Kvöldvaka at Engimýri 
W.D. Valgardson holds court 

W.D. Valgardson, Victoria, BC

On July 5th, I was privileged to be the first speaker/presenter at the initial Kvöldvaka (Evening Wake) held at Engimýri in Riverton, Manitoba. 

For those who don’t know much about the history of New Iceland – from Boundary Creek all the way north to Hecla Island (Mikley) – this includes the Icelandic settlement towns of Gimli, Hnausa, Arnes, Riverton, and Finns. This reserve was given by the government of Canada to the Icelandic settlers who arrived in 1875 and 1876. The small group and the large group.

The Riverton site was supposed to be the capital of New Iceland, but stormy weather meant that the captain of the ship towing the Icelanders on barges told them it was too dangerous to continue and they went ashore at Willow Point, just south of where Gimli is now. 

Settlers looking for good land for farming and shorefront for fishing went all the way to Hecla. Many went up the White Mud River (now Icelandic River) and settled on its banks. They eventually created the town of Riverton.

A group led by historian and sheep farmer Nelson Gerrard have a number of projects important to preserving the area’s historic importance. One of these is the historic house Engimýri. It is beautifully done and well worth a visit. It is here we gathered in one of the rooms and I discussed, tried to explain, as I’d been asked to do, the connection between my life in Gimli and the writing of my short stories, novels, and plays. (My writing has not been exclusively set in New Iceland – The Girl with the Botticelli Face is set in Victoria, where I’ve lived since 1974.)

I hope the audience enjoyed my talking about my writing. They all had read some of it, I believe. It is very strange to look back at my crooked path: University of Manitoba, United College, teaching high school, graduate school in Iowa, teaching at an exclusive college in southern Missouri, returning to teach for thirty years at the University of Victoria. Always writing, writing, writing. I’m sure my children felt they were writing orphans. 

Over coffee and dainties, I was told that this first lecture is to be followed by others in the tradition of the evening wakes held in Icelandic farmhouses when people gathered to do indoor tasks like weaving and spinning, carding, equipment mending and, while they did these necessary tasks, someone told stories or read by candlelight. Icelandic farms were isolated, individual, traffic was difficult, there were no roads and, perhaps, one bridge over the many rivers. These kvöldvökur were necessary for education but also, I would think, sanity. No TV, no radio, no movies. No cities. Reykjavík was a village. 

I wish all those who support Engimýri and the spirit behind it the best of luck in the future. In Victoria, we have the Richard and Margret Beck Trust because the Becks left their house to the University of Victoria to create an organization to bring speakers from the University of Iceland to lecture on Icelandic language and literature. That has now been going for thirty-five years. If there is anyone with an excess of money, or a house and no family inheritor, a gift to create a speaker’s program that would bring speakers from Iceland about not just language and literature, but art, music, business, geography, and history would be a wonderful culmination of an amazing project.