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Traditional Icelandic Dress
1 May 2005
Foam Lake, SK Canada

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Eyolfson Cadham, Joan on Icelandic clothing
10 December 2005
Foam Lake, SK Canada

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[Eyolfson Cadham, Joan]
Well we had- and I wish we could get her back again but nobody realized, one of those things that nobody realized how good she was until after? - a costume designer, costume maker, from Iceland who was doing workshops on making the traditional icelandic costumes; But also, talking about Icelandic clothes, and she explained that there's almost no photos of them ,no paintings of them because, she said, Icelanders were writers they weren't painters. People who were painters got looked down upon as not doing any work. And it's the painters who record the people of the time and the clothes that they wore and the customs. Well there wasn't anybody in Iceland doing it, it was only when someone would come to Iceland from some other country and paint, paint, paint that theres any record.
She has managed to get hold of some old clothes and by unravelling them, figured out how they were made. The suits were knitted so that they were actually elbows knitted in, so that they'd last longer so you didn't get the wear at the fold. And you know that the fishermens's mitts had two thumbs? Knitted with the wide band which was made by your grandmother before you went off to sea the first time, and good luck symbols were knitted into it. As each pair wore out the band was taken off and the new pair was knit onto the band, because that was your good luck band. [so you had to keep it]. The mitt had two thumbs, so that you're working away and this gets all wet and slimy you take it off you turn it over. This side wears out, you turn it over. Your mitts last you twice as long. Also the ladies formal costume or, sort of everyday traditional costume, was a black top and a black skirt. And you always wore an apron. So you didn't waste good material, for the section of the skirt underneath the apron, that was pieced together from as many pieces as you had to use from whatever stuff, whatever colour, it didn't matter, to fill in the space so that you didn't waste material. [did the aprons go the full length of hte dress?] yes the aprons sort of came down here [down the front] and went down to the ground with the dress, so this panel was made of piecings. And it was worn over a black petticoat, and when you were just working around your own house you just wore the petticoat, you didn't wear the skirt, to keep the skirt longer.

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Icelandic Wedding Dress
1 May 2005
Foam Lake, SK Canada

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[Eyolfson Cadham, Joan]
The dress that the girl is wearing at the Elfros monument, is one of the traditional Icelandic turn of the century dresses. And that was taken from, in fact, an actual dress.
[Interviwer] So the girl who posed for the statue actually wore the dress?
Yes, which exists around here. We borrowed some of them again this year and did an Icelandic fashion show at Thorrablot, and we've done that a couple of times. We've got the dresses kicking around here that are 145 years old, including a wedding dress made out of I think handwoven flax possibly.

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Desk built by Olafson, Gudlaugur
1920

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Since they couldn't bring much with them, they had to make or buy what they needed.

This desk was built by Gudlaugur Olafson of Winnipeg, in the 1920s. Gudlaugur also homesteaded in the Kandahar region with his brother Johannes.

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They also brought with them an Icelandic identity which they passed on to their descendents and which has survived in the stories and memories of the community.

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Foam Lake Marsh, North shore
25 September 2005
Foam Lake, SK Canada

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Helgason, Helgi on boating on Foam Lake
10 December 2005
Foam Lake, SK Canada

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[Helgason, Helgi]
But anyway when my dad [Gudbrandur Helgason] was young, he was the oldest of three brothers, then they had four younger sisters after that, but the boys were all two years apart, so they were fairly close together. I think dad had some friends out one weekend I don't know whether they were [age]11, 12, he was 12,13 in that area, and of course they used to haul the sheep out to the island on - we had a big flat boat , about, I don't know, probably 18 feet by 5 or 6 feet wide even, and they would haul the sheep out to the island in this boat. So the boys, he had some friends out, and his brothers, and they decided they should go out and do some boating for a while and they were half a mile from the lake and they tried to lift this darn boat that it was way to heavy for these young guys so they got a saw and cut it in half, and they took each half out there. but then it wouldn't float. It kind of ruined their weekend, because they were going to go sailing on this boat, go boating around. It was fun boating out there, the shallow lake, I mean I did it lots when I was a kid too, you'd go out there, get the little rowboat, go out to the island, from one island to the other. We sunk it once right in the middle, between two islands and we thought oh-oh, this is not the good idea, we each all had the shotguns, of course, we were hunting geese, so as the boat started to go down, we got worried and we were paddling as fast as we could and I mean once it gets half full you can't get it to move anywhere. Finally it started to sink pretty quick and we though we can't get these guns wet so stood up with a gun over our head and sort of jumped in and expected to go down, hoping we could keep the gun -well it came up to here [indicates chest level] so there we are, walking and towing this boat out to the shore.

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Ingimundur Eiriksson Inge's house
25 September 2005
Foam Lake, SK Canada

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Helgason, Helgi on his grandparents
10 December 2005
Foam Lake, SK Canada

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[Helgason, Helgi]
And he was, oh God, he had patience, both him [H. J. Helgason] and Grandma [Helga Helgason], they were the most patient people I have ever seen. Both had degrees and they were very patient with us. I spent many summers as a teenager, oh probably [age] eleven, from 11 up, I'd go out there and hay - he had purebred cattle - so dad would send the tractor, me and a buddy of mine we'd go out, we hayed all summer long. It never quit! And we tested his patience, I'll tell you. I don't think there's a thing out there that doesn't have lead in it. .22 shots. We'd go in the weekend, he would pay us 5 dollars a week or somewhere, we'd take the whole 5 dollars and spend it on a whole case of .22 shells, ten boxes of five hundred, and we'd blow them off in the week and start over the next week. There isn't a thing out there that isn't absolutely loaded with lead.