Iceland News spoke to residents of Icelandic descent living in London, Ontario, Canada. This is part one of a multi-part series telling their stories.



INEWS: I’m listening to Icelandic folk music… it’s a song called Draumalandith… in English… that’s dreamland… and it’s the favorite song for one London resident of Icelandic-descent. Here I am in her suburban home… listening to Draumalandith… listening to her story of maintaining her heritage.

Ardath: My name is Ardath Valdise-Finnbogason-Hill, which is a mouthful and always has been for people who have met me for the first time. I usually go by Ardath. I won’t necessarily tell you my age… but I’ve certainly been around a while. I’ve been married 40 years so that gives you an idea. I’m of Icelandic descent and very proudly so. It feels wonderful to think that although immigration took place at the turn of the 1900s… there is still this family connection. Although my grandmother was born in Canada… She retained a written communication with family there and so over the generations… even though people have seen each other… some of the generations haven’t never met… there was still correspondence … a close link remained.

INEWS: The link remains today through dreamland… a song she heard as a child.

Ardath: I had no idea what it meant… I just found it so sad… and I just found it so beautiful… My grandmother was a singer and a pianist… so even though I do not speak the language there is a still a connectedness that happens… it’s almost at a cellular place that you just…. I feel… when I hear the music…

INEWS: It’s not just the musical link that maintains ties… there is family too… unexpectedly living in London.

Ardath: I met my cousin actually here… I’d heard about her family for years through my father and my mother… and then at church we actually met. So Nancy Johnson is my cousin connected through my mother. But as is quite common with the Icelandic community… because it’s quite small… we’re also connected on the other side of the family.

INEWS: So now I move to another London home… to one of Ardath’s close physical links… and a new Icelandic story that’s a little different from Dreamland.

Nancy Johnson: I’m Nancy Johnson. I’m the same age as Ardath… That puts us in the neighborhood of sixty-plus. Anyway… I went to the world exhibition in Montreal… back in 1967… I went up to the Icelanders at the booth and said… [ICELANDIC PHRASE] thinking they’d be very impressed… but they were not. I said my grandmother and grandfather come from Iceland. Apparently I’m told… maybe still… in the old days if you just went to the airport and said something like that… you’d probably meet a relative. It’s a very small country.

In 2005 there were 16 cousins from across Canada who came together as a group and went to Iceland. They were all there for one purpose… that was to have a family reunion and celebrate our Icelandic roots. We went and spent ten days touring the country and spent some time in a little place called Borgarnes… That is where our grandparents set sail in 1901. We unveiled a plaque in their memory. A huge rock all of us send our kids there. You have to go to Borgarnes… find the monument… that’s where your strength comes from.

ICELANDIC SONG: Bí, bí og blaka, álftirnar kvaka, ég læt sem ég sofi, en samt mun ég vaka.

Nancy Johnson: Bí, bí og blaka… that’s all I remember. When we were in Iceland… by chance… we started… sixteen cousins… some of us started to sing that. Turned out everyone of us independently had parents who had sung that to us as children. So we all knew it… and maybe that’s how they made us so connected with our roots.

INEWS: And so our journey through part of London’s Icelandic community… draws to a close.

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