One Icelandic Immigrant You Don’t Know -A New Book

By Doreen Borgfjord McFarlane

Members of Icelandic Roots who read the newsletter are usually interested in finding and following their Icelandic relatives and ancestors. I was the same. But, to my total surprise, my research revealed much more than I was looking for: a genuine, well-documented family ghost!

Now, so that you too can learn this ghost’s story, I have written a book entitled Leirarskotta: Memoir of an Icelandic Immigrant Ghost. This ghost, a never-dull entity named Leirarskotta, has remained in my family for no less than eight generations and consequently immigrated with the family. 

First conjured from the dead in 1708 for the purpose of harassing one young couple, she followed the family by moving in with her choice of one of each couple’s children, right down to me. I was not looking for ghosts! I learned about the ghost from casually typing my grandmother’s name into the internet about fifteen years ago. There, I learned that a ghost had immigrated to Canada with my grandmother, Gudrun. I would not have taken any of it seriously except that I learned this from an academic lecture given at the University of Victoria, BC, Beck Lecture series.

This exciting book is written as if by the ghost herself. You will learn that she has a pithy sense of humor and a continuing eagerness for adventure. She also changes her attitude from belligerence and anger at the onset to a very different way of thinking as the hundreds of years pass with this one family. The book will take you to the various homes, including those of a sheriff, a ghost-hater, a farmer, a schoolteacher/office worker, an opera singer, and no less than three pastors. Leirarskotta visits an indigenous cemetery, meets and tangles with other immigrant ghosts, and maintains for most of the story a bit of an attitude about religion! 

Leirarskotta combines careful research and creative fiction. The book has a bibliography of 23 books and 135 footnotes. Practically every person mentioned includes their IR number (except of course, the ghost). You will learn, for example, that she is mentioned and discussed in an 1860 German history book.

Is she real? Well, who believes in ghosts anymore? On the other hand, people did fervently believe in her for over three hundred years, and because of this, she has a very real history of her own. 

Find the book at Amazon.