Iceland Archives - Western Civilization From Western Pennsylvania

Take Great Pride in Your European Heritage

There is literally nothing that anyone can say about the history of the European peoples that will ever successfully trick me into hating, or even looking slightly askance at, or being slightly contrite about, any of my ancestors or anything that any of them ever did.

By Kirk Johnson

For several years there has been a compelling meme making the rounds on social media titled “Ancestral Mathematics” highlighting the number of ancestors each individual has, going back twelve generations. It adds up fast. A total of 4,096 ancestors over the previous approximately 400 years exists for everyone.

Think for a moment. How many struggles? How many battles? How many difficulties? How much sadness? How much happiness? How many love stories? How many expressions of hope for the future? …did your ancestors have to undergo for you to exist in this present moment?

A bit of a genealogy aficionado, I am unconditionally proud of all of my ancestry, so have been increasingly perplexed by the escalating, baseless ire in sundry contemporary media directed toward my predecessors, including up to current generations. In my view this toxic phenomenon is now metastasizing throughout the culture. Somebody has to say something. I have had the DNA tests performed, and know that I am of one hundred percent northern and western European descent. No one can convince me to abandon my high opinion of my ancestors.

Here I visit Mont Saint Michel in Normandy, France at low tide, wearing my then recently-purchased Germany sweatshirt, during a family vacation in July of 1985. Though merely 17 acres in size, this enormously consequential island began to be developed by the Normans during the 10th Century. Mont Saint Michel is depicted on the famous Bayeux Tapestry, which commemorates the 1066 Norman conquest of England. Harold Godwinson is shown on the tapestry rescuing two Norman knights from the quicksand in the tidal flats. Norman patronage later financed the spectacular architecture of the Mont Saint Michel abbey. Photo by Jacquelyn Johnson.

Our family’s surname originated in Sweden as Jonasson, but was anglicized to Johnson when my great grandfather Fredrik and his brother Axel came to Jamestown, New York from Vånga, Östergötland around 1890. My paternal haplotype, I1-M253, suggests that I am genetically Scandinavian going back thousands of years — my father, his father, his father, and so on into the mists of time.

This is the church in Hov, Östergötland, Sweden, shown in August of 2011, where my great great grandparents Johan Pettersson Hofstedt and Johanna Andersdotter Hofstedt were married in November of 1862. This church is nearly 1,000 years old, dating to the transition period when Scandinavians were leaving their pagan Viking beliefs in favor of Christianity. The church contains ancient Viking runestones. Photo by Kirk Johnson.

People often note my unusual first name, Newkirk, and inquire about its origins. Some assume that my parents were fans of the popular American World War Two television sitcom Hogan’s Heroes, and so named me after Richard Dawson’s character “Newkirk” on that program. That is a good guess, since Hogan’s Heroes ran from 1965 to 1971, and I was born in 1969, but it is not the case.

Me as a newborn with my great great grandparents (my father’s mother’s parents) Thelma Burt Gannoe (born in 1895), and Charles Lester Gannoe (born in 1890) in Bradford, Pennsylvania, 1969. Photo by Evelyn Gannoe Johnson.

Newkirk originated as a Dutch surname. My ninth great grandfather on my mother’s side, Gerret Cornelisse Van Nieuwkirk, came to the American colonies during the 1650s from Slichtenhorst, Netherlands, about thirty miles southeast of Amsterdam, eventually settling in Ulster County, in the lower Hudson Valley area of New York.

Many Dutch settled in the lower Hudson River valley. America’s tenth president, Martin Van Buren, was from Columbia County, for example. Van Buren is the only American president whose primary language was not English — he was first a Dutch speaker. (He was also the first president without any British ancestry.) Van Buren was born and raised in the village of Kinderhook, and so was nicknamed “Old Kinderhook,” sometimes abbreviated as “O.K.” Thus, some attribute the use of today’s universally-recognized idiom “okay” to Van Buren and his supporters.

Within two generations of Gerret’s arrival, my predecessors had anglicized the Van Nieuwkirk surname to simply Newkirk. Upon his birth in 1915, my great grandmother Fern Rossall gave her son, my grandfather Chauncey Rossall, her maiden name of Newkirk as his middle name. My understanding is that some called him “Chance,” and others called him “Newie.” He unfortunately passed away long before I was born. He was a gifted chemical engineer.

My mother Jacquelyn Fern Rossall Johnson at the ruins of Tintagel Castle and the Celtic monastery along the Atlantic coast at Tintagel, Cornwall, England in May of 1982. Tintagel’s history began as far back as the 5th Century. Legends say this was King Arthur’s castle. My mother was fascinated by all things England, and cherished the two trips she took there during her lifetime. She wanted to find out more about her British ancestry. Photo by Jeffrey Johnson.

Rossall, by the way, is an English name, associated with the town of Rossall on the Northwest coast of England in Lancashire, where my mother’s great grandfather (my great great grandfather) Richard Rossall was born in 1852. The surname Rossall was brought to England in the great wave of migration from Normandy following the Norman Conquest of 1066. Rossalls were first found in Shropshire where they were Lords of the manor of Rossall. At the time of the recording of the Domesday Book in 1086, the holdings were known as the Isle of Rossall, held by the Church of Saint Chad.

