Christine Freeman's 1911 postcard translated to English
 

 
 

February 18, 2007

Hi Dianne,

I took along my scan of the postcard you sent with me to the Blaine Icelandic Heritage Society meeting today and "got my team of translators" to work on the text. Because the writing is in pencil and quite faded, I scanned it into the computer so I could enlarge it in photoshop and increase the contrast. This made it easier to read, which turned out to be a good idea.

They had trouble with the handwriting on the card, but as they poured over it again and again, they began to be more certain of the words the writing contained. They also were doing a word by word translation and then trying to find parallel phrases to make the words flow more naturally in English, something a word for word translation does not do.

Some of the interesting discoveries in the postcard include the use of an English word in an otherwise all Icelandic text. The English word "ask" is part of the message. I asked the translators why that would be, and they said often times speakers of both English and Icelandic would throw a word from the other language into their conversation if that word seemed to be a better contribution to the meaning of their sentence. They also said the writer of the postcard is male, because the word "latur" which means "lazy," applies to males, the same word applied to females is "lot," with two "dots" over the "o."

So given all this background, what was the postcard about? Like many postcards, it described common experiences that don't seem all that removed from our common experiences today. The writer acknowledges that he should be writing more often, but that his lack of writing is quite similar to the lack of correspondence he has himself received. Oh, and he talks about how the weather has been fairly favorable for the crops so far and he hopes the good weather will continue. So we can be fairly certain that the letter writer doesn't live in a big city, but rather is involved in agriculture, either as a farmer, or farmhand. And with just a hint of loneliness, he would desire more written communication to come his way.

  
 

Here is the translation they provided:

"Dear Stina,

I am rather lazy in writing, like you over there in the east.

It's been a wonderful spring growing season and for the time being, the harvest looks promising.

Give my greetings to all and then I would appreciate it if any of you would write to me in the near future.

Yours, Siggi"
 		  
  So, to a male named Siggi, our 16 year old relative, Kristine Freeman, is known affectionately as "Stina."

The writer, Siggi, apologizes for being a poor correspondent himself, but in his own defense, points out that she and others haven't exactly been overflowing his mailbox with letters. Then, giving a possible clue as to why he doesn't get a lot of news from others, he talks about the weather! And how it has contributed to a good growing season. He continues filling up the precious little remaining space on this small postcard stating that he hopes the rest of the season will continue in the same manner, so the crops will be a success. Now this might be of upper most concern on his mind, a worry about what sort of economic future lay in wait for him, all depending on the success of the crop. But is this the sort of thing a 16 year old young lady would want to read about in a postcard addressed to her?

With barely enough space for another line or two, he concludes with standard postcard "boilerplate" asking her to convey his greetings to everyone else on her end. To this he then ends with a plea that she and everyone else send a much appreciated return postcard. With barely enough room, he signs it "yours, Siggi." Or at least that is the name the translators assumed, because the "g's" in "Siggi" descend off the bottom of the card, and it is the only possible Icelandic name that made sense to them, given the masculine form of "lazy" mentioned above.

This is a fascinating translation of long ago correspondence. Who is Siggi? Could he be a childhood playmate of Kristine, a neighbor back in her Manitoba days? A former classmate of hers, trying to maintain contact halfway across the continent? What is truly puzzling though is his referring to her location as "out there in the east." Is he making a joke based on something as simple as her former home in Manitoba being east of his own? Or is he making a joke that she is not really on the west coast, but somewhere in the east? Could it be an "in-joke" between them?

Like the postcard itself, we get a too brief but tantalizing glimpse into a long ago world.

-Rob Olason