The Icelandic connection - 01.09.2010, Page 17

Vol. 63 #2
ICELANDIC CONNECTION
67
Sighvatur and his tale of the
Landsend Man
by Johann Magnus Bjarnason
From Timarit 1943-44
Translated by Nina Bjarnason Campbell
Editor’s Note - Landsend can be
translated into English as “a wanderer,
vagabond, tramp, a bounder, or a land
loper. The term refers to the fact that a
landsend man comes from the outskirts or
the fu rthest reaches of a country.
1 have often mentioned in these sto-
ries of the Icelanders in New Scotland
(Nova Scotia), that in the summer of
1880, I had been working in an eastern
gold mine by the ocean. I was fourteen
years old at the time. I have also men-
tioned that I had room and board at that
time with six Icelandic students who also
worked in the mine. Their shanty was
under dense green bushes high on the
mountainside north of the mining town
and not far from the main highway which
went over the Elk Mountain Road and
east to the ocean. Icelandic guests would
sometimes arrive in the yard. One of
these was a bachelor, around thirty years
old, whose name was Sighvatur. I never
knew what his father’s name was, but he
had adopted the surname “Sutherland,”
shortly after he moved to America.
I remember well when Sighvatur
arrived. It was on a Saturday night early
in August, 1880. He came from
Newfoundland, where he had been work-
ing in a copper mine for three or four
years. He was on his way south to
Boston, where his brother had been for
about a year. Sighvatur came to us to say
goodbye to the Icelandic students, whom
he knew well, since one of them was his
cousin.
Sighvatur was of medium height,
dark haired, keen-eyed and resolute. I
heard the Icelandic students say that he
was a hard working and trustworthy fel-
low, though he had an odd temperament
and he stood firm through changes. They
had all traveled together from Iceland to
Ontario in the summer of 1874. They
accompanied him east to the ocean that
autumn. He parted from them in New
Brunswick. The following summer he
went to Halifax, Lockeport and other
places on the coast, lastly to
Newfoundland.
Sighvatur stayed with us from
Saturday night till Monday morning.
That was the only time I ever saw him.
Otherwise, I know very little about him,
though I certainly heard him mentioned
after he moved to the United States. I
remember a short story he told to the stu-
dents shortly before he bade them good
bye. It is as follows:
“In my search for work here on the
Atlantic coast in the summer of 1875, I
was hired by a wholesale company which
owned three large warehouses in a big
city. The boss of the company was named
Milman. He was getting up in years
when I became acquainted with him. He
was regarded as hard working with a rigid
disposition, but a reliable business man.
He immediately wanted to know what
nationality I was, as he heard that I had