My father’s name was Jeff Johnson, and, as he explained it, everywhere he went in life there were multiple Jeff Johnsons, so naturally people would confuse him with others. During my childhood in Canandaigua, New York, there was another Jeff Johnson in town who was a commercial house painter. My father frequently got calls from people asking him to paint their house.

Thus, when I was born, my father wanted to give me a distinctive first name, and my mother Jacquelyn wanted to honor her father, so I was given Chauncey Newkirk Rossall’s middle name as my first name. (But people have almost always just called me “Kirk.”) When I was a child I probably would have preferred a “normal” name like Rob, Steve, or Tom, but today I am proud of, and grateful for, the unique ancestral choice. Now you know how the Dutch surname Van Nieuwkirk evolved to become the given name Newkirk with me.

Statue of Civil War hero General George Armstrong Custer in downtown Monroe, Michigan, United States, in May of 2022. Custer is a beloved native son of Monroe, and this statue was erected in his honor in 1910. My father lived in Monroe from 1989 until his passing in 2021, and I lived there off and on for several years in the early-to-mid 1990s. Custer distinguished himself on the battlefield during the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg. Leading the Michigan Cavalry during charges against well-armed Confederate troops, sword drawn and his long blonde hair streaming behind him, Custer hollered out to his men “Come on you wolverines!” (“Wolverines” of course being a Michigan reference.) Photo by Kirk Johnson.

I am not a “progressive.” Or perhaps more accurately, I am not a comrade. Those of that persuasion should not expect me to be their comrade, because I will never be on their side. I have no interest in contemporary subversive sensibilities such as “smashing the state” or “deconstructing the patriarchy.” Open borders policies are to me pure evil. The first and highest responsibility of the government of any nation is to the socioeconomic well-being of its own people — not foreign nationals. I am not interested in promoting “pride month.” Intentionally gaslighting little boys and girls into believing that they are somehow “really” the opposite sex — to the point that they acquiesce to permanently sexually mutilating their own bodies — is nakedly demonic. I much prefer grassroots populist nationalism over an affinity for openly anti-nationstate supranational bodies such as the European Union or the United Nations. And so on. I am tired of far-left indoctrination. I categorically reject it all.

In June of 2015, then Vice-President of the United States Joe Biden blithely, unashamedly advocated open borders and population-replacement-scale mass immigration to America in violation of United Nations admonitions against genocide. Comrade Biden, who routinely characterizes European-Americans — normal, decent compatriots — as “white nationalist terrorists,” has since been installed as President of the United States, an office he currently occupies.

Contrary to the repellent propaganda that Hollywood and others on the left and in media outlets have been browbeating us with for decades, I do not harbor any contempt for the America in which my parents were raised. I do not harbor any contempt for the America in which my grandparents were raised. I do not harbor any contempt for the America in which any of my ancestors were raised. I am not ashamed of the magnificent country we Europeans built here in the New World.

This is the church at Ingjaldsholl, Iceland, on the Snaefellsnes Peninsula, in June of 2021. The great Christopher Columbus himself is known to have stayed at the farm and church here over the winter of 1477 to 1478 in order to gather intelligence about Leif Eriksson and the Vikings’ previous voyages to the New World, in preparation for his own foray “across the ocean blue” in 1492 — a highly successful trip that eventually led to the establishment of America. The mountain in the background is the 4,744-foot-tall dormant Snaeffelsjokull volcano, which served as the setting for French novelist Jules Verne’s wildly popular 1864 science fiction novel *Journey to the Center of the Earth*. Photo by Kirk Johnson.

I am one hundred percent proud of every one of my European ancestors and everything every one of them ever did — Scandinavians, Englishmen, Germans, Dutchmen, all of them. Both in Europe, and here in America, they all worked their fingers to the bone so that their descendants — people like me — could have a better life. Thank God for all of them, and thank God for Western Civilization, which produced them all, and which symbiotically they helped to grow.

Here European-American reenactors depict members of the Continental Army, under the command of General George Washington, at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, United States during the American Revolutionary War as they fought valiantly for their independence from Great Britain. Washington’s brave and hardy troops endured great difficulty at Valley Forge during the winter of 1777 to 1778, with nearly 2,000 men dying from disease and other environmental factors. Photo taken at Valley Forge National Historical Park, Pennsylvania in March of 2009 by Kirk Johnson.

I hope I had Viking ancestors who raided around Europe and beyond, maybe even taking slaves as far away as the Middle East. I hope I had English ancestors who helped advance the British Empire, either by manufacturing weapons of war at home, or perchance as members of the military helping to tamp down rebellions in African or Asian colonies. “The sun never sets on the British Empire!” My maternal grandmother’s maiden name was Kohler, and our German line came from Württemberg, near the beautiful foothills of the Alps, and the Black Forest. I hope I had relatives who fought for the German military during World War One and World War Two. You name it. I love it all.

