Most of the folk in my family are hoarders.... it's a good thing I think.... some may disagree. This hoarding means that letters are never thrown out. One gem was uncovered recently and mum left it at my place and I posted it on a facebook site for my Icelandic cousins, I think though that it deserves a wider audience, and I am sincerely hoping that my sister will be ok with me doing this. You see this letter is from my fathers father to my sister dated 18 April 1972 - my sister will turn 18 in september of that year.
These are just snippets - not the whole thing:
Firstly I want to point out that I am not going to tire you with a long prattle. Your grandfather is getting old and all his thoughts and ways of speaking belong to a time long past, and are not compatible to the thoughts of a young lady today - which you are becoming.
You could imagine that an 80 year old man would have some life experience and knowledge about how to live your life in order to be content and make something of it. I started to think about this and came to a negative conclusion. Maybe 50 or 60 years ago an older man would have been able to give good advice that the younger folk may have been able to use. Life was slower then. Now times are different. Developments have been so fast during the last 20 years in all areas of life, there have been so many changes in lifestyle and values. Young people now need to view their lives from the position that they are in at the moment, and remove old traditions bit by bit out of their lives. To this there is nothing really to say. Mankind has always been trying to find ways to make life more favourable and because of this has come to "rule" over all other life forms. All this rapid change in such a short time requires, especially of the young, a wider and broader education. That's all I wanted to point out to you.
Young girls 16-17 years of age should use the time to 23 to acquire as much education as they can, before they commit themselves, thereby giving themselves at least one or two careers if they sometime need to support the home or if something else should happen.
.....
My afi was a forward thinking man.
and that was a crappy translation ... must get brother Jon or sister Unnur onto this!
What a loss it is that we now use digital and electrical means of communication... Who keeps emails that they received ten years ago? What will the next generation have to look at and read that gives them an incite into their parents, grandparents thoughts and views of the world?
7 comments:
Thanks. A lovely post. I´m very lucky in that mum and dad and grandad before them saved all the letters I wrote to amma and afi and I wrote hundreds, having a lot of teenage angst at the time. Unfortunately I didn´t save the letters from them. I´ve got letters I wrote to dad when he worked away. A 7 year old´s insight into life in Saudarkrokur
Thanks. A lovely post. I´m very lucky in that mum and dad and grandad before them saved all the letters I wrote to amma and afi and I wrote hundreds, having a lot of teenage angst at the time. Unfortunately I didn´t save the letters from them. I´ve got letters I wrote to dad when he worked away. A 7 year old´s insight into life in Saudarkrokur
Great post, Sigga! I think in the case of letters, hoarding is a pretty good trait...
I love love love this letter, such advanced ideas for a man from a tiny town - wish I could have met him.
xx
I am very much into family history and research but really have only a few photos...no letters, I always envy people who find diaries and letters written by their ancestors. However I have found quite a bit of information from old Australian newspapers that are being scanned and put on the internet and can often piece together their stories.
When your mum has transcribed the letters and you have electronic copies I would love to print them off and create a book for you. It would be a lovely project.
This was a great post! I wish my generation wrote letters. I think it's something we should take up again with loved ones, even if there are faster ways of communication. Letters seem to be more heartfelt than emails. Also, regarding what your grandfather said about finding a way to being content...maybe you could help me out in regard to my latest post?
All our best,
Glenna and Portia
Thanks sister dear, would be good to see the letters from dad. I don't have that many - but have saved most.
Olga hoarding is excellent... am glad that at least in all my travels I never threw out letters, ever!
Vicki - I will take you up on that - think it might be the ideal Christmas present! (I figure that that is how long it will take her to finish typing and me doing some editing/spell check)
Glenna, hope I made sense! life is for living and learning and there is absolutely no time left for regrets!
What a great letter! His wisdom is just as applicable today as it was 40 years ago.
I used to print out and paste all the emails I wrote and recieved into my diary. I have nearly all the emails Jason and I wrote to each other while I lived in Iceland.
I don't do the cut and paste as often anymore as most communication is fairly short and done through facebook and blogging these days, but gmail keeps all my emails for me. If I write an email with content that I would also write in my diary, I tend to paste it in there.
It has been said that the internet is forever (I say it all the time, myself, anyway), so it's possible that all the emails ever written have been saved somewhere in the world.
I'm finding it really hard to keep hoarding at the moment because I'm running out of space to store everything! Being a bit more selective about it now.
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