Author: rayela

Brazil 18years + Chicago 20yrs + Paducah since 2005 These have shaped my path and interests. I spent many years as an active artist (ceramics and textiles) but have focused on promoting the creative community online since 2010. My current projects are Artizan Made and this site, Creative PlaceMakers.

Featured image at the top: Donna Biel (nee Gislason) hiking with her Icelandic sweater.

My Aunt Olive has spent decades documenting our family tree.  She has researched churches, cemeteries, libraries and any accounts she can find that track the Gislason line from Iceland. She recently sent us an account written by my Great Grandfather, JB Gislason, about his father’s life in Iceland and immigration to the United States. I found it fascinating and hope that you do, too!  His narrative follows below with Olive’s commentary in teal. JB had eleven children, including my grandfather, Joe Gislason.  My grandfather was married twice, to Rachel who died of cancer in her early 30’s, and then to Helen, the grandmother I knew.  I was named after Rachel and my sister was named after Helen. Rachel’s children were Marian, Donna (my mother), Glen, Olive and Nyla.  Helen had one son, Jay.

We were in Brazil for 18 years and came back to the US every two or three years for two or three months and would visit the Gislason and Biel sides of our family. Minneota, my Mom’s home town, was a Gislason hub for at least a century and continues to have significance in the Icelandic diaspora. Reading this account of how my ancestors immigrated to the United States is so well told and created new images of that time in my imagination, especially envisioning how hard it was to survive the elements and the work it took to build new roots.

Bjorn Gislason and Adalbjorg Jonsdottir

FORELDAR MINIR — The Recollections of some Icelanders in the Western Hemisphere about their parents.
Edited by Finnbogi Gudmundsson, librarian at Iceland’s National Library in Reykjavik. “Minning” Publishers, Reykjavik, 1956.
BJORN GISLASON and ADALBJORG JONSDOTTIR from the account by Jon (John) B. GISLASON former State Legislator, Minneota, Minnesota. Written in Icelandic. Translated by Val Bjornson for Jack Gislason.
(I, Olive, have made a correction on the ship they took from Scotland to Canada. It was the “S.S. Waldensian”.)

My parents, Bjorn Gislason and Adalbjorg Jonsdottir, came to Minnesota from Hauksstadir in Vopnafjordur in the summer of 1879. My father was the son of Gisli Nikulasson and Margret Arnadottir, who lived for a long time at Breidavad in Eidpingha. It is my recollection that my father was born on that farmstead.

Father was married three times. His first wife’s name was Olof, his second wife, Sigurbjorg. I am not familiar with their ancestries. Likewise, I don’t know too much about my father’s boyhood years. But when he was six or seven years past 30, he lived in the Holsfjoll area or Fjallasveit, near sandy regions in Northern Thingehjarsysla, westward from Vopadfjordur. He was then a widower for the second time. He moved to Grimsstadir and married Adalbjorg, daughter of the farm couple there, Jon Jonsson and Gudrun Josefsdottir. Adalbjorg was related to the Modruvalla family on her father’s side. They were married in 1863.

My parents lived at Grimsstadir for seven years, and they prospered well. The Holsfjoll area was good for farming, though it was thinlythinly populated and somewhat remote. They wanted to get to a more heavily populated area with a bit more liveliness.

Farm Grimsstadir and farm Modrudalur are the highest lying farms of the country.  The farm was on the main route between the northern and eastern parts of the country, and its owners were obliged to ferry the travellers across River Jokulsa a Fjollum agains payment until the bridge was built in 1947.  In earlier times, the farm stood 7 km further north, but was moved because of the increasing erosion and sandstorms. 

At the turn of the 20th century a new part of the ring road (#1) was opened further south.  The crossing of the road leading to Waterfall Dettifoss still remains in its immetiate vicinity.  The farm is located east of River Jokulsa, about 45 km from Lake Myvatn.  During Catholic times, a prayer chapel stood at Grimsstadir, and it has long been a weather observation station.

It was in the year 1870 that my father bought the farm, Hauksstadir in Vopnafjordur, one of the biggest farms in the largest townships in the region. The seller of the farm was Joseph Josephson, snikkari (carpenter), who then sailed off to Copenhagen. He was later a neighbor of Bjorn’s in Minnesota.

 

Haukstaðir in 1879. (We can imagine, can’t we?) The family is leaving – see them in the distance. The sheep have moved into the empty area around the turf buildings – no one there to stop them. The ravens are leaving, too. Folklore says that ravens meet in the spring to “divvy up” the farms: two per farm. The sign has the old spelling – though in those days no one needed to bother with a sign: everyone knew the name of this farm. I took a bit of “artist’s privilege” and added the old farm Rjúpnafell, on the hill’s edge near the horizon. I would guess that Björn Gíslason and his family walked toward the sea on this side of the valley – perhaps Ingibjörg – Bill Holm’s grandmother – would be joined by her mother, who left from Búastöðum (out of sight beyond Rjúpnafell) the same year. On the right in the distance is the very top of the Smjörfjöll range, which can be seen from Haukstaðir today. The sea – another liberty I took! – is out of sight of the buildings. The river is there, the mountains to the left and right are there, and – as all know who have visited Iceland in the summer – the intense greens of the meadows and the deep blue skies are there, too. From Cathy Josephson

 

I was born at Hauksstadir and was eight years old when we sailed westward over the ocean. I therefore remember my early boyhood years in Iceland well. My parents were then in their best years. My father was just a bit short of six feet in height, well developed and broad shouldered; he retained a heavy head of hair all his life – red at first, but it grew gray early. He was a man of great energy, skilled in the Icelandic wrestling sport, Glima, in his early years, quick about his work to an advanced age. My mother was his complete partner in all things. She was tall, somewhat thin, with a sharp look in her blue eyes, had light brown hair, a quiet but friendly demeanor and a most pleasant conversationalist. She was considered genuinely brainy. It may truly be said that Adalbjorg had a markedly good effect on her family and her friends.

