Work Work Work (Not the Rihanna song)

        After work today I stopped to chat with Valgeir and Gunna for a few minutes. I had just spent the last fifteen minutes trying to explain the Emigration Center to a handful of elderly tourists from Holland, who had wandered in just after closing time. “I thought they might eat you alive,” Valgeir smiles at me as I walk up into the loft in Frændgarður. He had been upstairs with Gunna, listening to the whole exchange, and had not come down to rescue me, so I figured he either trusted my ability to survive conversational cannibals, or perhaps found my clumsy explanation too entertaining to interrupt. Maybe a bit of both.

Frændgarður is getting a new coat of paint this week

View from the North Dakota exhibit house

        I've worked seven days in a row now, and my enthusiasm has not flagged. Each day I go trip-trapping over the bridge to Frændgarður, which is the headquarters of the Emigration Center. The main floor of this building houses the genealogy database and library, as well as a currently empty exhibition space. The brilliant photo exhibit of Icelandic immigrants, called Silent Flashes, that normally occupies this room is currently holding court in Harpa, the concert hall in Reykjavik. Upstairs in Frændgarður, Valgeir and Gunna have a series of desks and work spaces tucked smartly away in all the corners, and of course, shelf after shelf of books. At the very top of the stairs is a cozy living room space. It is here that we often start the work day. 

        “Goðan daginn,” one of us begins, setting off a round of return “goðan daginn” greetings followed by “hvað segir þu?” Or “hvernig gengur?” (How are you?). We are always “allt gott,” or “bara fínt” as we start the day. I love the camaraderie of this place. The feeling that though you are not always working side by side with someone throughout the day, you are working as part of a team. Erica and I, along with one young girl from town named Emilía, take turns working in the three different buildings at the Center.  If both Erica and Emilía are working, I am happy to go to the genealogy library in Frændgarður while they man the desks in the museum exhibit buildings. There, I can help do research for the genealogy requests Valgeir gets via email or help walk-ins with ancestry questions. If one of the other girls is gone, I've most often been in the main exhibit building, which also houses the gift shop. People stop in to browse and buy souvenirs, and some want to buy tickets to see the exhibits. Here I attempt to use my rudimentary Icelandic skills whenever possible, but many of the people that come in are from places other than Iceland, and English is usually our common tongue. There are hours where it is dead quiet and I pull out my book or computer and read or write. Today I nearly finished a Sudoku puzzle. For the most part, I've found the quieter moments to be relaxing rather than boring. And soon enough, a carload of German or Canadian or American or Japanese tourists come stomping across the wooden deck and up the concrete stairs of the museum building, and once again I have plenty to do.

Gift shop- you can often find me camped out here behind
the desk

Emigration Center and Flag Factory combo

Lopapeysa, anyone?

Flags for sale

       On Monday, my second day of work, I was tasked with helping a woman find some information on her immigrant ancestors. “I didn’t even know this was here until we went into see the exhibits and the girl at the desk said to come and talk to you!” She is so excited she is almost vibrating. She sits across the desk from me as I struggle to type the correct names and dates into the complex database that I had just begun to learn. I am worried I will disappoint her, be unable to find anything, or that I will miss something important. I am on my own when she comes in, and I tell her I will try my best, and that reinforcements (Valgeir) will be arriving soon.

        “My great-grandfather left in 1890,” she tells me, showing me the documents she had brought with. We look over names and she tells me how she is related to each and what she knows of where they ended up when they left Iceland. “I´m the first one of my family to make it back to Iceland since they left.” Her eyes (and mine) fill with tears, as she tells me that a few days ago they traveled through the area where her ancestors had lived before moving to the United States so many years ago. “It’s a powerful thing,” I tell her, “to see where you come from.”

        I’m not generally an overly emotional person. I’ve got pretty solid control over the old tear ducts the majority of the time. But on this particular subject, family history, I feel ALL the feelings. One of the many highlights of my Snorri trip was a visit to what is left of the farm where my great-grandfather, Kjartan Sveinsson and his parents lived and worked before emigrating to Canada in 1878.  I remember standing there, on the ruins of what was once a turf house, and feeling completely overwhelmed. This place was part of who I was. My ancestors had worked that land and taken in that view and lived for generations in the very spot where I was standing. And because it was a hard, hard life, they had to make the difficult decision to leave that place, and hope they could have a better life somewhere else. And because of that decision, (and many more afterward) here I am today, back in Iceland, hopefully helping someone else connect to their own family story. Uffda. I need a tissue.

It didn’t take long and we were able to match the correct names and dates in several books and in the database. We found short biographies about a few of her Icelandic ancestors and she even learned that her great-grandfather had been a great saddle maker in the south of Iceland. Valgeir arrived and pulled another book from the library, and Voilà, even more information. This woman was shocked, and obviously incredibly, overwhelmingly touched. As she was leaving, we started to shake hands, but that didn’t feel like enough after such a momentous occasion.

“Can I give you a hug?” I ask her, half laughing, and half crying.

“Yes, oh good!” She pulls me in for a warm hug and thanks me profusely. “A handshake didn’t seem quite right after that,” she agrees.

She leaves and I sit grinning like a fool for a few moments, my hands folded over my heart as if I have to it from leaping out of my body. What an incredible mission this place has, and how lucky I am to be a part of it.

Names of my immigrant ancestors in one of the Center´s books

For the vast majority of people living in Canada and the United States, their family history in North America is short. Nearly everyone came from somewhere else, and if they didn’t, their parents did, or their grandparents, or their great-grandparents and so on. The few hundred years of history that we have to look at in North America is piddly compared to most other countries. I spoke with a man from England this week who was completely flabbergasted by the Emigration Center (in a good way) and the topic of how people claim their heritage. We had an eye-opening talk about how for many people in the world, whose families have lived in the same country or region, or even town for a zillion years (not a scientifically or historically accurate estimate), an interest in heritage at this level is bizarre. He said that as far as he knew his family had been in Britain since basically the dawn of time. “I visited America a few years back,” the man tells me. “My wife and I ate at little Polish restaurant and I spoke to one of the workers there and he told me he was Polish. I asked if he spoke any Polish and he said he didn’t! Turns out he had never been to Poland, and didn’t know the language! His parents had never even been there! But he still claimed he was Polish!”

I spoke with the British man about the similar experience I have had with my Icelandic heritage and all the other people I know at home in the States and in Canada who sound just like the Polish man from his story. As we continue to discuss the topic I say, “When you have such a relatively short history, you have to pull from a little farther back. At home, when people want to know where your family is from, they don’t necessarily mean Wisconsin or Iowa. Sure, I’m American; I was born in North Dakota. But when I talk about my heritage I can say I’m Icelandic, and Lithuanian, and Norwegian.”

For anyone at all interested in history, I think that it is impossible not to wonder about the people that came before us. We can try to imagine what things were like in those long ago times; what people ate, what they wore, and how they spoke. We can consume romanticized historical fiction novels and watch glamorous movies about Medieval times or the Roaring 20’s and claim, “We were born in the wrong era!” When examining family history, on a much more personal level, we have the opportunity to not only try to discover what our ancestors were like, but how we are like them. Bill Holm has the perfect ending quote for my lengthy entry this evening (morning actually, it’s like 2:30am here- whoops). Take it away, Bill.

“Who were these people? Am I like them? What did I inherit? Not money, in the case of Iceland, but bodies, even disease and infirmities, noses, flat feet, weak eyes, height, musical or literary talent, and of course, habits of mind, those windows forever coloring our perceptions.” -Windows of Brimnes, page 83