Pictured here with my father, Jeffrey Johnson, at the Burg Maus castle in Rhineland, Germany, more than 300 feet above the Rhine River, during a family vacation in July of 1985. Burg Maus was built during the mid-to-late 14th Century in order to help enforce tolls along the Rhine. Today this castle acts as an aviary, open to the public, and home to falcons, owls, vultures, and eagles. Photo by Jacquelyn Johnson.

To the best of my knowledge all of my American ancestors were northerners, so none of them were likely to have been involved with slavery or the Confederacy, but even if one of them had been, I certainly would not hold it against them. That would be fun and interesting history about which to learn. The bulk of my background is composed of Scandinavians and British Islanders, so a millennium ago I likely had ancestors sailing around the North Atlantic raping, killing, and enslaving one another. That is just a part of history. I do not need or want “reparations.”

In other words, there is literally nothing that anyone can confront me with about the history of the European peoples that will ever successfully trick me into hating, or even looking slightly askance at, or being slightly contrite about, any of my ancestors or anything that any of them ever did.

George Washington’s birthplace near Colonial Beach, Virginia, United States, September of 2022. George Washington was America’s first president, and is thought of as being the Father of our country. He was of British descent, and fought for the British Crown here in the American colonies early on in life, only to later successfully lead the American Revolution against that same monarchy. Photo by Kirk Johnson.

None of you should be ashamed of or sorry for any of your European ancestry either. Your ancestors were not villains. Do not ever apologize for them to people who hate you. Do not let anyone guilt trip you into being more amenable to population-replacement-scale mass immigration schemes of one variety or another in order to “help make up for the past.” Proponents of such policies are the true purveyors of hatred.

Museum installation depicting Robert E. Lee at Stratford Hall, also near Colonial Beach, Virginia. This is the birthplace of Robert E. Lee — the son of a Revolutionary War hero who was a trusted aide to General George Washington — located a mere five miles from Washington’s birthplace. The two families of course knew each other well. Lee married Mary Anna Custis, the daughter of Washington’s adopted son George Washington Parke Custis. In addition to leading the Confederate army during the American Civil War, Lee had previously been superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. He was one of us. Photo by Kirk Johnson, September 2022.

Common sense is dying. Too many have allowed a cucked, politically-correct type of mindset to be projected on them by little more than the power of suggestion. There are too many malleable people. Please know that you do not have to do anything that the liberal elites demand that you have to do, or say. You do not have to bend the knee. You do not have to mouth the words and slogans that they demand you mouth.

They can force me to take sensitivity classes, they can put me in a re-education camp, they can trot out people whose ancestors may have theoretically been negatively affected in some way by something my ancestors may have done at some point in time. It will not work. I will not check my “privilege” (whatever that is). I will not “be less white,” like the woke multinational corporation Coca-Cola and others have advocated.

Buddy Brown’s delightfully satirical song about the Coca-Cola corporation’s patently absurd and openly anti-white politically-correct “be less white” subversion.

“Be proud of who you are, no matter where you came from!” ~ Buddy Brown

I will always carry with me a deep, abiding, reverent appreciation of where and who I came from. We all should feel that way. Never let anyone project on you through the power of suggestion the specious idea that Europeans have anything to be ashamed of simply by being European. Whether you are of mixed-European ancestry such as with so many Americans, Australians, Canadians, or New Zealanders; or are a pure-blooded Swiss or French man going back countless generations. We have nothing to be contrite about, and everything to be proud of.

This is the iconic and ornate clock tower at the University of Otago, Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand. Located at the south end of the island nation’s south island, the University of Otago was founded in 1869 by Scottish settlers, and is one of the oldest universities anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere. The Gothic clock tower was completed in 1879 by renowned English architects Maxwell Bury and Edmund Anscombe. Photo taken in January of 2000 by Kirk Johnson.

Learn about your family tree. You have to know where you came from in order to know where you are going. Put in some time doing the genealogical research. Get the DNA tests performed, I know from personal experience that it can be deeply edifying, and even emotional. Know your past, know your history. Respect the ancestors — they are all now watching to see how you will respond to the pervasive, groundless, seething contempt leveled against us in today’s openly anti-European milieu.

Proud and strong!

The famous Swedish rock ‘n’ roll group Ultima Thule’s timeless heart-pumping anthem “Stolt och Stark” (Proud and Strong).

The Emerging New Forests of Iceland

When Vikings braved the treacherous icy waters of the Norwegian Sea and North Atlantic Ocean to settle the 40,000-square-mile island of Iceland during the late 800s and early 900s, they did find forests upon arrival. Perhaps as much as forty percent of the island was covered with dense thickets of brushy forest. That soon changed.

Afforestation on a Nationwide Scale

By Kirk Johnson

When Vikings braved the treacherous icy waters of the Norwegian Sea and North Atlantic Ocean to settle the 40,000-square-mile island of Iceland (about the same land area as the state of Kentucky) during the late 800s and early 900s, they did find some forests upon arrival. Perhaps as much as forty percent of the island, primarily in the lowland and coastal areas, was covered with dense thickets of brushy forest.

