Family and Kinship

Kinship patterns among Icelanders do not differ markedly from other northern European societies. Women tend to play a strong role in the family and, in mixed marriages, a mother of Icelandic descent is likely to influence her children to identify with her own, rather than her husband’s, heritage. The nuclear family is the predominant form of kinship organization, with descent traced equally through mother and father. All children, male and female, share equally in the inheritance of property. In more traditional families, particularly in rural areas, there is a greater likelihood that the older children will spend time living away from their nuclear family and with extended kin. Loyalty to one’s extended family is encouraged.

Icelanders use an intriguing medieval naming pattern, although legal and social norms in Canada have forced changes among the settlers’s descendants. In Iceland, patronymics rather than surnames are used. With few exceptions, children take their father’s name with a suffix added to indicate the relationship. Thus Anna, the daughter of Tómas, would be known as Anna Tómasdóttir, and Erlendur, the son of Hermann, as Erlendur Hermannsson. In the homeland, individuals are always referred to by their first name rather than their patronymic, and they are listed in the telephone book in the same way. Women do not change their names at marriage, a practice that is sometimes incorrectly cited by foreign commentators as evidence for their social independence. Rather, the tradition reflects the importance of family lineage and blood ties over marital or legal links.

In Canada some immigrants immediately adapted to the British norm. In particular, women adopted their husband’s name to indicate that they were married and thus avoided the stigma associated with common-law relationships. As well, some people shortened or anglicized their patronymics, changing Hallgrímsson to Hall, for example, or Jónasson to Johnson. A tradition of nicknaming found in the sagas persisted until recently among Icelandic Canadians. Usually these epithets are derived from an oddity of appearance, but more recently they may relate to the individual’s occupation or farm. Thus in the sagas are found Ketil Flat-Nose, Harald War-Tooth, Thorfinn the Skull-Splitter, and Ragnar Hairy-Breeches, while in Interlake Manitoba, individuals have been known as Valdi Butch (a butcher), Joe Mink (Johannes, a mink farmer), or Helgi á Videy (Helgi from the farm named Videy).

Ættfrædi, literally the study of relations, or what in English would be called genealogy, was and remains a central practice in Icelandic society. The importance of keeping track of who is related to whom in a small-scale society seems obvious, particularly when a lack of family names necessitates more effort to place people within a social context. Genealogy’s centrality is apparent from the bookshelves in households in Iceland. Volumes abound that provide lists of people from a particular parish, district, or farm or who descend from a famous individual. Translators of the sagas into English omit or relegate to an appendix one of the most significant structural components of these stories, their lengthy genealogies. Yet for an indigenous listener or reader, the ways in which people’s lives interconnect give strong clues as to the social obligations binding them together. It is no surprise, therefore, that detailed records of every individual emigrating from Iceland exist in archives or that an active interest is maintained in documenting the genealogies of Icelanders and their descendants throughout the world in computer-readable form. Since each lineage is believed to carry particular traits – a talent for medicine or music, scholarship or politics, for example – such records carry more significance than would a simple tabulation.

Intermarriage with other ethnic groups began slowly but almost immediately after the first Icelanders arrived in Canada. It was more frequent in urban than in rural areas and increased in occurrence, particularly after 1914. Between 1875 and 1880, at least six mixed marriages are known to have taken place, most of them in Winnipeg. The rate of exogamy in that city continued to increase over the next decade, but remained unchanged in rural areas. Then from 1891 to 1900 it decreased, possibly because of a greater influx of Icelanders. Prior to World War I some 10 to 15 percent of all marriages in Winnipeg were outside the community. Once geographical isolation became less of a factor, more non-Icelanders moved into the Interlake area, and language and class barriers were overcome, Icelanders increasingly married outside the group, primarily to individuals of British or other northern European origin. No ideological barriers have restricted out-marriage, except perhaps a sense carried by some of the superiority of Icelandic stock. However, many Icelandic Canadians have not differed from the majority of Canadians of European descent in their negative attitude towards racially mixed marriages, a view consistent with and reflective of their homeland’s isolationist tendencies.