Canadian Pacific Railway, which at that
time was expected to skirt the western
boundary of the settlement. Together, the
water and the rails would allow the
Icelanders easy access to markets for the
fish, timber, and agricultural resources they
expected to develop. Thor did not consult
the relevant primary documents in Ottawa,
and conveniently omitted the railway
rationale from his list of reasons why the
group chose the site (p. 80). He instead
argues that the site offered the ‘required
isolation’ for an exclusive Icelandic settle-
ment.
After taking us through New Iceland’s
difficult beginnings, Thor moves on to
cover other Icelandic settlements founded
from the 1880 on. His prerogative to
devote at least some space to all these places
gives the later chapters the character of a
whirlwind tour where the bus barely stops
long enough for the tourists to get a picture
of the place. Usually, our guide tells us the