A close-up shot of the leaves of a native downy birch tree (*Betula pubescens*), taken along a hiking trail in the Selskogur Park along the eastern outskirts of Egilsstadir, Iceland. Photo by Kirk Johnson.

Even though there had been little to no human habitation of Iceland prior to the Vikings’ arrival, however, these forests were not composed of towering stands of stout-boled old-growth trees, ripe for use in the manufacture of construction timbers, masts, or planking for longships. By far, the dominant tree was downy birch (Betula pubescens), which in Iceland has a crooked growth form and rarely achieves more than fifty feet in height. The second most common, though much less abundant, native tree is the tea-leaved willow (Salix phylicifolia), which in Iceland grows as a shrub.

A thick, brushy stand of downy birch trees along a trail in the Selskogur Park outside of the east Iceland town of Egilsstadir provides an sense of the dense thickets that Vikings may have encountered everywhere they went in the low-lying areas of Iceland upon arrival during the late 800s. Photo by Kirk Johnson.

Even these meager forests, though, were all but denuded by the Scandinavian settlers within a few centuries for charcoal, firewood, and to clear land for farming. Uninterrupted grazing by the Icelanders’ livestock over the centuries ensured that the vast majority of Icelandic forests never recovered. Land use was so intensive that eventually less than one percent of the entire island was considered to be forested.

The thick, brushy downy birch forest of the Selskog Park is in the foreground, with the small town of Egilsstadir beyond it. In the distance, across Lake Lagarfljot, stands of manually-planted non-native conifers can be seen dotting the hillsides. Photo by Kirk Johnson.

Here in the Allegheny National Forest region, we also had intense, impactful land use by settlers, during the mid-to-late 1800s and early 1900s, in which nearly the entire native old-growth hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) and beech (Fagus grandifolia) forest was clearcut. However, differences here include our temperate climate, better soils, and a longer growing season, which allowed for rapid natural regeneration and eventual recovery of forests — wherever people refrained from cutting them back down again, that is. We also do not have anywhere near the prevalence of livestock grazing as has been ubiquitous across Iceland.

A jogger running through Selskog Park, and past a downy birch tree, provides some scale for the typical size of a downy birch. I did not see any downy birch trees anywhere in Iceland much taller than this one. Photo by Kirk Johnson.

In 2017 Throstur Eysteinsson, director of the Icelandic Forest Service (“Skograektin”), wrote that “among the first things that visitors to Iceland usually notice are that it is not as warm as where they came from, and there is a lack of forests in the landscape. They connect these two facts and come to the conclusion that Iceland is too cold for forests. However, over a century of forestry has proven that it is past land-use and not climate that explains the treeless landscape.”

This is the Thorufoss waterfall on the Laxa i Kjos River, just west of Thingvellir National Park. This volcanic landscape scene is typical of most of Iceland today — beautiful with spectacular waterfalls, but almost completely devoid of any forests, trees, or woody vegetation. Photo by Kirk Johnson.

Reforestation, or perhaps more accurately afforestation, of Iceland had its nascent beginnings at the end of the 19th Century at Thingvellir, northeast of the capital city of Reykjavik, where the world’s first parliament began meeting in 930 AD, with the planting of small groves of non-native conifers. Today Thingvellir is Iceland’s most well-known national park (established in 1930 to coincide with the 1,000th anniversary of the Althing), and a World Heritage Site. Some of these early groves today impress across Thingvellir’s landscape.

Small groves of now many-decades-old non-native conifer trees can be found scattered throughout Thingvellir National Park, northeast of Reykjavik, pictured above. The Oxara River passes through the middle of this image, past the Thingvellir Church, and the summer home for Iceland’s prime minister. Photo by Kirk Johnson.

What is the difference between reforestation and afforestation? Reforestation is the process of planting trees in an existing forest where the number of trees has been decreased, such as through logging or a natural disaster. Afforestation is when new trees are planted or seeds are sown in a largely barren area where there are essentially no forests or trees, establishing an entirely new forest.

The Systrafoss waterfall, at the Kirkjubaejarklaustur forest grove in south-central Iceland, is shown in the background of this image, with native downy birch trees and non-native conifers in the foreground. Photo by Kirk Johnson.

The Skograektin was formally established in 1908, and there were small-scale experiments in forest recovery around the country through the first half of the 20th Century. Much of this involved simply fencing tracts against livestock grazing in order to better allow natural recolonization of native birch forests. This strategy is probably akin to our modern practice here in Pennsylvania of erecting tall wire fencing, encompassing many acres for many years at a time, creating exclosures against white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) browse of seedlings.

Kirkjubaejarklaustur Forest Grove, Iceland, June 25th, 2021, video by Kirk Johnson.

Tree planting then began in earnest in Iceland around 1950, and since then tens of millions of seedlings of native and non-native trees have been planted. Non-native species utilized have included North American and European/Asian birch (Betula spp.), larch (Larix spp.), spruce (Picea spp.), pine (Pinus spp.), and poplar (Populus spp.).

Standing next to the tallest tree in Iceland, a Sitka spruce (*Picea sitchensis*) at Kirkjubaejarklaustur, which is closing in on one hundred feet tall, planted in 1949. June 25th, 2021. Photo by Kirk Johnson.

