The Icelandic Canadian - 01.08.2001, Page 18

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THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 56 #3
and learning. Children were taught to read
and form letters but few were taught to
write in the accepted sense.
As a descendant of Jon, it is amazing to
learn that he was, as Benediktsson relates,
involved with sheep farming, haying and
cutting grass with a primitive type of
scythe. Benediktsson explains the hard-
ships of daily life by describing the type of
tools available, the weather conditions such
as working in driving rain and sleet and the
difficult work that had to be done. He
explains the arduous task of rounding up
sheep in the autumn with several trips up
mountains being required to recover all
sheep. There was constant onslaught of
flies and midges. The autumn ritual of
slaughtering lambs was likely not welcome.
The shortened days of winter brought daily
chores of gathering fuel, usually dried
manure, fetching water and ensuring that
the sheep and other animals were fed and
watered. Inside the house he would be
watching or helping the women with wool,
spinning, knitting, combing, carding and
cleaning. More pleasant would be the time
to listen to his parents read or recite old
rhymes until bedtime even though using
lamps fueled by whale, shark or seal oil
were foul smelling. There would be no
sleep until midnight.
He would be living in a squalid poorly
ventilated house made of turf and other
material which usually leaked. The bed-
room was over the stable so stench pre-
vailed. Washing and sanitation was difficult
and generally neglected. There was no toi-
let except outside mounds close to the
house. Religion was important, but they
had a close feeling about ghosts. Belief in
them as well as apparitions and hidden folk
was strong.
His food would be skyr, buttermilk,
meat, smoked lamb, kidneys, sausage and
porridge. The midday meal was rye gruel
with a bit of meat, beans and bread. Other
food would include dried fish, shark, sheep
head, black pudding and sometimes coffee
with cube sugar. On special occasions they
could have other choices such as rice pud-
ding, roast meat, pot bread with butter,
smoked lamb, sausage, fish, cured shark,
pancakes, doughnuts (kleinur), butter
cakes and other pastry.
Imagine the feeling of these people when
they heard the news about the opportuni-
ties of a fresh start in the New World. By
1883, when Jon Sigurdsson’s family emi-
grated they had heard about the Icelanders
who had already settled in New Iceland
and other places and that they were pros-
pering. No wonder they wanted to emi-
grate to America which offered work,
where there was no shortage of land to
own, cultivate and they could become rich.
The stories that Baldvin Baldvinsson had to
tell about the new land had been heard.
My quest for information about Baldvin
L. Baldvinsson was important because in
Kristjan Asgeir Benediktsson’s 1917 article
about Jon Sigurdsson, he writes, “From the
time Jon was about twenty he has been
involved with parliamentary elections an
politics in New Iceland. It was Baldvin L.
Baldvinsson who first influenced him
towards those matters. Jon was a constant
and faithful follower of the Conservative
Party. He has been a standard bearer for
Pjodraeknisfelag Islendinga f Vesturheimi
PRESIDENT: SIGRID JOHNSON
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