L.K. Bertram’s new book on Icelandic immigrants to Canada and the United States is a fascinating look at a culture that persists in spite of, and in some ways because of, assimilation.
In each chapter, Bertram looks at the evolving Icelandic identity through a different lens. Clothing, food, drink, folklore and language are each considered. She shows how early immigrants sought to succeed, and how their descendants built upon those successes in the face of changing pressures from the dominant culture.
Clothes make the immigrant
Her exploration of clothing is of particular interest. Traditional Icelandic outfits, such as the peysuföt still worn today by women on formal occasions both in Iceland as well as in North America, is sometimes seen as static and unchanging: a link to the past. She documents how this distinctive dress was created as part of Iceland’s struggle in the 19th century to define its culture against that of the Danes who ruled their country. Further, she shows how Icelandic immigrants abandoned aspects of that ensemble in North America, particularly the skotthúfa (a tasselled skull cap).
“Although many migrant women had eagerly embraced these fashions at home in Iceland,” she writes, “it became clear when they arrived in North America that this clothing, including the ‘peculiar’ skotthúfa, could represent something different, a marker of excessive ethnic and racial difference in the eyes of white, Anglophone North Americans.”
But her treatment of clothing is much deeper than what is marked as “traditional” by Icelanders and their descendants. She shows how adopting new styles was crucial for Icelandic immigrants. Those who settled on the Manitoba prairie, including on Lake Winnipeg, soon began wearing clothing more effective against the bitter cold. That included moccasins and garments made by Cree, Ojibwe and Métis artisans. Those who settled in large urban settlements such as Winnipeg abandoned clothing that marked them as foreign. They began wearing styles in conformity with the dominant Anglo society as a way to both gain employment and avoid discrimination.
Immigrants and colonialism
The book also examines the changing relationship between First Nations and Icelandic settlers. Bertram looks at the well-known (among Icelandic-Canadians) relationship between John Ramsay and the Icelanders at what is now Riverton. Ramsay, a prominent member of the Salteaux and Cree community living there, had petitioned the Canadian government for land rights, only to find the government had granted them to the Icelanders. Despite conflict between the two groups, Ramsay helped the Icelanders survive. Both his community and the Icelanders’ suffered a devastating outbreak of smallpox, likely picked up by the Icelandic immigrants as they passed through Quebec.
“Although individual Icelanders might have had positive personal relationships with their Cree, Ojibwe and Métis neighbours at certain times,” Bertram writes, “the Icelanders overall were very aware of and, in many respects, dependent on the appropriation of Indigenous land by the Canadian and American governments and the violent state repression of organized Indigenous resistance in the late nineteenth century.”
A decent cup of coffee
In another chapter, she looks at two important Icelandic beverages: coffee and alcohol. Early arrivals to Canada were frustrated at the lack of good quality coffee in a nation where tea was dominant. Thus, the customs that grew up around procuring and preparing coffee as good as they were accustomed to in Iceland became a part of the Icelandic identity in North America. (Especially interesting is the continuing practice of brewing coffee through a “sock,” which was the only way I knew how to do it until finally getting a coffee maker as an adult.)
Alcohol was more problematic, given its prevalence among male social culture in the decades following the Icelandic immigrants’ initial arrival. Its negative effects on how Icelanders were perceived led to many joining the burgeoning temperance movements in the early 20th century.
Bertram also shows how Icelanders and their descendants managed public perception of themselves and their culture. Xenophobia during the First and Second World Wars added to pressures to assimilate and not be seen as dangerous or too foreign. She shows how this led to a celebration, and mythologization, of a “Viking” identity.
Vínarterta, an ‘Icelandic’ icon
Appropriately, Bertram gives one defining aspect of Icelandic culture in North America its own chapter: vínarterta.
This layered prune torte that has become synonymous with “Icelandic” culture in North America had an unlikely path to stardom. Bertram traces the dessert’s origins in the 1700s as the “Vienna torte,” which then found popularity in Denmark, and thence to Iceland. There, it was popular during the early waves of emigration to North America. In Canada and the United States, vínarterta lived on as an ethnic Icelandic food. But in Iceland, it fell out of fashion and all but disappeared.
Interestingly, while the original versions called for experimentation in fillings and thickness of pastry layers, the recipe ossified in North America. That is, many Icelandic families’ versions became set as the “traditional” recipe. It was a matter of intense debate how many layers one should have, and whether anything but prune filling constituted a “real” vínarterta. (Bertram also includes an appendix with various versions of published recipes, including the early Viennese one.) It might be that I’ve eaten a lot of vínarterta in my life — and enjoy making it! — but this chapter alone is worth the price of the book.
Overall, Bertram’s The Viking Immigrants is a welcome addition to the growing body of historiography of the Icelandic diaspora. It goes beyond community histories and explores multiple themes in the context of emigration, colonialism, settlement, and assimilation, over multiple generations. It’s well worth picking up for anyone of Icelandic descent — as well as for the serious student of immigrant cultures in North America.
Book review
The Viking Immigrants: Icelandic North Americans
by L.K. Bertram
University of Toronto Press, 245 pages