I vacationed in Iceland last June, and among the many destinations I wanted to see, I made sure to visit Kirkjubaejarklaustur, in south-central Iceland, to visit a grove of trees planted in the mid-1940s which have now reached impressive heights. The tallest recognized individual tree anywhere in Iceland today is here, a Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis) which Skograektin formally announced on September 12th, 2022 is now 30.15 meters (99 feet) tall, and it is also 19 inches in diameter at breast height.

Plaque next to the tallest tree in Iceland, a Sitka spruce (*Picea sitchensis*) closing in on one hundred feet tall — Skograektin formally announced on September 12th, 2022 that is is now known to be more than 30 meters tall. Photo by Kirk Johnson.

I measured several additional Sitka spruce in this grove at more than 20 inches in diameter. Birds, which I took to be redwings (Turdus iliacus), flitted about to and fro in the understory of this grove as I walked the trails, demonstrating its value as wildlife habitat. Sitka spruce are native to western North America, but it is a species that seems to do relatively well in Iceland’s harsher environment.

I found this fledgling redwing (*Turdus iliacus*) hopping along the hiking trail in the Kirkjubaejarklaustur forest grove in Kirkjubaejarklaustur, Iceland, June 25th, 2021. I kept inadvertently pushing it down the trail just by walking. I guess it did not want to hop off the trail into the grass to get away from me. Finally, I made a wide, circuitous detour off of the trail so that I would not scare it anymore, and it could hop back to where it belonged. Hopefully it had a mama nearby. Photo by Kirk Johnson.

Many people who vacation in Iceland tend to spend the majority of their time around the greater Reykjavik region, and elsewhere in the western part of the country. By contrast, I actually spent a lot of my time in far east Iceland, around the small town of Egilsstadir (population 2,500) and the Hallormsstadur National Forest surrounding Lake Lagarfljot. After leaving Kirkjubaejarklaustur, I headed straight for Egilsstadir along Route 1 — Iceland’s renowned Ring Road.

The sixteen-mile long Lake Lagarfljot is shown in this satellite image surrounded by the green hillsides of the Hallormsstadur National Forest, as a result of Iceland’s long-term tree planting efforts in this region. The town of Egilsstadir is shown in the upper right. Source: Google Maps.

This area supports a most impressive demonstration of the successes of Icelandic afforestation efforts. All around the 16-mile long lake there are large stands of varying ages of manually planted forests. Several hiking trails through the man-made forests have been established. I hiked one called Bjargselsbotnar, which is a three-mile loop that climbs nearly 1,000 feet in elevation into the mountains above the south side of Lagarfljot. It took me through many acres of maturing planted coniferous forest at lower elevations, through groves of shrubby downy birch at higher elevations, and out above the treeline, affording sweeping views up and down the lake from above the stands of new forest.

Hiking the Bjargselsbotnar trail in the Hallormsstadur National Forest up above Lake Lagarfljot, June 26th, 2021. At this point I was up above almost all of the trees, but a stand of native downy birch can be seen in the immediate background. Photo by Kirk Johnson.

I was excited to hear a number of times during my hike the song of a bird I had never heard before. At times, one of these birds seemed to be following me, perhaps curious or concerned about what kind of creature I was and what I was doing there in its territory. (I did not see any other people during my hike — surprising for a warm and sunny Saturday afternoon in June.) From its song, I was later able to determine that this inquisitive fellow was likely a common snipe (Gallinago gallinago).

Intentionally planted coniferous trees of various species are shown here along the Bjargselsbotnar hiking trail in Iceland’s Hallormsstadur National Forest, June 26th, 2021. Lake Lagarfljot can be seen in the background. Photo by Kirk Johnson.

Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) from northern Norway were introduced into eastern Iceland during the late 1700s, and there is an extensive interpretive reindeer display at the East Iceland Heritage Museum in downtown Egilsstadir. While the Icelandic reindeer population has fluctuated quite a bit over the years, nearly crashing at times, strict hunting policies were enacted in 1901, and today the population is stable.

Reindeer (*Rangifer tarandus*) display at the East Iceland Heritage Museum in downtown Egilsstadir. Reindeer from Norway were introduced into eastern Iceland during the late 1700s. Photo by Kirk Johnson.

A quota hunting system is now employed to manage reindeer populations in Iceland at sustainable levels. This is perhaps not entirely unlike the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s ongoing lottery system for managing the elk (Cervus canadensis) population in north central Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, I did not catch sight of any reindeer in the wild during my time exploring eastern Iceland.

Engelmann spruce (*Picea engelmannii*) trees, with some native downy birch, along the Bjargselsbotnar trail in the Hallormsstadur National Forest. Photo by Kirk Johnson.

It was announced earlier this year that more than two percent of Iceland is now officially considered to be forested — closing in on 500,000 acres altogether. (For comparison, our Allegheny National Forest today comes in at 514,185 acres.) Two percent might not sound like a lot, but it is a benchmark that Icelandic foresters have been looking forward to achieving. The Skograektin goal is to have 2.6 percent of Iceland forested by 2040, and more than five percent of the country forested before the end of the century. This will require a herculean effort involving the planting of many millions of tree seedlings beyond what they have already done.

