Carry On Icelandic: Culture [selections] (2004)
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Vesturferðir - Going West
Vesturferðir
Á síðasta fjórðungi 19. aldar flýðu margir Íslendingar fátækt og erfiðleika í heimalandinu og héldu til Vesturheims í von um betra líf. Á þessum tíma gat hið íslenska bændasamfélag ekki brauðfætt vaxandi íbúafjölda og þar sem þorpsmyndun var lítil sem engin, neyddust margir til utanferðar til að eiga von um að komast af. Slæmt tíðarfar og eldgos juku einnig á hörmungarnar. Fyrsta hópferðin vestur var farin árið 1873, en áður höfðu nokkrir mormónar haldið til Utah og fáeinir einstaklingar til Wisconsin í Bandaríkjunum. Auk þess fóru litlir hópar til Brasilíu. Upp frá þessu tók fólk að streyma vestur um haf og fram til ársins 1914 fluttu alls 15.000 Íslendingar til Vesturheims. Var það mikil blóðtaka fyrir fámenna þjóð.
Vesturferðirnirar voru mikil blóðtaka fyrir íslenskt samfélag, talið er að allt að þriðjungur þjóðarinnar hafi flutt af landi brott (The emigration took a heavy toll of Iceland's populace, as much as third of the population is thought to have emigrated).
Langt fram á 20. öld var til öflugt íslenskt samfélag vestra og eru þeir sem fluttu vestur um haf jafnan kallaðir Vestur-Íslendingar.
Við árþúsundamót eru Kanadamenn, sem að einhverju eða öllu leyti eru af íslensku bergi brotnir, taldir hátt í 200 þúsund. Ekki er lengur litið á þá sem Vestur-Íslendinga, heldur Kanadamenn eða íslenskættaða Kanadamenn.
Komið hefur verið upp sérstöku minjasafni um vesturferðirnar á Hofsósi í Skagafirði.
Going West
In the last quarter of the nineteenth-century, many Icelanders who were poor and in great difficulty fled their native shores and headed westwards in the hope of a better life. Iceland could not sustain that many people by farming, and since villages and other urban centers did practically not exist at the time, the only choice for poor landless people to survive was to emigrate. Poor ecological conditions and volcanic eruptions added to aldready hard times. The first group exodus west departed in the year 1873, although some Mormons had earlier made their way to Utah and a few individuals to Wisconsin in the United States. In addition, small groups travelled to Brazil. After this, people began to stream westwards by sea, and in the period to 1914 a total of 15,000 Icelanders migrated to the west. This was a great loss for such a lightly populated nation.
Far into the twentieth-century, there was a distinctive community of Icelanders in the west. Those who moved west across the sea are normally called West Icelanders.
On the arrival of the new millennium, those Canadians who are either of part or complete Icelandic origin number close to two hundred thousand. They are no longer looked upon as West Icelanders, rather Canadians or Icelandic Canadians.
A special museum about the westward journeys has been established at Hofsós in Skagafjörður.
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