Iceland Day 8

Today I left the ship at 9 a.m. and was picked up by Gummi (nickname) of Gateway to Iceland Travel.  They had put together a report for me of my ancestors and had arranged for me to meet 2 of my relatives.  Initially Gummi just drove me around Reyjavik pointing out some of the notable sights.  One such sight was a huge Lutheran church that apparently took over 40 years to build.  I asked Gummi about the size of the congregation and he said that less than 10% of the people in Iceland attended church.  Of those who did, most were Lutheran but some were Catholic.  He also said that there were about 1900 people who practiced the pagan religion which was the religion in Iceland prior to them converting to Christianity back in 1000. 

We first met Ingibjorg Hafstao.  She is the grandaughter of Amma's sister Helga.  She is 52 years old and works as a systems analyst in the Icelandic Bank.  She is really, really nice and was constantly calling her mother who now lives in Northern Iceland, close to Husavik to find out more information about the relatives.  She is married to a man who does art restoration.  She has one daughter (age 29) who works as a nurse in Denmark and twin sons who are age 22.  The sons are still living at home.  One of the sons is attending university and the other one is taking a break.  The son who is taking a break is in a wheelchair with cerebral palsy.  He is really smart although is dyslexic but has trouble with his limbs as many cerebral palsy kids do.  The twins were really premature and had a difficult birth.

Helga's story on her parents (who were also Amma's parents) are that they were desperately poor and lived on a farm in northern Iceland.  Amma's father had been married before he married Amma's mother and had 3 children with that wife who eventually died. Amma's father went blind and Amma's mother got tuberculosis.  Amma's mother died when Amma was only 2 years old and her father died a few years later.  When things were looking really grim the parents gave their children to various relatives to look after.  Amma was given to her mother's half brother and his wife.  It was his third wife and the marriage did not last but Amma stayed with the wife.  When Amma was 12, as we all know, she moved to Canada with the woman who was not related by blood but by marriage.  I am running out of battery - will write more later.