The Icelandic Canadian - 01.12.2009, Side 38

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THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 62 #3
Short Story
Taking Root
by Simone Renee Morin
The original version of this short story
was published in the 1997 program for
Manitoba’s Icelandic Festival
(Islendingadagurinn) and has now been
revised and updated as of2009.
There was a billow in the curtain of
time. When I was a child you could find
that billow down at the end of King Street
in Riverton, Manitoba, in a place called,
Lundi. It was the home of my amma and
afi, Pauline and Earl Dahlman, and it was a
special place like no other in my world, in
a realm all of its own, where cottonwoods
rained downy tufts and caragana hedges
sweetened the air. Artesian water flowed
endlessly - surely by magic in my child’s
mind, and from dawn until dusk the birds
clustered near, singing a jubilee.
This special place became a well-loved
homeland of many members of my family,
along with Vidivellir to the north, which
our family owned for over 100 years until
my great uncle, Gilbert Guttormsson,
passed away in 2009. Both homesteads are
still considered by many as the true hearth
of our family. Although bodies have relo-
cated across Canada, hearts still beat in
Riverton.
Storms unleashed beyond Lundi’s bor-
ders seemed to gentle into showers the
closer that they drew. The weather was
always good - at least as far as I can
remember. Fresh-scented grass, dewy and
soft, pillowed my head as I watched the
shape-shifting clouds roll on through. I
imagined ancestral ghosts liked to linger
and revisit with fondness. In my mind’s
eye, I could see these ghosts of Icelandic
pioneers, together with the spirits of the
Indians from the nearby Nes Cemetery and
Sandy Bar, all of them fluttering by,
respectful and reverent, tiptoeing in protec-
tive vigilance of the land and its people.
The past screamed out to me at Lundi.
My people used to gather there - and still
did in the old photographs papering the
walls. There was no television through
which the outer world could invade, and
no phone to jangle us back to reality. The
clapboard outhouse, ancient and weathered
gray, stood time’s test like few other things
do today. Thankfully, a toilet roll came to
sit upon the shelf replacing the old Eaton's
catalogs and outdated telephone pages that
we used as toilet paper during penny-
pinching times. I’ll never forget my moth-
er showing me how to crumple, rub, and
‘uncrumple’ the pages so as to soften them
before use. I thought she was surely the
kindest person for showing me that trick
while she said proudly, “Icelanders know
how to economize.”
There were chamber pots under every
bed and the only sinks were basins. The
running water flowed not through pipes,
but, from a well outside. The water
splashed over the sides of pails, sloshing
icily on bare feet, as we children raced des-
perately for the porch, trying to get there
before our straining arms spilled even more
water than they carried back.
Although the house in Riverton was
small, it was a Great-Grand-Daddy of a
house all the same, aged and flogged by
time. Never stately, yet bearing its disrepair
like a badge of perseverance. Unheated, a
summerhouse is all that it could be in those
last few seasons. Yet, it is so much more in
memories and in dreams; least of which it is
the place I think of as my home, even
though I only visited and never lived there