Both my parents were congenial, mixed well with people, were proud of their home and very much enjoyed receiving guests. My father undoubtedly had more sheep than any other farmer in Vopnafjordur and took an active part in the affairs of his district. He was decorated by the King of Denmark.

The household was a numerous one at Hauksstadir; ten hired hands during the haying season and probably an equal number of women, some of them hired by the year and some for shorter period. My father had a knack for making working time really count. During the haying season he would get up at four in the morning, sharpen the scythes, repair rakes and other equipment, if that was needed. He was a handy man both with wood and iron. Everything was in readiness when the working force got out of bed. And then he worked all day with help himself.

I can remember well how skilled he was in cutting the hay on the tilled meadowland. He cut the grass off every protruding hillock with such skill that they stood there like shaved heads when the process was completed. I’m sure my mother did the housework with the same skill and energy, though I don’t remember that so well.

During the winters, ballads were recited in the Icelandic rhythmic style and the Sagas read aloud for the family group. My father performed those assignments and was considered well suited to the task. He sat in the light of the lamp in the middle of the living room and recited the rhymes in a loud and vigorous voice — Ulfars rimur and Hreidars rimur, among many others from which to select.

Well recited old-style rhymes of this kind could be full of pep and most enlivening, there’s no doubt about that. They had something of the same effect on the young folk as the colored comic books do today, though not as damaging. Some of the verses became impressed upon my memory, particularly those composed in an involved rhyme scheme, describing battles or various tussles such as this one:

“He intensified the attack on the armor-clad back, this symbol of the ancestral line.
Haraldur sighed and thought beside that he’d surely split his spine.”

My father read the sermons aloud every Sunday if there was no church service to attend. Hymns were then sung after we had listened to the sermons of Bishop Petur Petursson and then thanks were conveyed by a handclasp. Devotions were read on winter evenings until spring and the Passion Hymns of Hallgrimur Petursson were read and sung, as was the custom during Lent.

The Passíusálmar or Passion Hymns are a collection of 50 poetic texts written by the Icelandic minister and poet, Hallgrímur Pétursson.^[1] The texts explore the Passion narrative, as traditionally presented, from the point where Christ enters the Garden of Gethsemane to his death and burial. Hallgrímur began composing the work in 1656, while serving as pastor of Saurbær in Hvalfjörður. It took him three years to complete, the final poem being written in May 1659; the first edition was published seven years later, in 1666. By the end of the century, they had become so popular.

My parents were close friends of the parish pastor, Halldor Jonsson, the provost at Hof. It was his name that was given to my brother, Halldor. Sera Halldor was highly esteemed by his parishioners. He was a man just short of middle stature, red-bearded, kindly in his contacts and of noble demeanor. He was a good manager in his farming operations, but he didn’t go out to work with his hired help, as many pastors did. He likely had enough to do, for he was heavily involved in national affairs of Iceland.

My father had the feeling that work proceeded rather slowly at the parsonage, Hof. Once a start was made just about simultaneously on the construction of out-buildings at Hof and at Hauksstadir. “How goes it with the building, Bjorn?” the pastor asked one Sunday. “It has been finished long since,” said my father. The provost’s outbuilding was still keeping the carpenters busy. “Yes, that’s easily understood,” the pastor then said. “We each have our own directions for the workers. I say “Go” and you say: “Come with me”.

The poet Kristjan Jonsson had been a hired man for my parents at Grimsstadir. He worked for them the last year he lived. But misfortune had already fastened its grip upon that talented man. (He died a drunkard’s death upstairs over a store in the village of Vopnafjordur at the age of 27. – VB). My parents, as was the case with other residents of the area, prized Kristjan’s poetry highly.

[This video parses one of his poems.]

Weather conditions were severe and undependable in Iceland the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Then there was heavy damage from a volcanic eruption, from polar ice, winter storms, autumn winds and unseasonable spring times. These factors combined to drive many into ventures westward over the ocean. My father didn’t escape losses from these excesses at the hands of Nature. In the fall of 1878, toward the middle of September, a violent snowstorm raged across the highlands just in from Vopnafjordur with drifts so heavy that sheep by the hundreds were buried in the snow on the hillside farmers hadn’t yet finished corralling their sheep on the mountain heights. My father lost between 300 and 400 heads of sheep. The carcasses weren’t found until the spring. Some of the wool was still usable then but everything else was a dead loss.

It was then that my parents decided to go to the Western Hemisphere. The farmstead was sold that spring to Bjorn Halldorsson from Ulfsstadir in Lodmundarfjordur. My parents then started on their western trip early in July 1879; they took seven children, but the youngest child, Petur, then not quite a year old, was left behind with my oldest brother Eyjolfur, and his wife, Gudrun Gudmundsdottir.

