“I was born in Garðar in Kelduhverfi in North Þingeyjarsýslá on March 19, 1845. My parents were Reverend Magnús Jónsson, Jónsson’s priest at Grenjaðarstaðir, who at one time was Deacon in Hólar, probably around 1700 or earlier. My mother was Þórvör Skúladóttir from Múli in Aðalreykjadal, the daughter of priest Tómasson and Þórvar Sigfúsdóttir the priest in Höfði. I grew up in Garðar with my parents until I was 7 years old, then they moved east to Ás in Fellum in North Múlasýsla and stayed there for two years, but in 1855 my parents moved north to Grenjaðarstaðir, because then my father became an assistant pastor with his father, Rev. Jón, who is mentioned before. The first winter at Grenjðarstaðir in 1855-6*, the 3 brothers and I were sent out to Húsavík, in order to be taught writing and arithmetic by the local teacher Jakob Johnsen. Our teacher was Bjarni Gunnarsson, who had the most elegant handwriting that existed in Iceland in those days. During the test, I had to go to old Johnsen and write my name, and I got the certificate that I wrote in a district manager’s hand, which must not have been anything special in those days as I was 10 years old then. During the winter, I and my oldest brother, Björn, stayed with Sigfús, sheriff of Sohulesen and my maternal uncle, while Jón Skúli lived with Johnsen and my paternal sister, Hilda. The following winter, my father got a home tutor, Sir Benedikt Kristjánsson, assistant priest in Múli, (who later became my father-in-law), to teach me and my brothers writing, arithmetic, and Danish. When Sir Benedikt left Múli, he was replaced by Sir Magnús Jónsson, lastly a priest in Laufá, and then more subjects were added, such as spelling, geography, Danish, English, and German, this seemed a lot, depending on what happened then, and came in handy later on. But one thing seemed to be missing, which later became clear to me, and that is to point young people to a certain career path, preferably the one they choose themselves, if it makes sense, so that they can aim for a certain goal. But in Iceland there isn’t much to aim for, and that’s why everyone probably wants to get into a the government support fund, which is not in itself a loan to anyone, because little else is viable. However, this has changed a lot for the better since I left Iceland.”
*This fall, or early in the winter, the whole town called Múli burned down, and then many in the household moved up to Grenjaðarstaðir, including my grandmother, Þórvör Sigfúsdóttir, she had been lying in bed for several years by then, and I remember that she was carried in a quilt up to Grenjaðarstaðir.
According to what was previously explained, during my upbringing I had received some resources, good provisions, in order to start the journey into life, and after this the teenage years passed and I worked in the countryside, sometimes in good company and also sometimes in worse ones and you can get close, as there were usually about 20 people in a household in Grenjðarstaðir in those days. I was precocious and fully grown here at about 18 years old. Wrestling and other strength tests were then frequent in the villages, along with swimming lessons.
Speculation in Iceland – Going West: During these years, or 1865 and after, emigration from Iceland began, and I was not the only one who was touched by the desire to go abroad. Einar Ásmundsson from Nes was the first person to go; he procured various publications and maps, both in Danish and German; they were passed among people in the countryside who could enjoy it, and so those who read this told the others, because everyone now became curious about this new settlement. This spread incredibly quickly throughout Þingeyjarsýsla and Eyjafjarðarsýsla. However, Greenland had first been mentioned, then Brazil, and finally Canada and the United States. However, I wanted to seek my fortune abroad, and bad weather and misguided government strengthened my desire for a departure. Jón Ólafsson was then, among other things, publishing “Baldur” and many more could be counted. My trip abroad was delayed for two years due to special reasons, but it finally happened in 1873, when I set off from Iceland together with 9 others on a journey to the United States. There was no option other than sailing ships to get out of the north, so I decided to go with Örum & Wulf’s merchant ship from Húsavík. It was an old ship called Hjálmar. The captain was Sivert, a well-known sea captain and used to trips to Iceland; had been going on for years. Hjalmar was supposed to go to Norway and we had to comply. The ship set sail on June 1 or 2, on Whit Sunday, as I recall, because we arrived in Bergen on the 12th of the same month, but the first landing place was Christianssand, where we had stayed a few days. Let’s have a good time and enjoy the outdoors. The wind stopped when we put to sea from Húsavík and there was a dust storm over Sléttunni