A video clip from the television documentary series West Into the Blue (1976) featuring an interview with Salome Johnson of Vancouver, British Columbia. The video’s dialogue is translated from Icelandic to English in the descriptive transcript below.
Video runtime: 2:16
Descriptive Transcript:
[The video fades from black to a woman with white hair, glasses, a blue and white patterned dress, and white necklace seated in front of a dark green hedge.]
Salome: We boarded a ship in Stykkisholmur. The name of the ship was Lara. It came to Stykkisholmur from Reykjavik. Then it went all the way around Iceland and departed from a harbour near Reykjavik to Scotland. There we took the Allan Line to North America.
Interviewer: How long did the trip from Iceland to the west take?
Salome: If I remember correctly, it was three weeks. We left in the late part of June and arrived in Winnipeg on July 15th.
Interviewer: What was it like after you reached Winnipeg?
Salome: We were taken good care of by relatives. We stayed in a house there for nine days. Then people came to get us to take us out to Gimli.
Interviewer: What was the journey north like?
Salome: There were two men who came. One man had a team of oxen and the other had a team of horses. They moved us.
Interviewer: Wasn’t that a bit difficult?
Salome: No, it was fine all the way. We slept under the wagons at night.
Interviewer: How long did the journey north take?
Salome: It took us three days. We arrived on the third day.
Interviewer: Were there many Icelanders there?
Salome: Not many Icelanders had settled there yet, but the ones who had had built homes near the lake.
Interviewer: What year was that?
Salome: 1894.
[The video fades to black]