14

Vatnabyggd Homesteads Foam Lake to Leslie
9 December 2005

15

Thorsteinson, Danny on Farming
10 December 2005
Leslie, SK Canada

16

[Thorsteinson, Danny]
...And unfortunately out of all of that, you know obviously the Icelanders and other nationalities came to Canada from other countries and if you look at the map you'll see that they all wanted a piece of land - or the majority did - every quarter had a name on it. We just got a map here from the Emerald RM [rural municipality] and dated back to when it was originated, and every quarter had a name on it. And right here on this section my grandfather [Thorsteinson, Thorstein] had one quarter and my great grandmother [Thorsteinson, Gudbjorg Sigurdordottir] had the other quarter, a fellow by the name of Moodie had another quarter and another fellow by the name of Gordon. And I believe that it was Mr Gordon that just up and left and never did come back, one or two years here, and Moodie - one of them went to war and never came back, and the other packed his bags and left. And then somehow my dad purchased one quarter, and my grandfather must have bought the other quarter. that made it this section that we lived on that dad farmed. And of course back then they all had their fifteen, twenty cows, tied in the barn ... cleaned the barn, took the hay in... Today my son and I are farming and, I was just doing the papers this morning, so fifty quarters or 8000 acres, we run 4 or 500 cows plus a bunch of feeder cattle. There's something wrong with that picture, because nobody should have to do that to make a living, but the margin gets so slim that five acres won't make you a living. Then it gets to the point where you're just running and you can't see daylight. I don't know what the answer is.

17

Vatnabyggd Homesteads Foam Lake to Elfros
9 December 2005

18

Many of the first-generation homesteaders were not, as one might expect, young men looking for their own land. In fact, many of the Icelandic homesteaders (and this is true of all the nationalities that came in that era) were in their fifties or even sixties when the homestead patents were granted. Many had families to support, and in several cases, a father and his grown sons would take out different homesteads.

19

Vatnabyggd Homesteads Foam Lake to Mozart
9 December 2005

20

B. Bjornson and Ben Josephson exchanged homesteads so Ben could live closer to his parents. B. Bjornson then swapped homesteads with Rognvaldur Sveinson. In each case, the reason given for the trade was to be closer to parents.

21

Vatnabyggd Homesteads Foam Lake to Wynyard
9 December 2005

22

Olafson, Eric on Icelandic emigration
10 December 2005
Foam Lake, SK Canada

23

[Olafson, Eric]
Now my fraternal grandfather [Bjarni Olafson] was a year old when they came, and the interesting story there is, when my daughter and Karen - my daughter's name is Marea - when Karen and Marea were in Iceland last - not this summer, the summer before - they were at the homestead where my grandfather was born. So my daughter was at the homestead where her great grandfather was born, and we've acutally got a picture of Marea [there]. So they emigrated in 1887, they came from Nupsdalstunga in 1887 and settled at Gimli. And why did they come here? You know that's one thing that I guess I was never told. I've heard the stories that a lot of them emigrated because of famine, because of the volcanic activity, they were starving. I think with them it was more - I don't recall hearing stories about famine and starvation, but just they though it would be better if they came to Canada.

24

Vatnabyggd Homesteads Foam Lake to Dafoe
9 December 2005

25

Olafson, Eric on his grandfather coming to homestead
10 December 2005
Kandahar, SK Canada

26

[Olafson, Eric]
My grandfather [Bjarni Olafson] came here with his brother [Gudlaugur Olafson] and he was 19 years old and his brother was 17. They came to Sheho because that's as far as the rail went. In 1905 the rail line went to Sheho. So they came there, and came across country, about 60 miles. I don't know if they had a team of horses or a team of oxen or what they had, but they came to the homestead south of Dafoe in September and built a shack and stayed there and lived on oatmeal porridge.

27

Fridrik Gudmundsson estimated that Vatnabygg�in consisted of 866 homesteads, plus 334 other farms (the land would have been bought, not homesteaded). No date is given for this estimate, but probably it was for around 1920 or 1930 once settlement started to decrease.

Gudmundsson was a Mozart pioneer, who learned to type after he went blind and wrote one book, Endurminningar (Recollections) and began another before he passed away.