and Langanes; that was the last I saw of the country at that time. There was no mountain view just the dust. In Bergen we exchanged money and more. The steamer we went with belonged to a Norwegian company, as there were 5 or 6 hundred Norwegians on board, all emigrants to the United States. We spent 14 days on the Atlantic and landed in New York on July 26. We arrived at the harbor in the middle of the night, and many people woke up when the ship anchored; I could then see the length of the city along the coast, which was all set with electric lights. The next morning we went into Castle Garden, bought our tickets there, and set out a day later for the west of this great country, strangers to both the places and the customs of the country. However, I had sent an urgent message to Jónas Jónsson, who is now in Winnipeg, and planned for him to meet us at the train station in Milwaukee. This breaking news reached Jónas the day after we arrived there. As the train was pulling into the station in Chicago, groups of rascals flocked to the train with shouts and noises, and I was not particularly impressed by that greeting; it gives you some idea of all the social garbage that lives in Chicago, even to this day. I came to Milwaukee on the 4th of July, and did not like the fireworks, but soon heard what was going on; I reached an inn safe and sound, where I met several people, most of whom had come to the town the year before. After resting a few days, I took a job with an Irish farmer; I worked for a while in a furniture factory, and in the fall, I hired on with another farmer to help me through the winter, but in the spring of 1874, I went back to Milwaukee, which in those days was like my home, because some Icelanders were living there, as said before. Some time after I came to Milwaukee, during the summer, there was talk of land searches, because most of the countrymen wanted to become large farmers, if possible; therefore, a meeting was held to discuss the land acquisition issue. Among others at that meeting were: the great Rev. Páll Þorláksson, Jón Halldórsson from Stóruvellir, Árni Sigvaldason, Ólafur Ólafsson from Espihóll, Sigurður Kristopherson and others. It was decided at this meeting that I, together with another man, would go to search for a settlement for the Icelanders. I then traveled across the states of Iowa and Nebraska, and I was able to stop wherever I wanted, but this trip was mostly unsuccessful, because all land was taken up in these states, except for railroad lands. My fellow traveler, Jón Halldórsson, and I agreed to purchase land, which we later sold. This summer I worked with farmers during the harvest, and I thought that work was difficult.
Travel to Iceland: In the fall, on October 16, I left for Iceland. I then went through Quebec and from there to Scotland; had to wait another week in Leith for the mail ship, which was supposed to go to Reykjavík. In Reykjavík I waited until the northern mail started, December 3, 1874, and I made it all the way home just before Christmas; I had been away from here for about 1 year and 7 months. Of that time, I had spent 15 months in the United States, but the rest of the time was spent traveling back and forth. This time the stay at Grenjaðarstaðir was not long, but in connection with it I should mention that weaving was one of my jobs at home. There, as in many other places in Þingeyjarsýsla, all fabric making was of a very high quality, and it inspired me to translate a short, Danish book on coloring, it was published in Akureyri in 1877 and was then used for several years by my sister Ingibjörg. In the summer of 1876, on July 29, I married Miss Guðrún E. Benediktsdóttir from Múli, and the same summer I moved to Múli and the following year took over my father-in-law’s estate. I lived there until 1882; then I moved with my wife and three children east to Seyðisfjörður. In order to get there, I had to wait until autumn in Akureyri, because the arctic ice filled all the fjords and there was fog every day for a whole month or more. There was a lack of shelter in many places and more disadvantages, which come with regular storms like the one that happened then. After more than four years of stay in Seyðisfjörður, I decided in the winter of 1886 to move to America for the second time, and I had then contacted the Anchor Line Company, by providing the company with several westbound travelers, so my fellow passengers became about 40 people. Together, the group would go to Scotland and the ship Laura left Seyðisfjörður on July 12 and headed for Granton, from there we went to Glasgow and waited there for 5 days; the stay was good for everyone after the trip from Iceland. From Glasgow we went on July 5th to Liverpool and then directly to New York. There the group split up, because all my fellow travelers went to Canada from there, but I continued west along the United States.