The lakefront at Atlavik Campground along Lake Lagafljot is showing some good results from reforestation efforts. Here I was standing knee-deep in the lake, and that water was frigid! Photo by Kirk Johnson.

While Iceland’s planted forests are impressive, they do not yet compare to the natural maturing forest of, say, the 8,663-acre Hickory Creek Wilderness Area or the 9,705-acre proposed Tracy Ridge Wilderness Area here in the Allegheny — both areas that were once completely denuded, but are now cloaked by a healthy, diverse maturing forest due directly to a long-term hands-off management strategy.

The climax hemlock-beech old-growth forest of the Tionesta Research Natural Area in the Allegheny National Forest is shown here, in 2001. Photo by Kirk Johnson.

Icelandic forests will likely never achieve the grandeur that the Tionesta Scenic and Research Natural Areas old-growth, or the Cook Forest State Park old-growth, offers here in our region. Certainly not in the lifetime of anyone alive today. But the Icelanders’ determined efforts toward reforestation of a heretofore largely barren land is most commendable, and awe-inspiring.

On my last day in Egilsstadir, I stopped by the Skograektin office in town hoping to purchase a large map of Lagarfljot and the surrounding Hallormsstadur National Forest. A map aficionado, I wanted one to hang on my wall at home. They did not have any such maps for sale, but I did have the opportunity to speak to two Skograektin personnel about their tree-planting efforts.

Leaves of the native tea-leaved willow tree (*Salix phylicifolia)* are shown here in an image taken along Route 931 in the Hallormsstadur National Forest southwest of Egilsstadir on Sunday, June 27th, 2021. Photo by Kirk Johnson.

One of them, Borja Alcober, was interested to learn that I am from Pennsylvania, because he had spent a year in high school as a foreign exchange student in Williamsport. He vividly remembers Penns Woods’ lush green forests, and that inspires him to envision a similarly sanguine future for considerably more of Iceland someday.

This sign post denotes a stand of Engelmann spruce (*Picea engelmannii*) trees growing along the Bjargselsbotnar trail that were planted in 1967. Photo by Kirk Johnson.

It does not seem likely that much of these new forests will be preserved in a hands-off wilderness type of protected status anytime soon, except for the most historic sites, where they occur within national parks, where they occur in small protected groves such as at Kirkjubaejarklaustur, and the like.

Most of the rest of the planted forest acreage will likely be actively thinned, managed, and harvested as time goes on. That is just the nature of an ‘artificial’ even-aged forest with seedlings that were generally planted on a tightly-packed spacing.

Currently little sawn lumber is being produced from Icelandic forests, though that may change with time as their trees continue to get larger. The primary wood products produced to date from these new forests have been wood chips (a by-product of thinning operations), firewood, and roundwood such as for fenceposts.

The rowan tree (*Sorbus aucuparia*) is native to Iceland, but far less common than the native downy birch. Photo taken along the Bjargselsbotnar trail in the Hallormsstadur National Forest, June 25th, 2021. Photo by Kirk Johnson.

There is a great opportunity in Iceland in the decades and centuries ahead to plant vast acreages of forest, which will improve wildlife habitat and water quality. These new, rapidly growing forests will also act as an important carbon sink, drawing massive volumes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and holding it in its wood and in the duff layer on the forest floor. In 2016 Skograektin estimated that 210,000 tons of carbon dioxide is sequestered per year just in the Icelandic forests planted after 1990.

What fun it would be to be able to visit Iceland again in 100 or even 200 years to see what the today’s new forests have matured into. If only it were possible. As the old adage goes, “a society grows great when men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit.”

Christopher Columbus’s Edifying Winter in Iceland

Though many may not be particularly well aware of it, the nascent beginnings of America can be thought of as arising in western Iceland. Specifically, the region of western Iceland including the Snaefellsnes Peninsula, and associated Breida Fjord, from which the legendary Viking explorer Leif Eriksson hailed more than 1,000 years ago.

Christopher Columbus’s Edifying Winter in Iceland

Great Explorer Gained New World Intel From Erstwhile Vikings

By Kirk Johnson

Although many may not be particularly well aware of it, the nascent beginnings of America can be thought of as arising in western Iceland. Yes, Iceland. Specifically, the region of western Iceland including the Snaefellsnes Peninsula, and associated Breida Fjord, from which the legendary Viking explorer Leif Eriksson hailed more than 1,000 years ago.

Like many in the greater Jamestown region with Scandinavian ancestry, I am proud of our peoples’ long, rich and storied history. My Scandinavian roots are primarily Swedish, and so travelled to Sweden several years ago to visit places my ancestors lived. But I am also intrigued by the history of Iceland, which was settled by Scandinavians — largely Norwegians but there were some Swedes too — during the late 800s and early 900s.

