Today, Iceland has some of the highest standards of living in the world, and it’s hard to imagine a quarter of the nation emigrating for greener pastures. At the time, however, it was a poor and backward colony of the Danish Crown. The traditional way of life had remained practically unchanged since the founding of the Old Commonwealth in 930 CE. Sheep farming was the occupation of 70% of the nation and the basis of its economy. Lamb was supplemented by fish caught at great risk in open rowboats. In 1870, the population of Iceland was no more than 70,000 while the combined populations of Reykjavik and the next largest town of Akureyri were just over 3,000 people. Until the 20th century, Iceland had virtually nothing in the way of infrastructure: no harbours, railways, bridges or paved roads, and not even a single hospital until the last decade of the 19th century. Diseases such as smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, scurvy, and leprosy regularly ravaged the country. Starvation was a familiar foe. Even after the First World War, the majority of Icelanders lived in turf houses with dirt floors and neither indoor plumbing nor central heating.
Born on the 1st of February 1867, Jakob Ágúst Jónsson, known as “Gústi,” grew up in a typical turf and stone farmhouse not far from the village of Vopnafjörður in East Iceland. His parents were simple farmers, living on rented land in a lifestyle not unlike that of their ancestors a thousand years before them. Even as an older man, Gústi remembered the infamous winter of 1881-2 all too well; it is now regarded as one of the most extreme ice years of the past two centuries, contributing to the worst years of famine in living memory.
The motivations to emigrate from Iceland to Canada were many and various. Laws on indentured servitude prevented average people from marrying unless they had land, and viable land was in short supply. Some longed for adventure, modernity, freedom, and a farm to call their own. Others sought relief from the grinding poverty and harshness of their existence. They too often failed to eke out a decent living in the inhospitable climate, where sea ice regularly held the nation hostage, and volcanic eruptions, such as the Askja eruption of 1875, could destroy hundreds of farms in one fell swoop. By 1882, heart-breaking stories of natural disasters, epidemics, famine, and hardships in Iceland were regularly appearing in the international press, but little assistance could be mustered.
Gústi’s family’s 300 free-range sheep were caught in a snowstorm in the spring of 1882. At 15 years of age, Gústi and his brother Jón were tasked by their father to go out into the storm and bring back as many as possible. They would have to get a minimum of 60 just to be able to service the family’s debts. Scores of sheep died, forcing their father to sell off all his livestock and quit farming altogether. He moved the family to the local town of Vopnafjörður and found some work as a carpenter while Gústi’s mother helped out at a local farm. They had known hard times before, but without farming their family would stay separated. Not long after, Gústi’s father died.
However dire these last years of the 19th century were, they also brought the first real signs of hope and progress. In 1874, during the celebrations of the 1,000th anniversary of settlement, the King of Denmark came to Iceland and formally granted the colony a constitution of their own. Sheep and horse farmers found profitable markets in Great Britain, and hard currency was beginning to seep into Iceland for the first time. With the constitution, the country got its own domestic currency, the krona, and the Icelandic National Bank was founded in 1885. International transport became affordable to ever-larger numbers of common folk, and for the first time, emigration became a realistic option for subsistence farmers and their families. However, the fight for the nation’s independence from Denmark was in full swing, and those who sought opportunity in North America and escape from a feudal existence in Iceland were publicly denounced as unpatriotic, or traitors running from work. Benedikt Gröndal, a respected intellectual, wrote in 1888, “Dirt-poor wretches and the lowest kind of rabble, these people are pathetic layabouts – good riddance!”
Seeing only a dim future for the family in Iceland, Gústi’s mother decided to emigrate to North America. She took his two sisters and younger brother with her, never to return. Gústi, now a capable young man, was determined to stay in Iceland. He married Arnbjörg Jónsdóttir, a local farmer’s daughter, and for the next few years they lived and worked on the farm with Gústi’s father-in-law, Jón. Arnbjörg soon became pregnant and gave birth to their first child. The harvests were improving, the livestock multiplying, and the future looked a bit less dim for a change.
There was no central plan to promote Icelandic settlement in Canada. Still, in the 1870s, the Canadian government was eager to encourage the settlement of vast territories in order to secure its claim on the land and extend its borders. The idea of an Icelandic colony was enabled by the Governor-General of Canada, Frederick Temple Blackwood. Better known as Lord Dufferin, he had travelled to Iceland in 1856 as a young man and published a best-selling account of his journey, Letters From High Latitudes. Recalling the industriousness and resilience of the Icelanders, he agreed that they would make ideal homesteaders on the sparsely-settled Manitoba plains.