Nebraska – Minnesota: We finally arrived at Long Pine in Nebraska on August 6th, after almost a month of very tiring travel. In Long Pine (a very small village) I immediately met my old friend and playmate, Jón Halldórsson because I had decided, before I left Iceland, to settle down near him and other people I knew there. I knew little or nothing about land quality. The first winter I stayed with Jón Kristjánsson, Jón’s half-brother, who is mentioned before. Already in the fall I took out the right to 160 acres of government land, and another 160 acres, which I got with two conditions to plant 10 acres of trees on them. At the same time, I also took my first citizenship letter. (Relinquished his Icelandic citizenship and became a citizen of the United States: insert JÞ) In the spring of 1887 I moved to the land, after I had built a house on it; it was sheltered and not very hot in the summer. I lived in this mud hut for 5 years, I did all the improvements on the land that the law required, but because the soil was not good, it was hilly and remote and it was far for the children to go to school, which also had poor teaching, I saw that this could not be my future home, so I decided to move to Minnesota, because by then I had also received full rights to the lands and could go wherever I wanted. After asking a man I didn’t know at the time, Leif Hrútfjörður (This will be Þorleifur Guðmundsson b. in Dalasýsla on October 16, 1853, d. in Duluth May 9, 1932: Insert JÞ) in Baldur in Manitoba, I decided to move to Duluth where I have lived ever since, and I arrived there late in April 1892. The 3 children started going to public school in the first fall and then to high school for 4 years. They completed their studies in these schools and one of them in the state university. At the end of the season, my children are now 5, 4 girls and 1 boy (none of them died), and the two who live with me have now completed the same course as the other ones, although the youngest is still in the public university here in town. One of the daughters and then the boy, as mentioned before, have taken a degree from a state university. Two girls teach in a public school here in town, but my son works in a book store in Washington D. C. One of my daughters is married to Baldur Benediktsson and they live west on the Pacific coast; she had previously been a teacher for several years. In these few last lines, the harvest is now counted, after all the toil, and it is not for me to judge how it has turned out, but very much is certain that I have never regretted having moved to this country, and I doubt very much that the success would have been greater in my dear homeland, Iceland. In worthy memory of my wife, who died last winter (January 27, 1913), it should be mentioned that she played the greatest part in raising the children. She herself had had a very good upbringing in her paternal house, both in speech and hands, and at an industrial exhibition held in Reykjavík in 1883, she received a medal for the embroidery that was shown there.
A typical mud cabin in the last decades of the 19th century in Nebraska. Sigfús’ cabins would have been similar to this.
Written in the month of October 1913 Sigfús Magnússon
Þorleifur Jóakimsson looked for emigrants in many places when he collected material for his publications. It is clear that he has received Icelandic newspapers, but they were able to publish letters from Icelandic settlers in the West during the Western migration period 1855-1914. In Frá Austri til Vestur (From East to West), published in 1921, there is an excerpt from Sigfús Magnússon’s letter written in Nebraska in 1874. In the same year, a small number of Icelanders gathered in Milwaukee had called a meeting in that city to establish an association to look for suitable colony areas for Icelandic emigrants who had come to the West. The meeting was attended by Páll Þorláksson, Ólafur Ólafsson, Sigfús Magnússon, Jón Halldórsson, Sigurður Kristófersson and Árni Sigvaldason. It was then decided to send Sigfús on a land search to Iowa and Nebraska, as they had some ideas about these states because Torfi Bjarnason, later the school principal in Ólafsdal, traveled there in the fall of the previous year and described the country there for the Icelanders in Milwaukee. The meeting invited Sigfús to elect a person to accompany him, and he chose Jón Halldórsson. But let’s take a look at Sigfús’s letter: (JÞ)
“A letter from S. M., 14 Júne, 1874.
Lancaster P.O., Nebraska
Sigfús and Jón’s route from Milwaukee to Lincoln, Nebraska. The farms of the brothers Torfi and Lárus were south of Lincoln.
