Saturday, October 27, 2018

MY FATHER JONAS, A MAN WHO LOVED THE SEA..


There were two men who inspired me to live life to the fullest and not be afraid of venture, wherever it might take me, my grandpa (Afi) Bjorn and my Father (Pabbi) Jonas.

My father, Jónas Björnsson was born at Hámundarstaðir, Vopnafjörður, Iceland on June 13th 1887. He was the oldest of three siblings... Páll Helgi, a sister, Þórbjörg and a half-brother, Hámundur (Bjössi).

Grandpa Björn -Afi- raised his children (and me) with the saying ''old enough to hold your fork and eat, old enough to work, plenty to do around here", also, "Viking kids don´t cry!'' He combined farming and fishing, splitting his time between sea and land.

Father did not care for farm life, instead his love for the ocean was evident early in his life when he was able to swap chores with his brothers who liked farming better than fishing. He left home at age 18 and went to Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, there he entered the Navigation School of Reykjavik. Graduating in the spring of 1924. After he and my mother married and had five children, he was pretty much gone fishing and we didn't see much of him. As the war raged on during WWII  we were in constant worry as he sailed across the Atlantic to England.

Of us five kids - three daughters the two sons - I was most like him and tried to imitate his mannerism. Even to the rolling gate of the seafaring man, much to the merriment of my siblings who would laugh, then imitate me imitating Father.

I was a married and living in America when I found out that my Father was quite the poet who jotted down lyrics at every opportunity; to quote a friend of his, Ragnar Eliasson, on my Father's 80th Birthday :"Jonas is a quiet man by nature but funny and happy in the company of his friends...Not a few are all the poems and verses this friend of mine has uttered at various moments..."
 I now have a few of his writings that I hope to be able to translate and publish...no problem for me to do that for my Icelandic friends and family!

The photo below is of trawler ICELAND II (Father in white shirt in center) that foundered off of Nova Scotia in a brutal winter storm in 1967 - all ten men perished. My Father was in Iceland at the time, but I didn't know that when I picked up our local newspaper -The Daily Pantagraph, in Bloomington, Illinois - and below photo was on front page as A.P. news.

It was one of my, few, awful times... so far away and communication at that time was really bad, it took all day for a phone call  from the U.S. that had to go through London, England, to reach Reykjavik, Iceland, where my family lived.












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