During a June Iceland vacation, I wanted specifically to investigate the little-discussed possibility that the great Christopher Columbus himself had also visited, over the winter of 1477 to 1478 at a farm and church called Ingjaldsholl, and while there learned from the native ethnic erstwhile Viking people about their frequent exploits in Vinland (North America) just a few centuries earlier. This would help explain much about Columbus’s own journey to America fifteen years later, and why he was confident that he would find land “across the ocean blue.”

Leif Eriksson’s party had in 1000 AD landed and established a short-lived settlement at what we today call L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, Canada. For centuries afterward, while their small civilization at the south end of Greenland persisted, Vikings returned repeatedly to the east coast of North America to gather timber, game, grapes and berries, and to trade with the “Skraelings,” who we know today as American Indians.

The famous statue of renowned Viking explorer Leif Eriksson is situated in front of the iconic Hallgrim’s Church in downtown Reykjavik — Iceland’s tallest building. Photo by Kirk Johnson.

Upon my arrival in Iceland, Jon Sverrisson, the office manager at Happy Campers in Keflavik, where I rented a small camper van that I drove around the country for the next ten days, replied emphatically “it must be true” when asked about the possibility of Columbus staying at Ingjaldsholl. We had been poring over a large table-top map of the country in the Happy Campers’ lobby when the subject came up.

The next day I went to the National Museum of Iceland in the capital city of Reykjavik, a forty-five minute drive from Keflavik. It was a quite rainy day, so I made the most of it by visiting a number of different museums. The National Museum of Iceland guides visitors chronologically through the history of the country, from settlement in the 800s to the present.

Finding, as expected, no mention of Columbus in the 1400s portion of the museum, I inquired with museum staff. (Essentially everyone in Iceland speaks nearly flawless English.) The museum staff people knew of the Columbus story, but explained that since it is not universally accepted by all historians, the museum does not interpret it. And in any event, there are no known artifacts from Columbus’s visit to display. However, I was informed, if you go to the little towns near where he is said to have overwintered and ask anyone on the street, they will happily tell you that it is true.

The church at Ingjaldsholl is shown late in the day on Tuesday, June 22nd, 2021. The late evening Icelandic sunset brightly illuminates the church beyond the field filled with non-native purple lupine (*Lupinus polyphyllus*). Photo by Kirk Johnson.

Two days later, I went to Ingjaldsholl late on my first evening on the Snaefellsnes Peninsula, but not surprisingly the church there was closed. I walked around it and peered into the windows at the pristine, intimate sanctuary, and took some nice photos of the church in the setting sunlight. I was even able to capture a reasonable picture through the window in the parish office down below of a painting of Columbus on the wall in a large meeting room. But I was disappointed that I had come all this way from Warren, Pennsylvania, was at the cusp of what I wanted to see, and yet could not go inside. I hoped for better luck the next day.

This is the coastal region of Iceland’s Snaefellsnes Peninsula along the Breida Fjord that Christopher Columbus is known to have visited over the winter of 1477 to 1478. Ingjaldsholl is shown to the southeast of Hellissandur. Source: Environment Agency of Iceland.

I stayed that night at a campground to the immediate east of nearby Olafsvik. The next morning I visited Olafsvik’s tourist information center. The agent there was a friendly, knowledgable and helpful woman, and knew the man who was the minister at both Ingjaldsholl, and the church in Olafsvik. She telephoned him and was able to arrange for me to meet with him at Ingjaldsholl at 11:00 a.m. He was willing to give me a personal tour and answer my questions! I almost could not believe my luck, and was grateful and elated.

This area of the Snaefellsnes Peninsula reminded me a bit of the northern Olympic Peninsula in Washington, where I lived for two years during the mid-1990s, with Olafsvik being reminiscent of Port Angeles in my mind. (Though Port Angeles is much larger.) The weather that day was to me evocative of a crisp sunny maritime day in coastal Port Angeles. Olafsvik was actually formally incorporated as a town even before Reykjavik, though Reykjavik did have a slightly larger population at the time.

The narrow road leading to the church at Ingjaldsholl on Wednesday morning, June 23rd, 2021, with the Snaefellsnes mountains in the background. The Ingjaldsholl parish office is seen on the lower right. Photo by Kirk Johnson.

The knowledgeable Oskar Ingi Ingason has been the minister at Ingjaldsholl since 2012. The current church was consecrated in 1903, and is the world’s oldest church made entirely of concrete. Reverend Ingason is also the minister at the modern church in Olafsvik, which was consecrated in 1967. He was on the board of directors for the organization that helped design and reconstruct the Leif Eriksson birthplace, living museum, and historical site to the east. Established in 2000, the site is called Eiriksstadir, meaning “Erik’s place,” named after Leif’s father Erik Thorvaldsson (Erik the Red).

Reverend Ingason stated that there is a well-known oral tradition around the Olafsvik-Rif-Hellissandur maritime region that Columbus visited Iceland and stayed at the farm at Ingjaldsholl during the winter of 1477 to 1478, likely arriving in the early autumn and leaving in late spring (it would have depended upon wind and weather patterns and conditions). It is known that a “southern gentleman” stayed there that winter, with “southern” denoting someone from the south of Europe. According to Columbus’s own diaries, and Ferdinand Columbus’s 1571 biography of his father, he indeed stayed at Ingjaldsholl.