The same day that I finished the last letters home, May 5th, Jón Halldórsson and I left Milwaukee and arrived in Chicago at 5 a.m. same day; we walked straight from the train stations to the land sales office of the Burlington and Missouri Railroad Company and there bought land inspection passports. With them one can stop and view land wherever one pleases on the way, and as the company gives almost a free passage here to Nebraska, it makes these passports count as payment up to the first rent paid as soon as the land is purchased; but if a man does not buy land from this company, he will not be paid for the trip. My and Jón’s passports each cost 25 dollars and 25 cents and we applied at the capital, Lincoln, Nebraska; there are still only 1245 inhabitants. Lincoln is 20 miles north of here from the land I bought. From Chicago we set off again at 10 in the evening on May 5th and we arrived in Burlington, Iowa at 8 o’clock the next morning, May 6th. The carriages had shaken us half asleep for 10 hours, so we needed refreshment. After that, we went to the land office, looked at land documents and asked about everything we could think of. On the seventh of May at 5 and a half a.m. we arrived at Villisca, which is a small village in Iowa, thence went on foot six miles to the north-west to view land offered for sale; it was a highland plain, for 11 to 17 dollars per acre. We did not like this land, which was too dry and high. I forgot to tell you about the bridge over the Mississippi River just outside Burlington; the wagons took many minutes to cross over it, as they did not go faster than a man walks. The bridge is so impressive that few people can imagine it. Beneath it are very large three-cornered tubs, and one corner faces the current; they are full of stones. After one day’s stay at Villisca, we left thence on the 8th of May, and arrived at the Missouri River at 9 a.m.; was there to take a steamboat so big that it took two wagons full of people and brought them on; then the second steamboat took over and pulled them forward. Was it strange to sail on water and yet be in a steam carriage? At 10 o’clock we arrived at Plattenmouth, which is a small town on the west side of the Missouri river, just about where the Laplatte river flows into it. The town stands in a clearing from the river, which is bordered by steep wooded slopes and in some places, cliffs. The river is wide, with sandbars, which are all changing, and the ships often get stuck on them. At Plattemouth we tarried an hour, and thence proceeded by the track which runs along the west bank of La Platte. We arrived in Lincoln at 4 after noon on the 9th of May, we stayed there until the 12th and were waiting for a letter from Torfi’s brother, Lárus Bjarnason, but we were allowed to leave the train from Lincoln before it arrived at Salthills. There we examined the land and saw the land of Torfi, which had been sown with wheat, we continued from there still on foot to Firth, we stayed there that night and walked again to find Lárus. We stayed at his farmhouse for two nights, then we spent a lot of time walking and looking around the country and finally found what we liked; it is 4 miles from the stagecoach station at Firth; an acre costs 7 to 8 dollars. Now every day we expect Ólafur Ólafsson, who is probably going to take land in the same “section” as us, because here is truly beautiful land, if there were enough workers to improve it. After all this wandering, Jón and I went to refresh ourselves. I stayed with a German man for seven months from May 10 to December 10, for 18 dollars a month. I like it here, except that I don’t hear much English, because mostly Low German is spoken here, but I don’t try to speak anything but English. When Jon and I arrived here after a five-day journey of more than 100 geographical miles, or 20 day’s journey (about 23 miles per day) plus all the little detours, from Milwaukee, where the forest had become full of leaves, but there was no sign of leaves on the trees in Wisconsin; everything had been sown there and many had planted corn, so I didn’t want to go to the trouble of trying to plant corn in my land if it wasn’t fully grown at harvest time; but I’m going to have the land broken, which costs 3 dollars. and 50 cents per acre. Since I came here, I have been very healthy, and although some days feel as hot as when it was hottest in Milwaukee last year, and yet it gets hotter than this. I’m not afraid of it though. The water here is so good that even if I drank a lot of it, it wouldn’t hurt me, but in Wisconsin I couldn’t drink it, because then I was sick to my stomach. I think the climate here is fine; the south and southwest winds cool here often in the heat: thunder, lightning and pounding rain now clear the air here once, twice and three times a week, so the grass grows up. Almost every night you can see “plain fires” here, because everyone burns their own land. Each farmer plows around his land a strip 16 cubits (2 ”rods) wide, to keep the fire away from his house. However, these fires often cause damage here.”
English version by Thor group.