In the early years of western emigration, those going west knew very little about what awaited them beyond the sea. Often couples went with some of their children, breaking apart the family’s children. It must have been worrying what their future would be like, were they going from the ashes to the fire? Almost from the very beginning, Icelandic westerners approached the settlement of the plains of Canada and the United States in a similar way, people chose land, broke it and started farming. Or they raised livestock and gathered hay. Sometimes the settlement was Icelandic, i.e., the settlers were almost all Icelanders, but it also happened that settlers from different origins were among them. It didn’t take long before the settlers started thinking about the youth and their future, because one of the first things they tried to do was to establish a school. Gísli Guðmundur Jónsson from Skagafjörður was just seven years old when he came to the Hallson settlement in N. Dakota and there he received a public-school education which was enough for him to start studying at Wesley University in Winnipeg. Let’s look at Þórstína Þorleifsdóttir’s account in her book “Saga Íslendingi i N. Dakota” about Gísli and his education:
“Of the children of Icelandic settlers, the good doctor in Grand Forks, Dr. G. J. Gíslason, at the forefront of the group. He is the son of Jón Gíslason from Flatatunga and Sæunn Þorsteinsdóttir from Gilhaga. After a rather limited public-school education, Dr. Gíslason studied at Wesley University in Winnipeg and finished his second year there in the university department. He pursued his medical studies mainly in Chicago, specializing in diseases of the eye, ear, throat and nose. He has traveled twice to Europe and studied at a university there. Dr. Gíslason has been practicing medicine in the town of Grand Forks for between 15 and 20 years, and he soon gained trust, and showed that he is particularly qualified as a doctor, especially when you take into account that he started out as an unknown in a city where there are only a few Icelanders. For several years he has been president of the Grand Forks District Medical Association, which includes 5 northeastern Dakota counties. He is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and belongs to the American Medical Association, the American Medical Society of Vienna, a member and the first president of the North Dakota Academy of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology, etc., etc. Dr. Gíslason is an avid reader and he cares deeply. As an example, when he had been a doctor for a few years, he took the subjects he needed to get a Baccalaureate in Arts as a sideline at the University of Grand Forks, and he graduated from there. He is well-spoken and has translated various Icelandic poems into English, such as “Gröfin” by Kristján Jónsson, and I think those translations are brilliantly well done. He has a lot of true Icelandic endurance, and on his educational path he worked his way up by himself and overcame poverty and hardship.”
English version by Thor group.