The knowledgable Oskar Ingi Ingason has been the minister at the Ingjaldsholl church since 2012. Photo by Kirk Johnson.

Columbus’s ship docked at nearby Rif. He came to this area of Iceland specifically because he would have known that Leif Eriksson came from the Breida Fjord region. Columbus was aware of Eriksson’s voyages and wanted to gain information about Viking exploration in preparation for his own journey west — he was there quite deliberately ‘doing his homework.’ Reverend Ingason told me Columbus stayed at Ingjaldsholl because the nearby Hellissandur was actually the largest town in the area at the time, as a result of their substantial fishing industry. More so there than in other parts of Iceland at the time, in fact.

Earlier this year a parishioner informed Reverend Ingason he had recently become aware of a large timber which was purported to have been part of Columbus’s ship, and had been incorporated into the construction of an old house in the northern part of Iceland. The timber was said to have been at the farm at Ingjaldsholl until the 1800s. When the last inhabitants of Ingjaldsholl left, they had taken the timber to their new place in northern Iceland.

A large plaque in Ingjaldsholl’s parish office lists all known Ingjaldsholl ministers dating back to the year 1200. Bodvar Jonsson was likely there when Columbus visited. Photo by Kirk Johnson.

Large wooden timbers would have been highly valued construction material in Iceland, and difficult to come by, due to it being a largely treeless land. There were some thick lowland forests when the Vikings first arrived, but they were made up primarily of relatively small, crooked downy birch trees (Betula pubescens) generally not suitable for manufacturing large timbers, and even those forests had been all but denuded within a few centuries.

After touring the charming, meticulously maintained church sanctuary, Reverend Ingason and I walked down through an underground corridor into the newer parish office section, where I was able to view the “Cristoforo Colombo 1477” painting by Icelandic artist Aki Granz first-hand. Gifted to the church by the artist in 1998, the painting depicts Ingjaldsholl’s priest at the time (not unlikely Bodvar Jonsson, known to have been there in 1480 and possibly as early as 1476) symbolically pointing Columbus toward America.

The “Cristoforo Colombo 1477” painting by Icelandic artist Aki Granz depicts Ingjaldsholl’s priest at the time (probably Bodvar Jonsson), pointing Columbus toward America. The mountain in the background is the 4,744-foot-tall dormant Snaeffelsjokull volcano, which served as the setting for Jules Verne’s 1864 novel Journey to the Center of the Earth. Photo by Kirk Johnson.

The intellectually dishonest wont from some contemporary historical revisionists is to willfully mischaracterize Columbus as a bumbling fool not knowing what he was doing as he made his way blindly across the Atlantic in 1492, so he just got lucky to find any land at all. And sundry other such absurd calumnies — any false narrative to as an end in itself sully the reputation and cast aspersions upon the historical figure they hold in such contempt.

That Columbus purposefully travelled to Ingjaldsholl and learned from the Icelanders in the lead-up to his New World trip helps demonstrate that this is not the case. Our great Scandinavian ancestors, who were such brave, noble and acutely accomplished world explorers, were able to provide Columbus with knowledge and confidence from which he surely benefitted in order to help him make a more informed attempt at finding a way across the Atlantic.

A sign along highway 574 between Hellissandur and Rif directs visitors to the church at Ingjaldsholl. The body of water in the background is the Breida Fjord, upon which both Leif Eriksson and Christopher Columbus once sailed. Photo by Kirk Johnson.

“Leif landed first,” as the old saying goes, because he and the Vikings were indeed the first Europeans to arrive in the Americas. But it took a skilled navigator in Columbus, half a millennium later, standing on the shoulders of what the Vikings had already experienced and learned, to help Europeans finally gain a permanent foothold in the New World, eventually establishing the greatest country ever known to mankind with the United States of America. Columbus’s trip should not be thought of as being independent of or unrelated to Leif Eriksson’s deeds, but rather a logical progression, and an expansion upon them.

As an ethnic Scandinavian, I am proud of what Eriksson and the Vikings accomplished in discovering the New World. At the same time, as a red-blooded American, I am naturally also quite grateful to Columbus for being wise enough to recognize the Vikings’ proficiency, having the good instincts to deliberately seek out their knowledge, and build upon what they had already accomplished. Thanks in no small part to Eriksson and Columbus, we all now live in a truly amazing place built by generations of our ancestors.

Over the years there have been unfortunate disagreements between Scandinavian-Americans and Italian-Americans on the discovery of America question, but it is past time to leave contentiousness behind, and simply agree that both Eriksson and Columbus were equally important.

What is needed are more monuments across America, not just to Christopher Columbus, or just to Leif Eriksson, but rather statues symbolically portraying the two profoundly consequential trailblazers together, shaking hands in the good cooperation that they for all intents and purposes engaged in across the centuries in helping to assemble the beginnings of America. If they only knew at the time the gravity and magnanimity of what they had accomplished for mankind.

Kirk Johnson is a resident of Warren, Pennsylvania, and has extensive Scandinavian ancestry. He is a volunteer with the Scandinavian Jamestown organization.