Olive, Nyla, Donna, Jay and his wife, Crystal, visited Iceland in 2022.  They said Bjorn’s farm was far North and that the land was remote, making it hard to imagine how life had been there…

 

We went on the steamship Camoens to Scotland and by rail between harbor points there. Beautiful and strange-looking scenes confronted childhood eyes then.

The steamship Camoens

On Sunday the 6th of July 1884, while on a routine sailing to Iceland, the Camoens, commanded by Captain Robertson with a crew of 30 ran aground at Brims Ness, Walls on the island of Hoy in the Orkneys.

The Camoens as seen from the side in its early stages after having run aground and abandoned by it passengers and crew. The vessel’s position later changed broadside to the sea and quickly began to take on water. By the next day its saloon, located at the ship’s stern, was full.

The Camoens was to remain half-submerged for some twenty-eighth days until the 13th of August when she was successfully re-floated under the direction of Mr. Armit, a Surveyor of the East Coast Salvage Association. The partly insured ship was towed to Leith where it underwent extensive overhaul and repair. In 1885, the shop and its crew were engaged by the British government during the Sudan war as a part of the Medical Transport Service sailing to the Red Sea port of Suakin. By summer of that year, still wearing it life-boat war marking of “82”, the refurbished Camoens resumed her scheduled sailings to Iceland

The ship’s many emigrants travelled from Iceland to Scotland, where they took another ship across the sea to Canada.

 

From Daren Gislason:

1. The majority of immigrants departed from this ship
2. The Camoens was built for Brazulison Rivertrade in 1871.
3. Named in honor of the 16^th century Portuguese poet Luis de Camoens (1524-1580)
4. It ran aground at Brins Ness, Walls on the coast of Orkney (on the island of Hoy) July 6, 1884
5. In 1885 it served as part of Britain’s Medical Transport Service during the Sudan War.
6. Icelandic horses were carried to Scotland (as many as nearly 1,000 at a time)

 

STEAM TO ICELAND
THE LEITH & ICELAND STEAM SHIPPING COMPANY’S
MAGNIFICENT SCREW STEAMSHIP
“CAMOENS’
1204 Tons Register, 170 H.P.
Or either First-Class Steamer, Sails between GRANTON and ICELAND
fortnightly from Junn till October (unless preveted by enforseen Circumstances, carrying Mails and Passengers. The “Camoens” is a full-Powered, fast steamer, with superier Passenage accomadaties, has spacious Ballroom, Ladies Cabin, well-ventilated State-rooms, Bath-rooms, and Smoke-rooms
Carries full staff of Stewards, and Stewardess.
FARES: – First Cabin, L5; Return, L7; Second Cabin, L3; Return L5
Separate State-rooms may be had by special agreement.

 

We took a sizable vessel, the S.S. Waldensian across the Atlantic to Quebec, Canada, as I recall it, and then by railroad westward to Winona, which is on the Mississippi River in southeastern Minnesota. There were 130 people in the group (the number has been usually estimated at about 160 VB) and some of them were extremely poor. My mother fed at least two additional families when it became necessary to buy food on the way.

 

S.S. Waldensian left from Glasgow, July 10, 1879 – arrived in Quebec, July 19, 1879

S.S. WALDENSIAN (Montreal Ocean Steamship Co.)
Ship’s Purser: Jas. Maclagen

Ship’s Master: J.G. Stephen

– 1407 Tons per register

– 7,250 superficial feet in the several compartments seapart for passengers            other than cabin passengers.

From the Public Archives in Canada: received in 1983 (O.E.)

The Waldensian was built in Glasgow, Scotland in 1861. She was a steam-screw measuring 260’9 x 33’7 x 22’1. She had two decks and a poop, three masts, barque rigging and an elliptical stern. She was first registered at the port of Montreal in 1861 under the name St. Andrew, a name which she kept until 1873 when, after undergoing a number of structural modifications, the ship’s name was changed to Waldensian. It was also in 1873 that the ships’ registry was transferred to London. In 1880, the ship’s registry was returned to Montreal where it remained until 1886, at which time the registry was transferred to Glasgow. The ship’s name disappears from the list of registered British ships in 1904.

The Waldensians’s ownership indicates that she was the property of one of the numerous Canada-Scotland family enterprises of the late-nineteenth century. The shop’s first owners were Samuel Allan of Glasgow and other family members from Liverpool and Montreal. In 1865, principal ownership was transferred to Glasgow in 1886, its new owner was Alexander Allan of Glasgow. In 1898 the title of ownership was transferred to the Allan Line Steamship Company (of Glasgow) which retained ownership until the Waldensian disappeared from the British list of registered vessels.

Our sources for this information are RG 42, volume 177, p. 70, microfilm reel C-2466), the Mercantile Navy List and Maritime Directory  (Great Britain) and the List of Vessels series of the Department of Marine and Fisheries of Canada.

When we got to Winona we were met by Johannes Halldorsson Frost as a representative of the government; he was from Grenjadarstad in South Thingeyjarsysla. He had come to Minnesota from Wisconsin the year before. Johannes was a brother to the mother of Hulda, the well-known poet. People were mighty glad when Johannes addressed the group in good Icelandic. He directed the group to another train, to go straight westward across the state to Minneota.

