The Icelandic Canadian - 01.12.2004, Blaðsíða 25

Vol. 59 #2
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
67
Lessons learned from Amma
by Sharron Arksey
Amma is the Icelandic word for
Grandma. In our family, both grandmoth-
ers were of Icelandic descent, so we differ-
entiated between the two by adding their
surnames. There was Amma Wild, our
dad’s mother, and Amma Sigurdson, our
maternal grandmother.
Although the grandparents on our
mother’s side lived only a few miles away
and we saw them often, Amma Wild lived
just across the road and she was as much a
part of our family as our parents were.
Amma Wild was born Gudrun
Magnusson, the third in a family of five
children. Her parents emigrated from
Iceland in the late 1800s, settling first in
Mountain, North Dakota, then
Churchbridge, SK and finally the Westlake
area of Manitoba.
Amma used to talk about the trip from
Saskatchewan to their new homestead at
Leifur, MB. She was too young to remem-
ber the exact route, but she did remember
passing through the town of Minnedosa
and she remembered the yoke of oxen they
used for a team.
She also talked about the 1902 flood
that forced the Magnusson family to move
once again. Temporarily homeless, they
spent several days on a nearby Indian
Reserve and it was a group of those Indians
who led them to their new homestead in
the Marshland district several miles to the
west. Amma said that they had to cut trees
to make a path ahead of them as they went
and she remembered cooking their first
meal in Marshland over an open fire.
Today the Marshland community lies
within the boundaries of a community pas-
ture and grazing cattle have torn down the
fence erected to protect the graves in the
cemetery where the Magnusson parents are
buried. But in the early 1900s, Marshland
was a thriving community of cattle ranch-
ers, most of them Icelandic immigrants.
Amma helped out on the family farm.
One of her jobs, she told us, was to go out
at the end of the day and bring the cattle
home from their grazing pasture. On one
of these occasions, the family dog that
accompanied her was fatally injured by a
wild animal. I think she said it was a wolf,
but my memory on that point is hazy.
What I do remember vividly is the image of
a pre-teen Amma walking all the way home
with the injured dog in her arms.
Eventually, Amma went out to work
as a hired girl. She worked at the hotel in
Langruth and several private homes on the
Portage Plains. When she married Malcolm
Wild of Lakeland in 1919, much of their
furniture was paid for out of her savings.
Malcolm and Gertie (an Anglicization
of the Icelandic Gudrun) purchased farm-
land from the Great West Life Assurance
Company. Much of the land required
breaking by horse and plow and it was long
and hard work. To supplement the farm
income, Amma raised chickens and milked
cows. The butter, milk and eggs helped
keep the family in groceries, especially in
the days of the Great Depression.
Malcolm and Gertie had three children
- one daughter and two sons, the youngest
of whom was our dad. Malcolm died of
cancer in 1958, but Gertie remained on the
family farm until 1980 when she moved to
a personal care home in Gladstone. She
continued to milk cows, raise chickens and
grow her garden until she was well into her
80s.
We liked to spend nights at her house.
We would pack our belongings as if we
were going on a two-week vacation and
walk across the road, returning the next
morning after breakfast. We liked Amma’s
breakfasts. We were used to porridge, eggs
and toast, but at Amma’s house, breakfast
was all those things plus cold meat from
last night’s supper, fried potatoes and a
bowl of canned fruit.
Our mother had a part-time teaching