Aldís’s trail from Winnipeg to Cavalier. The route from Gimli to Winnipeg is almost 80 km (50 miles).
Aldís Jónasdóttir Bergmann Laxdal settled in New Iceland in the fall of 1876. She hadn’t been there long when smallpox struck at Íslendingafljöt (Icelandic River). The winter of 1876-1877 was difficult for the settlers as smallpox raged. In VÍÆ IV there is a short story about Aldís and her work in nursing and midwifery in the West. “She gained a good reputation as a nurse in New Iceland during the smallpox winter of 1876-77, where she worked with unwavering courage often night and day to relieve the sick and dying. Three times that winter she walked to Winnipeg, about 60 miles away, to fetch medicine and nursing supplies, and lay out in the woods at night. In 1878 she moved to Winnipeg, Man., and continued to practice nursing and midwifery, as there was still little obstetric care there. Two years later, she decided to move to the United States, walking with her children most of the way to Cavalier, North Dakota. She took land in the Garðar Settlement in 1880, but sold it three years later to Hannes Björnsson, and after that dedicated herself only to midwifery. In the Icelandic cemetery at Mountain in North Dakota, a solemn monument was erected to her by a number of grateful mothers whom she had helped. It is believed that she received approximately five hundred children.”
English version by Thor group.