We got there on the 25th of July. People were provided with sleeping quarters in a lively barn that stood empty and in the loft of a warehouse. No other places were available; the village at that time had a population of 112.

But we didn’t stay long in the livery barn. The very next day there was discussion of purchasing the homestead land taken by Eirik Bergmann, the father of Judge Hjalmar Bergmann in Winnipeg – land to which he had taken title two years before in Westerheim Township, just north of the Yellow Medicine River, and seven miles northeast of Minneota. Nevertheless, my father didn’t want to close the deal for purchase of Erik’s land without some additional investigation. He went on the second day westward to the hills of Lincoln County, where the western settlement of Icelanders near Minneota was being formed. This was between 10 and 20 miles west of Minneota, in Lincoln County. That settlement was building up rapidly, but the hilly land was of varying quality. On the other hand, the land was much better on the more level ground of the eastern settlement, in Lyon and Yellow Medicine counties; but at that time just about all available homestead land had been claimed.

It was, as a matter of fact, just an accident of circumstance if any government land was available for the asking then in southwestern Minnesota. I shall mention that more fully in just a few words.

The first settlements by white men in Minnesota were just east of the Mississippi River. Then in 1851 the white men purchased a large tract of land, the hunting grounds of the Indians in the area, west of the Mississippi, and farmsteads began to be settled in that region. The sellers were the Sioux Indians, warlike men and good hunters. Peaceful behavior on the part of these Indians did not remain a certainty, and the fault The Congress of the United States permitted itself to change the terms of sale in various ways, without any good supporting reason. The Indians became dissatisfied. Then came the Civil War. The government was in difficulty. In the summer of 1862, the Indians waited impatiently for the payment of money that had been promised them in the big land sale. They finally took matters into their own hands and attacked the white people on the 18th day of August, so completely without warning that defense was virtually impossible. That day and immediately thereafter they killed nearly 400 people, according to reports, and many settlers fled the area, never to return.

The victory was a short-lived one for the Indians. Government troops and volunteers overcame the Indians by fall. Several hundred were sentenced for the outbreak. Thirty-seven were sentenced to execution and were hanged in Mankato on the day after Christmas that winter. It was a grisly holiday! But all of the race responsible for the outbreak were moved away to areas further west.

After that, the battleground was pretty much an empty one there in southwestern Minnesota. Settlers feared the Indians. Settlement was not resumed until the year 1870. Shortly after that, another plague descended. It was the grasshoppers that wrought havoc in the central plains; they even halted rail travel in some places when it became necessary to shovel the vermin off the tracks. They made shambles of the fields on farms in western Minnesota and still more widely. By the summer of 1877 the grasshopper plague was just about over. By that year they had finished laying the railroad through Tracy and to Marshall and Minneota, and further west. There was speedy activity in settlements thereabouts from that point on. The next summer, in 1878, it was as though gold had been discovered in Lyon County. Every bit of land was taken. Icelanders who were seeking free homestead land in 1879 simply couldn’t find any.

It was about the same in the settlement west of Minneota. My father couldn’t find any tract of land there that he liked. All the best homestead land was gone. But in both these settlements there were some who were willing to sell their homestead claim rights, which they had earlier secured. This was with the purchase of Bergmann’s land. My father concluded the deal as soon as he had made his trip further west. What he got was the quarter section homestead, with 15 acres plowed and any crop that was growing on it, a little log house, a ramshackle barn, an old wagon, an old plow and a few tools; the price was $900 cash. Some thought that price high, but farmland was rising in value in this area of prairie land, and my father didn’t come penniless form Iceland. Some others who came west from Iceland were pretty well off too.

They could buy the homestead claim from the original settler, pay him pretty well for it, and then be registered for that land themselves, while the seller could still take homestead somewhere else if he found one. In other words, his right to a homestead claim was not sacrificed through the transaction.

My parents moved northward from town to the farm the very same day, as I remember it. In this region there were very few trees, except along rivers and creeks, and of course it was such land that was taken first of all. Settlers who were poor, coming later, had to live in turf huts or dig themselves into a hillside, to start with. This was one of the reasons why Eirikur Bergmann and some others wanted to get to the North Dakota settlement. There were more trees there, both for building purposes and for fuel. There were no trees on Bergmann’s land. The log cabin he had built from log posts which he bought somewhere eastward along the Yellow Medicine River. He lived in that cabin at first and then moved to North Dakota.

My father immediately began to plan building a house. He bought lumber for the structure and Loftur Jonasson, a carpenter from Thingeyri in Hunavatnssysla built the house as he did many others there in the settlement and finished the job in the fall. It was a roomy and substantial house, 16 by 24 feet at the floor level and 12 feet high under the eaves – about a story and a half – with a shanty behind. My father paid for the house in spot cash as he had the farm.

Most of the newcomers gave their farmsteads Icelandic placenames just as they did in New Iceland up in Manitoba; sometimes it was for the Icelandic farmstead as with Hakonarstadir, or for the name of the man who settled on the land, Snorri Hognason at Hognsstadir or more or less in fun as was the case with Gudmundur Peturasson’s farm Glaesisvellir. My parents named our home Storhol, for the hill behind the house.