Shipping companies hired Icelanders to sell the idea of moving to the New World to their countrymen, offering them payment for each one who emigrated. Sigfús Einarsson was one of the most successful of these agents. Rather than move abroad himself, he made enough money from the sale of tickets that he was able to build a mansion in Reykjavík where he lived out his life as a wealthy gentleman. In the summer of 1873, the first large-scale group migration to North America began, when 200 Icelanders boarded the steamship Queen in Akureyri. The hastily organised journey was arduous and took up to 70 days. Unsurprisingly, seasickness and diseases plagued the early emigrants en route, and many perished. With little ceremony, their corpses were cast into the sea. Over time, conditions gradually improved. A typical journey in the 1890s would be relatively safe and take no more than two weeks.
In late May 1892, Arnbjörg gave birth to twins. Ominously, the skies darkened, and heavy flakes began to fall. Within two days the fields were covered with a metre of heavy snow. Rather than grazing on fresh green grass in the open air, the livestock would have to remain in their cramped, murky barn and feed on what remained of the hay. In the following weeks, as the snow continued to enshroud the fields, it became apparent to Gústi, Arnbjörg, and Jón that they were facing a crisis. Realising they would have to cull some of the herd, they began with the scores of new-born lambs. Some time passed. When the hay supply was nearly exhausted, Gústi and his father-in-law were forced to cull more of their livestock, which had numbered 60 ewes and two horses. By the time the first grass appeared through the melting snow in late June, all they had left were 18 malnourished sheep and a single skinny horse. Although Gústi had never seriously considered emigrating from his beloved homeland, now he was a husband and the father of three small children. In a little over a decade, he had seen his family’s sheep herd decimated four times by unseasonal cold and the resulting diseases and hunger. On top of that, wet summers and early frosts had led to poor hay harvests every year for the past decade. Gústi and Arnbjörg made up their minds to emigrate, selling everything they could to pay for their family’s journey to the Icelandic settlement in Canada.
In the plains surrounding Lake Winnipeg, there was plenty of timber for building, and substantial tracts of land would be granted to hard-working, ambitious settlers. The Canadian Pacific Railway company planned its new route to give better access to the colony while sawmills were set up to provide employment and furnish timber for building. To promote the plan, the Canadian government offered temporary housing and paid, steady employment for assiduous settlers. An additional draw was that the colony site promised an “abundance of fish” in the vast waters of Lake Winnipeg. Apart from the rapidly growing local industry, the expectation was that the New Icelanders would be able to sustain themselves generously from agriculture, cattle-ranching, and fishing. The settlers would be allowed to create their own laws, maintain their own schools, and generally manage their own affairs – all in the Icelandic language. They even made their own constitution that declared, among other articles, that their settlement would be for Icelanders only.
After a two-week voyage, by ship, train, and ferry, the family of five arrived in Winnipeg, Manitoba in early September 1892. Eager to establish himself and pay off his debts, Gústi tended cattle, dug ditches, slaughtered pigs, reaped corn, cultivated fields, cut and collected firewood, and did whatever work he could find. At first, he earned about $1 per day, about 27 American dollars in today’s value – about a quarter of the minimum wage then. By the end of that fall, the 25-year-old Gústi had managed to pay off his loans, but the family was broke once again. They stayed wherever they found shelter, government huts or cheap rentals. After seven years, Gústi, his brother-in-law Gunnar, and their growing families were able to take ownership of some forested land in Swan River Valley that the Canadian government was granting to settlers. The two families built log cabins and worked the land together, taking loans to buy cattle and growing a variety of crops. Within five years, Gústi and his family were growing high-quality wheat and barley, enough to pay off all their debts. In the meantime, Gústi and another neighbour founded a Sunday school for the local children, which Gústi ran himself. Arnbjörg and Gústi’s good reputations grew among the community of Swan River Valley, as did the size of their family – they eventually had nine children. Arnbjörg died in 1949 and Gústi in 1957.
The New Iceland colony experienced numerous setbacks and in just over a decade, it lost its independent status and was integrated into the province of Manitoba. But the tens of thousands of Icelanders who emigrated seeking a better life and endured the risks and hardships were often well rewarded. Much had to be learned, including ice fishing, hunting, felling trees, and building log cabins. (Most had never seen trees, but now they were surrounded by them!) The West-faring settlers thus created a vibrant community in their newfound home of North America that even had positive impacts back home in Iceland. Had they not emigrated, it is estimated that 10-20% of the population of Iceland would have died of hunger. A recent census found that today there are over 25,000 citizens of Manitoba and over 100,000 Canadians who can trace their roots to Iceland, with perhaps another 100,000 in the United States. The enduring connections between the descendants of Icelanders in North America and those still in Iceland are a testament to their shared identity as survivors of the hardest of times.
