Last day in Iceland

Last night I stayed at the Borg Hotel in downtown Reyjavik.  As I was saying in the blog yesterday, cousin Ingibjorg was very nice.  She told me a bit about her everyday life and the life of Icelanders.  She works pretty hard, rides her bike to work each day, even in the winter and most days stops at an outdoor swimming pool to swim 1000 meters before heading off to work.  Hot swimming pools are very popular here in Iceland and this one is hot.  On the weekends, her and her husband quite often go fly fishing and camping.  They catch salmon and trout in the lakes and rivers around Reyjavik and eat them during the week.  Her sons are really into music and the one healthy son is in a band.  She says other than that, the kids study and get together with friends.

The tour guide had also arranged for me to see an older lady - Asta.  Ingibjorg decided to drive me over there as she had never heard of the lady and wondered how she was related.  It turns out she is the widow of Gunmundir Mathiason, the grandson of Amma's 1/2 brother Kristjan.  His mother was Ragnheiser.  Asta had met Emily and Esther (and Jim and Eddie) at an Icelandic Festival in the 70's and she had a photo of them.  The grandfather is apparently the same 1/2 brother who took in Amma's father and mother when they were both ill and the family broke up.  Another leg of that family is where Sigrun and Thor (who visited us in Canada) fit in.  They are the children of Gudrun Kristjansdottir who is another daughter of Kristjan, the 1/2 brother.

Asta was also very nice and fed Ingibjorg and I lunch of seafood salad on crackers, lobster soup and a green salad.  She has a boatload of children, grandchildren and a few great grandchildren.  Everyone except one family lives in Iceland and that one family lives in Germany.

The area where Amma lived was in Bardardal Valley, considered the Western fjords.  She lived on a farm named Myri.  It is much further north than Reyjavik.  Apparently when her father was not ill, he raised sheep and cattle and bartered for fish.  In the late 1800's when Amma was born, the weather was very severe. 

I did not get much more information about Afi than I already had.  One piece of information that the tour guide came up with that they thought explained why Afi's family moved to the U.S. was that his parents were renting a farm.  They did not inherit one from their parents and so left the country to find a better life.