With the lack of trees and thus the shortage of fuel, most settlers tried to spare themselves the purchase of coal as much as possible. In the summer, women and youngsters gathered small sticks, twigs and other combustibles around the prairie, but the principal fuel in the wintertime was hay, mainly coarse hay grown tall in the sloughs. Wisp after wisp of this hay was twisted together like long sails of twine, and it was remarkable how long the flame lasted if the wisps were wound tight. But it was a tiresome chore to have to burn such wisps throughout the winter.

Icelandic customs were maintained at our family home at Storhol; the books of sermons were read and hymns sung; ballads were chanted, and books and newspapers were read aloud. Many of the settlers were great readers of books; they bought quite a lot of books and newspapers, both Icelandic and Norwegian. This food for the soul was loaned back and forth around the settlement, so that there was always enough to read. They each bought a Norwegian newspaper on their own, my father and Gunnlaugur Petursson from Hakonarstadir in Jokuldot, and lent each other the papers. The newspapers were the Decorate Posten from Decorah, Iowa and Skandinaven, from Chicago. Much of what was considered the best in Icelandic was read aloud. Some of it we children read ourselves when we begin to grow a bit. I still remember stanzas today which I learned as a youngster, from the poems of Matthaias Jochumsson, Kristy Jonsson and others.

Nevertheless, my parents and others in the settlement had the feeling that the maintenance of Icelandic culture faced difficulties. The settlements weren’t isolated; farmers lived among neighbors of varying backgrounds. And the chores were numerous; there was no big staff of hired hands. The schools were conducted in English. They attracted and held the studious inclinations of youth almost completely, as time went on. Many chose the course of paying home teachers, mainly older people, to teach the youngsters Icelandic and the fundamentals of Christianity. The man who got that assignment at Storhol was Benedikt Bjornsson from Vikingavatn in the Kelduhverfi area of northern Iceland. He was well known throughout Northern and Northeastern Iceland, quite mature when he came from the old country, a great singer, particularly talented, but peculiar in speech and manner: He could read a good Norwegian or Danish book without let-up – – in Icelandic. We got from the old man a very good basis of training in the Icelandic language or Danish or Norwegian – and we should have kept on building on that foundation. But such things were often ignored in America!

There was very little pastoral service in the settlement in the first years. A few times, the Reverends Pall Thorlaksson and Jon Bjarnason visited the settlement Sera Jon Bjornason carne in April of 1880 when he was on the way to Iceland. He instructed children in both rural settlements, but they had naturally received instruction in the homes before. The children were confirmed, 28 of them in all, late in April. The place of worship was my parents’ home. The women folks were invited into the house, but the men sat on plank benches out in front of the house, and blankets from the beds were suspended over them from the gable.
This spring they came from Vopnafjordur westward across the ocean, Eyjolfur, my brother, and Gudrun, his wife. They brought with them, my brother, Petur, then in his second year. The child died a short time later. My father then gave the settlement an acre of his land for a graveyard. That place has remained the cemetery for the settlement since.

Sera Jon Bjarnason went to Iceland that summer; but the following spring Sera Halldor Briem came from New Iceland in Manitoba and served the settlements for one year, leaving for Iceland at that time. Thereafter the settlements were without a pastor for four years, until Sera Fridrik Bergmann visited the community in 1886. Congregations were permanently established the following year when Sera Steingrimur Thorlaksson began his service here. It had been attempted earlier to get a pastor to come from Iceland, without success.

In those years without pastoral service, Norwegian clergymen helped when there were baptisms, burials or marriages, but not with confirmations so far as I know. Folks wanted their children confirmed in Icelandic. Meetings were held in the settlements where reading from books or sermons constituted the service. Places of assembly for worship in our eastern settlement were the homes of settlers and finally in a schoolhouse which was built just east of Storhol. The man who read the sermons most often was Sigbjorn Hofteig, brother of the mother of Julius Oleson in Glenborol and sometimes Benedikt Bjornsson did the reading.

A public school under full government auspices was established in the fall of 1879. Teaching proceeded at three different homes, a month at each of them for the first two or three years – – and that was all, just three months a year – one month at Storhol, one month at Hakonarstadir, the home of Gunnlaugur Petursson, the first Icelandic settler in the state of Minnesota; and then the third month at the home of some Norwegian pioneer. School attendance was on an interrupted schedule, particularly during the hard winter of 1880-81, as I shall describe later. Youngsters got to these school sessions when they could, depending on the weather and the chores they had to do. Everyone moved along as far as he could in his learning. It was remarkable how well the mental development of these youngsters ‘stretched out’.

Gunnar B. Bjornson attended this school of ours these first years; so did Fridrik Fljozdal, the renowned labor leader and many others who became well known in the state.

My father pursued his farming operations with the same energy that had characterized in Iceland, even though he had now moved to another hemisphere and was beginning to grow older. He increased his tilled acreage and then bought 80 acres of railroad land for $1600. He bought a threshing rig in conjunction with neighbor. It was a horsepower apparatus, in the literal sense. Six teams of horses turned the contrivance that got the threshing machine into motion. He had some other equipment that he either owned along with neighbors or shared with them. Men had to be cooperatively minded in those days.

I must mention two pieces of equipment my father took with him from Iceland. One was a loom for weaving, in the old style, upright, with weights to keep the yarn stretched and other such appropriate equipment. Such looms had not been in use in Iceland for nearly half a century then. My brother, Eyjolfur, wove woolen yarn on this loom and used to weave rugs with it.

