The Icelandic connection - 01.06.2014, Qupperneq 8

150
ICELANDIC CONNECTION
Vol. 66 #4
Connecting to the Viking Heart
by Arden Jackson
I made a surprising discovery of
coincidences and unraveled an interesting
multi-layered connection between
Laura Goodman Salverson and my Irish
grandfather George Alexander Jackson
when I opened his Autograph Book from
the time of WWI. On this, the 100th
Anniversary of that war, I am enchanted
and curious about the constant pervasive
energy of the spirit of the Viking Heart
which not only propels us to survive, but to
prevail and succeed.
On the nineteenth of May in 1915,
a married twenty-five year old Icelandic
immigrant’s daughter, Laura Goodman
Salverson wrote two entries in the autograph
book of her twenty-one year old unmarried
boarder, and son of Irish immigrants,
George Alexander Jackson. Ninety-nine
years later, I opened the fragile leather
bound book belonging to my grandfather,
and discovered this unexpected connection
between my inherited ethnic influences.
As I read and acknowledged the
signature of a celebrated Icelandic-
Canadian author, I realized that this
captured moment had more meaning for
me than it appeared at first glance. There
was something really special about this
artifact that gave it greater significance than
a simple gesture of friendship and respect
between landlord and tenant. When these
words were penned, it was a point in time
of interconnection and departure for these
two young adults. The bigger story of their
independent personal and professional lives,
as I knew it, was just beginning.
My grandfather was a very interesting
fellow with three distinctive Icelandic
Canadian connections. Firstly, in 1915 he
was boarding at Laura Goodman Salverson’s
house. She was married to her husband
George at the time my grandfather lived
with them, and they would have had their
only son named George too in the following
year. Secondly, one of his acquaintances of
Icelandic heritage in the Telegraph business
was Sir William Stevenson ‘The Man called
Intrepid’, with whom he learned Morse
Code at the time, and who became the
head of British Intelligence operations in
the United States during the Second World
War when Iceland was a secret meeting
place for Winston Churchill and Franklin
Roosevelt. And the third connection is
through his son, George Crandon Jackson,
my father, who married an Icelandic
Canadian in 1954, Margret Sigvaldason,
my mother from Riverton, Manitoba.
Visual, touchable and relevant history
is a powerful thing for me and I enjoy the
tangible as well as the spiritual connections
to the people who formed and continue
to influence the fabric of my life. My
curiosity was inspired, and I pulled out my
grandfather’s copy of The Viking Heart, by
Salverson and checked the publishing date
against this autograph entry. The book was
published in 1923. Surely years of practicing
her craft had already been in progress when
my grandfather was at her home. She died
in 1970, and he in 1979, so I couldn’t ask
them about what was going on in their
lives in 1915, however from anecdotal