Audio clip from an interview with Gytha Hurst, 1989

Bio: Gytha Hurst was born in Winnipeg on August 4, 1909. Their parents were Gísli Jónsson from Norður-Múlasýsla, Iceland, and Guðrún H. Finnsdóttir Straumfjörð from Suður-Múlasýsla, Iceland. Gytha died on August 7, 2002. 

Duration of Audio Clip: 2:52 

Transcription of Audio:

Laurence Gillespie, interviewer: How did you learn how to read?  

Gytha Hurst: Icelandic? 

Laurence Gillespie: Yeah. 

Gytha Hurst: Well, my grandfather had something to do with that. My grandfather, who arrived when I was maybe two or three or something. And he used to invite us children up to his room. And I remember he had a green trunk that fascinated us, what was in the green trunk. So, he’d sit us on his knee and he’d say, now we’re going to do a little bit of reading and grammar in Icelandic. And we did. And then we were rewarded with the peppermints out of his green trunk. He was a darling. He was a very smart man, really. And he had, in his own home, he had he had evening readings. You’ve heard of that, of course. 

Laurence Gillespie: Yeah. 

Gytha Hurst: That’s what the old-timers did in Iceland. They had readings in the evenings. There were no other distractions. And they learned to read and to listen, to write that way, too. So, I think that that’s its start. Well, the language was inbred in us. You know, that’s the only way to learn it is from the time you can learn to talk or listen. And so, I think that he came at a propitious time for us, and he taught us a lot. And then on top of that, my parents were keen that we learned the language. They weren’t insistent because we had so much schoolwork and we were into everything at school and later. But they wanted us to know the principles of the language, and the proper way to speak and write, and the grammar. All this parsing and conjugating. You know, even the proper name is changed in the sentence. So, we had a tutor on Saturday afternoons, and we were pretty young then because we were sort of upset about that because that was when the funny paper came out in the weekend paper. So there came the paper and we had to listen to our tutor who was a grand person.