After the transition to the horizontal loom the contribution of women became limited to the spinning phase, while weaving became a job for men and by the 19th century, warp-weighted looms were literally forgotten.

[Variation shown with a partial weaving]

The other piece of equipment requires a more elaborate description. These were Icelandic millstones. Large grinding mills were evidently not available in Minnesota in those years. There were small mills here and there about the state; they were located mainly at rivers, turned by the waterpower. Pioneers went to the mill for the grinding of flour usually once or twice a year, with their wheat. No doubt many wished they owned a small mill of their own to spare this travel and expense. Petur Jokull from Hakonarstadir, for example, shaped millstones for neighbors in the western settlement sometime later, but the stone was too soft – it had been sandstone or limestone most likely, and it must have made the ground product a bit rough on the tongue.

I don’t know how millstones were assembled in America. Copy of what they could of look in Iceland:

I consider it likely that similar attempts were made by others in the settlement; at any rate, my father had heard about it and thought immediately of his millstones at Hauksstadir and took them with him westward across the ocean. People involved in moving the goods were disturbed by this heavy burden; they found it both heavy and hard to handle. But after what was doubtless a goodly outpouring of profanity, these stones got all the way over here and were put into a framework at Storhol. I remember that my brother, Valdi, and I usually got the assignment of turning the grinding millstones. We did grinding for our own home and for neighbors. Valdi was then ten years old, and I was eight.

The following winter the millstones proved our salvation, in a sense. That winter was a memorable one, even in Iceland, known as the hard winter 1880-81. Residents of the Vopnafjord area were said to have reported then that it was possible to ride an appropriately shod horse right across the bay at Skrossavik to the village itself. That same winter had a bad reputation that lives even today, in Minnesota both for its cold weather and its great fall of snow. No such winter has been experienced here, before or since.

It fell upon us first with a terrific blizzard in the middle of October. Many perished in the storm around the state, and livestock were buried in the snow. Farmers surely didn’t expect such weather so early in the season. There was a mild spell, but the storms started up again and it continued until April. Here is a brief excerpt from the diary of Loftur Jonasson. It gives a good idea about this terrible winter:

November – the weather has been much worse than usual; repeated storms.
December — storms and heavier frost than anyone remembers.
January — storms and freezing temperatures beyond belief. For 18 days in a row temperatures were below zero, Fahrenheit, from 18 to 24 degrees below. No trains to speak of none whatever through Marshall and Minneota. Most of all we lack wood to burn.
February – up to the 9th of this month, steady storms from the southeast. There has been such a tremendous fall of snow that it is simply unparalleled. It is impossible to get across the country except on skis, and they aren’t plentiful in this country. No trains are running and there is nothing to burn except hay. Some are even out of hay. Most people are without hay and have very little food, for it is impossible to buy anything in the towns. Ten days in a row of below zero weather.
March — from the 5th to the 10th, one could call it bright weather; 19th to 21st, blowing snow; 21st to 31st, clear weather, frost at night, thawing some during the day; the snowbanks have shrunk a good deal; the sharpest frost was just 2 below zero and zero on the last of March! Then on the 31st came a blinding snowstorm from the north, which I believe is the worst we have had all winter. Critical situations as the hay and food. Still, a few have been able to break through the drifts to get at a mill, and the train has gotten as far as Granite Falls.

Granite Falls is in Yellow Medicine County, 40 miles from Minneota to Marshall, which is 13 miles from Minneota, no train got through until in April -none from the beginning of the year until the 20th of April.

Residents in town did not have enough wood for fuel for themselves, let alone others. They reduced the number of houses in use, gathered themselves together, two or more families to the house, to fend off the cold and save fuel. Marshall residents broke through the 12 miles to Lynd, with 16 teams of horses during the winter, and there they chopped down immature trees for fuel. They had to shift the lead team time and again, the going was so rough. Farmers saved their lives by burning hay.

Trips to gristmills were just about impossible during the fall and winter, as Loftur said. On top of all the other trouble, residents living north of the Yellow Medicine River had wheat that had not been threshed because the threshing machine they were to use had burned in the fall. They had to take small loads to other more distant mills or else pound the grain out of the sheaves in some manner, just to have some food.

Then the grinding remained. Neighbors waded through the snow from every direction, home to Storhol, every day with wheat in sack on their backs, and the two of us brothers had a tough time keeping the mill grinding, just as Fenja and Manja did at their mill. It was tiring work, but we were popular. In the eyes of many, these millstones became veritable jewels. Still, there were many who weren’t able to get away from their homes with grain to grind. They ground the grain at home in their little coffee-grinders.

My parents had enough of everything to do, both inside and out, getting hay for feed and fuel, twisting the coarse hay for burning, digging some paths through the wilderness of snow, and many other tasks, redoubled by the weather. Our primitive barn stood southward in the hill behind the house and the drifts covered it over in the worst storms. One time it was necessary to shovel 16 steps through the hard crust over drifts in order to get into the barn.

In April, the thaw finally came, and it was to be expected that most of the settlement would be flooded. It turned out better than we expected. The Yellow Medicine is just a little creek most of the year, but it can become much bigger in the spring. This time, it overflowed its banks and reached a width of one mile or more, at the peak. But the water flowed fairly fast into the Minnesota River. Nevertheless, fields weren’t seeded until May. The harvest was very poor in the fall, that is to say, the wheat crop.

