Kristján Níels Jónsson, “KÁINN”. Photo: “Fæddur til að fækka tárum”
Kristján Níels Jónsson was born on April 7, 1859 in Akureyri in Eyjafjarðarsýsla. He died in the Eyford settlement in N. Dakota on October 25, 1936. He is known as Káinn in the west.
Unmarried and childless.
Kristján came west in 1878 and first settled in Winnipeg, Manitoba. There he got to know various aspects of multinational culture, in a Canadian newspaper it was claimed that on the streets of Winnipeg, at least 17 languages could be heard. He got a job here and there, did almost everything that was offered, but didn’t put down roots. He left the city in the late 1880s and went to Duluth, Minnesota. There he is greeted by a city very similar to Winnipeg, where immigrants from Europe who traveled along the great waters of the United States passed through on their way to the west, but in the 1890s the West in the United States was opening up. Work in the city was seasonal, like in Winnipeg, plenty to do in the summer, less or almost nothing in the winter. Then Kristján decided to visit his countrymen who were settled on the plains of N. Dakota, he moved there in 1893 and put down roots. Further reading in Jón Hjaltason’s excellent book, Fæddur til að fækka tárum.