The Icelandic Canadian - 01.04.2001, Qupperneq 20

58
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 56 #2
years to complete.
In those days the price for fish was low.
Some years the loss was great. Other years the
pay was low and there were very few winters
with a profit. Then fishing was about the only
available trade in New Iceland. Even though
men cleared quite a bit of woodland it was
almost impossible to transport the firewood to
the market. At that time there was a lack of
transportation. In those days men were usual-
ly very poor. People survived mostly on fish
and milk which was in short supply. I have
heard that it was considered to be excellent
contribution of grain, if a farmer was able to
buy two bags of wheat a year for household
use. It would be 180 pounds on Danish scales.
One pound of coffee had to be enough for
many a household. Vegetable gardens were
few during the first years. There were no tools
to plow the earth and a shortage of seeds.
Still, it was what people were able to grow at
the time, mainly potatoes. In those days
Icelanders drank Indian tea, it is a brew from
a special plant which grows in the moss in
pinewoods. Said to be similar to ptarmigan
leaves brew. People used another plant called
peppermint tea, also silver-weed and foliage
The Vidir School
brew, or the leaves of a poplar tree. People
didn’t have sugar to sweeten these brews but
milk was often mixed with them. All these
brews proved to be harmless and perhaps
worked as blood cleansers. At least people
had just as beautiful and healthy complexions
as now, when coffee and tea drinking is
almost excessive. Many interesting things
about the circumstances of the Icelanders in
New Iceland have been forgotten, both from
those early years of the settlement, up to the
turn of the century and even past that time, all
the way until the time when the railroad was
laid north to Gimli. These stories are not nec-
essarily told to explain Jon’s circumstances
and that of his people. On the contrary, his
people probably lived a better life under bet-
ter circumstances than many others did. Jon
is and was a good manager and a good farmer,
if one takes into account the circumstances in
New Iceland. From the time Jon was about
twenty he has been involved with parliamen-
tary elections and politics in New Iceland. It
was Baldvin L. Baldvinsson who first influ-
enced him in those matters. Jon was a con-
stant and faithful follower of the Conservative
Party. He has been a standard bearer for this
party at home and in other parts of Gimli dis-
trict and in Bifrbst district after he moved to
ViSir. Jon was involved with the school board
before he moved from the lake to Vidir,
among other things.
5. Chapter
In the year 1900 new ideas began to sur-
face in the minds of men who lived close to
the waterfront. Then serious discussions
about laying railroad tracks north, through the
New Iceland settlement. Around and after
1900 a few farmers moved north to the west
side of the Icelandic River, from North
Dakota. They were grain farmers of some
means and were knowledgeable about agri-
culture. They had surveyed the area they had
settled and named it Ardalsbyggd. The
Icelanders from Dakota prospered from the
very beginning in this new settlement. Then
The New Icelanders who had lived down by
the lake began to look westward. The woods
were difficult and cumbersome to clear and
the out-fields by the lake an unlikely place for
increased feeding for livestock. Farther west
away from the lake the natural clearings in the