It must be acknowledged that southern Minnesota is not best suited to raising wheat. The land lies too far south for spring wheat and too far north for winter wheat crop improvement didn’t become great in this field until corn became the principal crop. But by that time my parents were about to wind up their active span of years – toward the turn of the century.

In the year 1884 an organization “Islendingafelag” was formed in our eastern settlement, The Society of Icelanders. Such an organization had then functioned for five years in the western settlement. Both of them were patterned after the Icelanders’ Society which was formed in Milwaukee in 1874, if I recall correctly. In accordance with the articles of organization, the purposes of the society were “to build our esteem and so maintain and enliven among Icelanders the free, progressive spirit of learning which throughout all ages have typified our nation.” My father’s name is on the roster of charter members, but he didn’t appear to have exercised any great role in the performances of the society – which weren’t of any major sort. The proposes had a high-flown sound but they proved a bit vague. The society was disbanded after four years.

Another society had more specific purposes – Verzlunarfelag Islendinga – considered the first consumers’ cooperative in the state of Minnesota, and perhaps in all the Middle Western states. Nearly all the settlers in the community, whether single people or the heads of families, had memberships in the organization. The by-laws of the organization are likely lost, but they were probably modeled to a great extent upon those of the Granufelag in Iceland, a consumers’ co-op. Joseph Josephsson from Haukssradir, who had sold his farm to my father, my father himself and other neighbors had all had memberships in the Granufelag. In addition, Joseph Josephsson was an old friend of Tryggvi Gunnarsson. They had gotten acquainted out in Copenhagen. That this organization in Minneota was a consumers’ co-op and not just a shareholders’ organization is evident from the fact that votes were cast at its meeting, not according to shares owned but in the names of the persons themselves. Each part-owner cast one vote, whether he owned a single share or ten of them.

The organization continued for ten years and ceased functioning during the depression which is linked with the Cleveland administration. It was difficult to collect past due accounts. My father was for much of the time a director of the organization.

My parents did well at Storhol as compared with the pioneers generally. But farm management in the community underwent considerable change at the turn of the century as I have indicated. Then old age came along. My wife and I took over the operation of the Storhol farm in 1895. As a matter of fact, I had begun to rent the farm from my parents two years before that. My parents then moved to other land they had bought in the settlement. They lived there a number of years, but I rented their acreage. My father died in 1906 at the home of my brother, Eyjolfur; but my mother then moved in with my wife and me at Storhol and died there in 1913. My father was nearly 80 when he died, and my mother was 78. They were laid to rest after long and fruitful lives.

Their children did well, as the given here attest.

Children of my father were these – by his first marriage:
1. Eyjolfur Bjornsson, married to Gudrun Gudmundsdottir. They lived first in Vopnaflordur; came west in 1880, bought land in the Westerheim settlement and lived there from that time on. They are both dead.
2. Kristin Bjornsdottir Snidal (Mrs. John Snidal), married to Jon Snidal. He was from northeastern Iceland. Both are dead.

Of the second marriage Sigurbjorg. Died in Iceland. No children (there were two children O.F.G.)

Of the third marriage: (a son Peter, who stayed in Iceland and came with Eyjolfur and died in MN)
1. Olof (Olive S. Gislason) Died in Minneota, unmarried.
2. Thorvaldur (Walter B. Gislason) Merchant in various locations, last and longest in Minneota. Married Effie Griffing. She survives her husband.
3. Jon (John B. Gislason) Farmer in Westerheim Township. Member of Minnesota Legislature from his election in 1918 to 1927. Married Lukka Edvardardottir Thorleifssonar from Eshifjordur.
4. Bjorn (Bjorn B. Gislason) Lawyer businessman, Realtor, Volunteered in the U.S. Army in the Spanish-American War, 1898. Saw action in battles in the Philippine Islands, married Johanna, the daughter of Jonatan Jonatansson from Eida who the son of Jonatan Petursson from Eida in Eidapingha was. (Joan Peterson). She was the first woman of Icelandic birth to be graduated from the University of Minnesota. Both are dead.
5. Ingibjorg (Emma Gislason Holm) Married to Sveinn Johannesson Holm from Koreksstadir in Hjaltastadapingha. Lived in the eastern settlement. Both are dead. Sveinn was the brother of John Holm, the journalist, who died a number of years ago in New York.
6. Halldor (Halldor B. Gislason) Professor of Speech at the University of Minnesota. Married to Bessie Tucker. She survives her husband.
7. Arni (Arni B. Gislason) Lawyer, Realtor, District judge in Minnesota courts. Twice married – first wife: Cora Eastman, daughter of Thorodur Sigurdsson Austman, whose ancestry was from Fljotsdalsherad (Fljotsdalsheradi), northeastern Iceland. Ann, her mother, was the sister of Gunnar B. Bjornson’s father. Second wife: Solveig Grimsdottir Thordarson, niece of Sjartur (Hjartar) Thorderson, the electrical inventor and manufacturer in Chicago. She graduated in medicine and is now a doctor at the State Hospital in St Peter, Minnesota. They reside there. Arni retired from the bench three years ago.

