By Audrey Ledford
From Seattle, Washington, Audrey is a recent graduate of Georgetown University with a B.S in Foreign Service and currently works as a teacher in Madrid, Spain. Audrey supplied the photos for this article.
Family is probably one of the most complex words in spoken language. Each user bestows its meaning to anoint family exactly as they choose. For me, family meant small Christmas Day gatherings with about ten people. Myself and my two siblings, the only kids in our small tribe.
Family was loosely connected to history, with mentions of the family farm, of great grandmothers and distant heritage; Iceland was occasionally mentioned in response to a genealogical inquiry. I couldn’t imagine Iceland in my mind, it was merely a place where my great-great grandfather came from before he opened up a bakery in Seattle, my true homeland, and left Iceland behind him, along with our ancestral tongue and many Icelandic traditions.
Home might be the second most complicated word in human language. For me, home stretched many miles from Seattle to San Diego to rural North Carolina to Washington DC. I couldn’t even figure out how home felt in my body, let alone the bodies of my ancestral kin. Home gets even more complicated when systems of power intervene to change my ancestor's home to the land a different group of people called home for centuries prior.
So I left for Iceland with the two most important, but confounding expressions on my mind: family and home. I wasn’t searching for either, rather I decided to let go of expectations and be in a new place free of pressure to feel any extraordinary connection. Then I found myself on a farm in Northeast Iceland, mere miles from where my great-grandfather lived.
I grappled with big questions: How can the limits of family be decided across time and space? How can blood tie you to a homeland you’ve never seen before?
Out in Öxarfjörđur, the lush grass meets soft brown cliffs with distant snow-capped mountains viewed from Husavík. Horses and sheep roam as the only evidence of wildlife other than the chirps and burps of the birds. The single contact I had with my host family was a brief phone call, the only images I held in my head came from Google Photos.
In mutual nervousness and anticipation my cousin Gunnar and his partner Margrét welcomed me into their home. Gunnar is my second cousin twice removed. His grandfather Vilhjálmur and my great-great-grandfather, Helgi, were half-brothers. When their mother Gudrun came to take her five children to Canada, Gunnar's grandfather, then nine years old, refused and thus his family line are the only descendants of our shared great-grandmother still in Iceland. They are still in the same general area, over a century later.
After working as a farmer most of his life Gunnar started a farming equipment company with his brother. His partner Margrét is a patent lawyer working from home for a firm in Reykjavík. She and her 14-year-old daughter Lilja moved here two years ago. I only knew bits and pieces about my great-great grandfather and nothing about the other diversions on our family tree. Together, Gunnar and I filled in the gaps.
From afar, I found it difficult to grasp just how small the Icelandic community is.
Immersed in the community, it's easy to tell that everyone is family, often literally, but always figuratively. Yes, everyone knows everyone, but what surprised me the most is the lengths they go to to support their neighbors and create a vibrant community of care. When a horse goes missing, everyone is out looking for him. They extend this close-knit familial energy to distant relatives. It appeared to me that Icelanders like to claim relatives, expanding the reach of their small island. Gunnar melted my insecurities about claiming Icelandic heritage by referring to me as his niece from Washington. They took time out of their schedules to take me around the Northeast, seeing puffins by the hundreds on an empty cliffside, the breathtaking Myvatn Lake, and most importantly, Gunnar’s mother’s house.
Gunnar’s mother Maren, now 90 years old, is a survivor. She survived unimaginably hard conditions as a young girl of seven siblings fostered out on different farms. She reminded me of my own grandfather of seven siblings who persevered through childhood poverty to create an incredible life for my mother and myself.
Unable to speak each other’s language, Maren and I sat in comfortable silence knitting and eating cake, the silence of two women who are something more than strangers, connected by an invisible string. She showed me old family photos and presented me with a booklet containing all the information about the children of Gudrun, her grandmother. I pointed out my grandfather on the family tree. Her instant propensity to claim me as family warmed my heart. I had an instinct to fly her back home to Seattle to meet the family.
I found it easier to understand and contextualize family history by studying history, language, politics, etc. in Reykjavík before the homestay portion of the adventure. We attended daily Icelandic classes which helped me communicate in few words with Gunnar and Maren (Margret and her daughter spoke perfect English). Our history lectures and historical museum visits helped me understand what life was like for my great-great grandfather in the absence of family lore.
Utterly shocked by a visit to a turf house, I started to understand the daily struggle for survival our ancestors faced. The guide at the museum, a man perhaps in his 30s, said his grandmother was born in a turf house. This history is not as ancient as I thought.
Until 1971, Iceland was considered a developing country by the UN’s Development program. I read about the starvation of families around the North and East of Iceland after the 1875 volcanic eruption of Askja made the land untenable. I started to understand why, despite Helgi living with my grandfather until my grandfather was 24, he rarely spoke about his childhood in Iceland. Home is complicated.
I found a pocket of home in the magic of Icelandic landscapes. Originally, Iceland made me feel like I was on the moon or about to fall off the edge of the Earth. However, these feelings drove me to a deep spiritualism and gratitude for this land and every person who has come before me to lead me exactly where I am today.
Walking on the untouched black sand beach or wading through the thick grass I began to feel at ease. I could see the beauty and the hardship my ancestors experienced and weigh them both equally in my hands. From the obvious high of galloping on an Icelandic horse to seeing dozens of humpback whales in a fjord, to the more mundane beauty of a dinner of lamb chops enjoyed outside on a sunny day and discussing life over coffee with Gunnar and Margret, I began to fall in love with Iceland.
Through the Snorri program, I was able to live my Icelandic dream from academic engagement in Reykjavík to family life in the countryside to touring the landscapes with a group of incredible young people from North America.
The Snorri program gave me everything I didn’t know I needed. I found unexpected family in the group of Snorri participants (of which we are all related by 9 generations or so) as we were able to support each other through our shared experiences.
I think I started to understand what my cousin from Seattle meant when she said in Iceland, “Family is family is family is family.” We are all family here. I let myself uncomplicate the word and just bask in it instead. I started to uncover that maybe in life, you create pockets of home and pockets of family wherever you go. I feel so grateful to have this new home and family in my life.
I am beyond thankful for the Snorri Program, my host family Gunnar, Margrét, and Lilja, and of course, the Icelandic Roots for sponsoring me and being an integral supporter of this experience.
The Snorri program is so important because we are the next generation of our connection to Icelandic heritage as it gets more distant. I hope anyone reading is encouraged to participate and support the program.
Thank you for reading!