Helgi Stefánsson Photo: RbQ
Þuríður Jónsdóttir Photo: RbQ
Helgi Stefánsson was born in S. Þingeyjarsýsla on June 8, 1865. He died in Saskatchewan on April 27, 1916.
Spouse: Þuríður Jónsdóttir b. 1863 at Gautlöndum in S. Þingeyjarsýsla, d. in Gimli on May 28, 1925.
Children: Sigurbjörg b. November 13, 1897 in Mountain, N. Dakota.
Helgi came west to Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1890. Þuríður arrived on June 15, 1891 in Duluth, Minnesota and worked there. One Western source states that they got engaged in Iceland and then married on July 22, 1895 in Duluth. From there, they moved to Mountain, N. Dakota, where they lived for 10 years. They moved to the Lakes Settlement (Vatnabyggð) in Saskatchewan in 1905 and settled in Wynyard. Þuríður moved in with her daughter in Winnipeg after Helgi’s death in 1916, and later to Lundar and finally to Gimli.
In Reflections by the Quills, Sigurbjörg writes a good article about her parents and the ruthless early years in N. Dakota and Saskatchewan. The article ends with this: On looking over the past years, never once do I remember my parents flinching or shedding tears even amid disastrous circumstances or painful illness, nor did they complain about anything that really mattered. Neither of them ever mentioned homesickness for Iceland, though my father admitted that he would have liked to live there had his means permitted. My mother never once expressed such a desire. But when my father, who died in our home, had breathed his last and the peace of death spread over his features, my mother turned to me and said, “He is in Iceland now.”