If people want to know what became of the loom and the millstones, I might as well conclude that story. The loom was likely burned, in the end. The millstones received a high place for a time. They were made part of a windmill in the Dutch style and set up on the hill behind the house. Peter Jokull made those improvements. But then came the fine flour from the big cities and made its way in all communities. The small mills were all closed down. Another pioneer got our millstones, but they were rolled from their seat of honor with him finally, too. The stones were in the end used as a threshold for a horse-barn, I have heard.

Sic transit gloria mundi – thus go the glories of this world.

-JB Gislason, Minneota, Minnesota

If you like poking around in Icelandic history, hop on over to Icelandic Roots!

memories and more recent connections

This section talks a bit about some of my relatives and their Icelandic connections and how I connect to this part of my ancestry. My brother, sister and I all inherited the recessive genes of Icelanders. We look like our mother with our fair skin and freckles. My Grandpa Joe used to joke that each freckle was worth a silver dollar.  I’m rich!  🙂  – Rachel Biel

JB Gislason died in 1960 and I was born in 1962, so I never met him.

Growing up in Brazil meant that we didn’t have a close connection with our American relatives in terms of locality. But, my parents did a great job of imprinting our grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins into our lives in other ways. Both enjoyed writing letters back to the United States and when my Dad died, his sister Marian gave me a box full of letters that they had sent her over the years.  I transcribed about two thirds of them to a blog, Biels in Brazil, and hope to organize them and finish the rest at some point.

We spent one year in the US in 1967-1968 and then came back every two or three years for two or three months.  We lived in a farm house on my grandfather’s land and I don’t know if that is one of the one’s his father talked about. I went to first grade in Minneota and we spent a lot of time with my Grandpa Joe and Grandma Helen.

Great Grandma Kroeling was Helen’s mother, a German immigrant.  I also remember my great grandmothers Gislason and Larson.

We saw quite a bit of the Biel side of the family as well.  Both of my parents were the second oldest of six siblings. They were farm kids.  My mother said, “I grew up on two farms, one with Abo Bjornson, and then moved about one mile to other farm. Jay, my dad and Helen moved to town when we were in Brazil.” This is the house I remember with a wonderful white porch.

I’ve always thought of the Gislasons as the readers and writers while the Biels seemed to have the genes for carving, painting, and building things.  My cousin John, Olive’s son, was a wood turner and there is one on the Biel side, too, Greg.

John passed away recently and I wish we had had more contact.  We messaged on Facebook from time to time, and he was so interesting.  His passions were history, archeology, and politics.  That’s his beautiful Anna, a fire eater and earth child….  John’s brother, Robert, just retired and is homesteading with his wife, a gentleman farmer! Sheila is an outstanding quilter!

What is handed down through the genes?  A friend of mine taught me how to knit a few years back and she said I had an amazing knack for it.  Does being a watered down Viking make knitting easier?  🙂

back to iceland

Grandpa Joe had been to Iceland several times and he showed us a photo he had taken there of a waitress.  She looked just like my Aunt Nyla!!!  I went to Europe after college and spent a summer backpacking.  I took Iceland Air.  We landed in Reykjavik and spent about an hour at the airport and it was such a strange experience!  It was the first time that I felt like I was a part of a tribe.  “My people! My people!”  I had gone to a Norwegian Lutheran college, so that feeling was there, too, but somehow this was different. It was eerie…  Even though we don’t speak the Language or have any real ties there, there is a curiosity about the culture.

My mother and her siblings planned on going for a visit in 2020 but Covid put a stop to that, so they went in 2022.  They visited the farm that is shown at the top this post.  Here are a couple more photos:

bill and daren

Perhaps part of my interest in Iceland was lit because two of my mother’s cousins, Bill and Daren, both teachers, were connected to the literature and to the history in a profound way.  I remember visiting Daren in the 70’s and he seemed like a hippie.  He had painted one room all black and the walls were covered with books.  Mom let me do that to my room in Brazil, too!

Bill Holm is quite famous in Minnesota.  He ended up having a home in Iceland, too, and wrote about both countries (and China!).  This is a wonderful interview with Bill with footage in Iceland:

I wrote about Bill and Daren on my personal blog.  Click!!

immigration:  the moral of the story

When I was a teenager, my father told me: “You will not belong anywhere, but you will be able to live anywhere.”  That has been true for me.  Those of us who have grown up in two or more cultures often have a broader sense of citizenship, identifying more with the idea of a “world citizenship” than one that is limited to boundaries.  For example, when I was at St. Olaf College, there were about 50 international students and many of us felt like we had more in common with each other than we did with the kids who came from wealthy Minnesotan suburbs.  We had a familiar sense of displacement while enjoying discovering each other’s foods, music, and ideas. This mix is the fabric of American society, the great social experiment!

We are living a horrible time in our American history.  People are getting snatched off the street, thrown into prisons or deported without due process.   Racism, along with resentment and cruelty, is spewed with no shame.

I really liked this account my great grandfather gave of his youth.  It seems level headed, generous and kind.  We have all arrived to this land with our own stories.  Human history is full of violence, migrations, disasters and horrible chapters, but it’s also shaped by curiosity, exchanges, story telling, and creativity. My world has been enriched by all of the stories I have learned about from other people and cultures.  I hope yours is, too!

diversity is our strength!

This is the first post on a series on Immigration. If you would like to share your story, join us as a member (only $25/year!) and I’ll get it up for you. You can also leave a comment below. If you are on a cell phone, just keep scrolling until you see it.