Páll Cecilson
Fatherless one year old.
I was born and raised at Búðir by the roots of Kirkjufell. My parents were Cecil Sigurbjarnarson and Oddfríður Kristín Runólfsdóttir. I was the youngest of 5 siblings, 5 years younger than the second youngest, Guðbjartur. The eldest 3 were Kristín, Bæring and Soffanías. When leaving Búðir all of us settled in Grundarfjörður, except for our sister Kristín who settled in Stykkishólmur. The live stock was not much at Búðir. We had 40-50 sheep, 2 cows and maybe 2 horses. Everything that grew in the vegetable garden was used. This was subsistence farming, as common in this time. In the winter my father went to sea, either on boats in the local area or further away to Reykjavík. It was namely in a winter fishing season when he was on the fishing ship M/s Papey, and Papey was sailed down by the german cargo ship Brigitte Sturm, and half of the crew drowned. Among those was my dear father. I was only 1 year old when this happened, but my mother kept on with her 5 children at Búðir. Soon the oldest ones could help out with the family support by getting a job. The oldest brothers did much of fishing on theyr boat, and when my brother Guðbjartur became older he would be the one to take care of the farming with my mother.
The educational institution of Kvíabryggja.
I did not spend many years in school. The main educational institute when I was growing up was at Kvíabryggja. Then the school was for 2 weeks at a time, and after that the teacher went to Grafarnes to teach children for 2 weeks. The name Grafarnes was not so pleasant, but it was later changed to Grundarfjörður where the town is now. I was 9 years old when I first started school, as it was not too far from Búðir to Kvíabryggja. Between these 2 places there was a bay or a cove called Bryggjuós or Hálsvaðall. On the low tide it took only 20-30 minutes to go to school. I think it was the second time I went to school that the tide was high in the morning so water was high up the bay, so I had to walk all the way around the bay to get to the school. This took around 90 minutes. This was on a saturday and my brother Guðbjartur was on his last winter at school. On the way back we could walk together in the evening. By then my family had received no news of my traveling since early that morning.
When going to school I was always clean and dressed neatly, but as the children in school came from various situations as cleanliness is concerned and some of them had head lice.
I remember that once as many times when I came home from school my head and clothes were crawling with lice. My mother instantly took my clothes and cleaned them. My hair was then washed thoroughly and she put kerosene oil in my hair and after that she wrapped a cloth around my head. It was left like this over night, and it killed the head lice.
Then the next time when I went school it was the same all over again. We slept two and two in each bed inside the school house. I shared the bed feet to feet with a boy from another farm, and I recall that when going to sleep I could hear some kind of clicks from the other end of the bed. This was him crushing head lice between his fingers.
I often think about how things have changed very much. Now children are often driven by cars to school, although the school is very close to theyr home, but there I was only 9 years old and I was just expected to manage on my own. Nobody actually knew if I was still alive or not.
Moving to Grundarfjörður.
The school at Kvíabryggja was laid off when I still had 2 winters for my final exam, as the pre-school exam was called back then, in the spring when I had my christian confirmation. After that the school was only in Grundarfjörður. The first winter I stayed with my grandfather Runólfur Jónatansson and his second wife Sesselja Gísladóttir.
Theyr son the ship owner Guðmundur Runólfsson was my mother´s half-brother. It was after this winter that my family left Búðir and settled in Grundarfjörður.
So I practically lived in Grundarfjörður my last winter in school. Some how the spirit of the times was such that it was thought to be almost unnecessary to tend school and I really didn´t think much of that. The whole family was just helping each other out, and working for a living was just part of life.
In the spring when I had my confirmation at church I began working at fish processing, and it was like that for the next years. Recently Hraðfrystihús Grundarfjarðar was founded and I worked there. When we moved to Grundarfjörður in 1945 there were only a few houses, 5 or 6 houses by the forming street of Grundargata and it was the main habitance in the village. It was not like moving from the countryside to a village, as it was common for people to have live stock, and we took with us from Búðir 2 cows.
When building our house on Grundargata much of the building material from the Búðir house was used. This actually was the 3rd house using building material from the same house.
