The Icelandic connection - 01.03.2018, Side 43

Vol. 70 #1
ICELANDIC CONNECTION
41
Kristinn Bjarni is born in March 1868.
The joy of the birth of this little child is
short-lived. The winter has been difficult for
the household and the family is forced to
ask for assistance from the town to survive.
- “Yes, we will loan Jon blacksmith
some rye that he can pick up from Moller
and Steincke which he can then repay at
a later date,” the town council has decreed
early in January. Then later, in June of that
year there is further mention that the same
agreement that has been reached with other
households within the town that were in
the same difficulties as the blacksmith had
been the winter before.
The children of the couple on the
bay are beginning to move out. To relieve
some of the stress within the household,
Jon Julius is fostered out to the couple at
Brekka in Kaupvangssveit and they become
his foster parents. A few months later, in
August of this same year, the family again is
diminished. Josep Vilhjalmur, who was just
two months short of his fourth birthday,
lives his last day in this world. What was
the cause of his death, we don’t know. No
illnesses were reported within the town,
colds or otherwise. And the church registry
has only a brief mention of the death of this
boy. There is a mother in mourning and a
father who uses every excuse to get into
the drink. His neighbour, Bjarni Jonsson,
is appalled at this behaviour and labels him
the town drunk.
- “Both the high and the low are guilty
of the same bad behaviour,” writes Bjorn in
his diary in October of 1868. “The doctor
is said to enjoy a drink as does Hansen the
pharmacist, Stefan Thorarensen the regional
alderman, the storekeeper P. Th. Johnsen
and Lauritz H. Jensen barrel-maker and
innkeeper. These are all well respected men
in the town. Then there are others, such as
Jon the smith as well as those unmarried
men who drift through here off and on,“
writes Bjorn.
This unruliness by her husband
disturbs Porunn to no end. The household
is destitute, it is evident that the children
are not being fed properly, but instead of
working and earning, the blacksmith just
drinks everything away. She threatens to
leave him but she stays long enough so that
another child is conceived. The seventh and
youngest child of the blacksmith’s couple on
the bay shore is born on the 1st of October
1870 and is named Rosa Sigrfdur. In the
church registry it shows that the child was
christened in the church. Godparents are
the neighbours in the bay, all upstanding
folk in the town, Jon Chr. Stephansson
carpenter, Fridbjdrn Steinsson, bookbinder
and his wife, Gudny Jonsdottir.
In the house of the blacksmith, the
difficulties continue. The wife has borne
seven children. One of her children has
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