This is Rúf English Radio with Darin Adam, daily English language radio from Iceland's national broadcaster, Rúf.Hello, this is Rúf English Radio. My name is Darin Adam. Thanks very much for your company today.We're back in the museum building in Husavík, Sabnahusið, in the town.And you have probably heard some of the recording and conversation that we've made in this building already.We're just going to quickly touch on a very small exhibition, but a very important and interesting onethat you can see when you make your way into the building right at the reception area.Föðin vestur, the journey west. Nikola, my guide here at the museum once again.And there's not a lot going on in this particular sort of micro-exhibition, but it tells a big story, doesn't it?Absolutely, yes. So we're really proud to have worked with the organisation Icelandic Rootsthat I believe is a great organization.I believe it's based in the American Midwest. It's an organisation of descendants of people that left Iceland.And in honour of those people, we came up with this exhibition to tell the story of the thousands of vesturfarðar,the people who went west, particularly from this part of Iceland, towards the end of the 1870s.From the 1860s to about 1920, thousands of people left.It was pretty grim in a lot of Iceland at that time.People had faced a lot of hardship.There had been, of course, the eruptions at Laki, which caused the hunger mist,which killed a lot of the Icelandic population, basically from toxic fumes from those eruptions.And then people had kind of...Started to find their feet again and the population started to sort of grow againand the land started to heal and then, of course, there was the eruption at Askjanthat sent another cloud of ash and destroyed farmland, particularly in the northeast and the east of Iceland.Of course, you know, the winters had also been really bad.The summers...were bad as well so people were there wasn't enough farmland in icelandto sustain this growing population so peoplebasically in big numbers decided to seek their fortunein america canada and some people not not as many but some people did leaveto go to brazil which is definitely not a story that is told very often is itno not at all i mean i was lucky to visit theimmigration center in hofsofs before i went thereto my embarrassment i did not know about people going to brazilbut particularly people from thingy or sislathey did they did go over there and you can stilltrace you can still find some icelandic namesin parts of the brazilian population the descendants of these people i mean thatwould feel unexpected i think yeah i mean i think what i'veunderstood a lot of people werewanting to go but it didn't quite materializedue to uh maybe in scrupulous agents and things like that they wereover promised but so the bulk of people did go toamerica and they did go to canada the museum is very fortunate that acouple of weeks ago we received a booning like a folk costumethat was driven to the museum by someicelandic family who live in Reykjavíkand they had received this from their american familyi traced the origins of this booning andthe woman who sewed it originally lived at grenierstaðurand she left yeah she left in 1886 and she made itas far to washington state and they have children andher great granddaughter was like you know thatuh doesn't belong in america her granddaughter livesnear boston i believe and she was like it belongs backin thingy so there's still a lot of strong connectionsand there's a lot of information as i say contained in this relatively smallarea in this pillar in the reception area ofthe museum here in husavik you can learn whypeople left as nicola has just beendescribing you can read about paul thorlóksson thefather of the icelandic settlement in dakota because when we think oficelanders in north america we think of gimli yes in canadaand did he work with or or serve any of the churches in in gimli i meanhe certainly was in manitoba i have no idea i cannot answer that questionunfortunately that is a significant icelandiccommunity i have friends who have been and say that it's the most icelandicsummer yeah more than anywhere else yeahi mean it's true yeah it's true i study folklore and i was reading abouthow the descendants of people wholive in gimli who move to gimli are they still cook uh icelandic cakeand they swear that it's more authentic than the icelandic cake that's served iniceland today the vina terta they're like we we'rewaiting we know the real one forget the modern version from iceland yeswell learn about some of the movements that were made from people in this partof iceland to not just north america but south americathat we heard as well there from nicola people moving tobrazil which certainly surprised me and surprises a lot of people i think whenthey come across that piece of news we are in the museum in husavik sapnahusi and we will be back here again before too long nicola thank youthank you this is roof english radio my name is darrenand you can get in touch anytime where english is ruv.isthere is more from roof english with all the news from icelandin english at ruv.is slash english roof english radio is a daily englishlanguage radio from iceland's national broadcasterroofruv.is
