Einar Ragnarsson Kvaran

Einar Ragnarsson Kvaran (November 19, 1920 - December 13, 2012) was an Icelandic engineer, teacher, genealogist and writer. He lived in America much of the latter part of his life and was the author of the Our Ancestors newspaper series.

Einar at home, age 89

Early life

Einar was born in Reykjavík, Iceland, the son of Ragnar Einarsson Kvaran and Thorunn Kvaran and the grandson of Hannes and Ragnheidur Hafstein and Einar Hjörleifsson Kvaran and Gíslína Gíslinadóttir. During his childhood the family moved to Gimli, Manitoba, Canada and then to Árborg, where his father was the minister of the Unitarian Church from 1930 to 1933 and the publisher of the Icelandic newspaper Morgunblaðið.[1][2]

After his family returned to Reykjavík in 1933, Einar attended Menntaskólinn í Reykjavík, one of the oldest institutions in Iceland, founded in 1056,[3] where he was the Inspector Scholae in 1940.[1][4] His grandfather, Hannes Hafstein, had been the school's first Inspector Scholae in 1879.

Following his graduation he attended the University of California at Berkeley in the United States,[5] where he graduated in 1945 with a degree in Marine Engineering.[6][7] While at that school he met and married Clara Caldwell[lower-alpha 1] on October 21, 1944 and after finishing his studies returned to Iceland, where he was employed at the Icelandic State Herring and Meal Factory in Siglufjörður. His first three sons were born there.[7]

United Nations career
Einar, far left, being filmed by a United Nations film crew, Sri Lanka, ca. 1956

In 1952 Einar was employed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and was posted to Sri Lanka (at that time, "Ceylon") where his fourth son was born. This was followed by postings in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malta and finally at FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy.

Later life

He retired in 1980 and moved to Pueblo, Colorado, USA to be with his wife's family. There, in 1997 he became a US citizen. "I wanted to vote ... I'm from Iceland. About the time we were having elections here, they were having elections in Iceland. I realized that I was more interested in the presidential elections here than in Iceland. That pushed me towards citizenship."[8] While in Colorado he worked for the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program, helping people file their tax forms.[9] Einar and Clara became a fixture at the Pueblo Meals on Wheels program.

When Steve Nawrocki, director of the program "said goodbye to Meals on Wheels drivers Einar and Clara Kvaran," he wondered "how many volunteers it would take to replace them. The two have delivered meals to homebound Puebloans for 17 years calling off for only a few vacations and the occasional surgery. They have been around longer than I have. It is volunteers like them that make a program like this possible."[10]

After twenty years in Pueblo he moved again, to Sun City, Arizona. He was a member of the Association of Former International Civil Servants.[11]

During the 1990s Einar, who had a lifelong interest in genealogy, began contributing articles about "famous" Icelanders of the past, all of whom were ancestors and relations, to Lögberg-Heimskringla, an Icelandic and English newspaper published in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The paper was created by joining two Icelandic newspapers, both co-founded in the 1880s by his grandfather, Einar Hjörleifsson.

Before he died Einar requested that some of his ashes be spread in the Hvalvatn area, where he spent summers as a youth serving as a fishing guide and a horse handler. He died on December 13, 2012.[12][13]

Selected publications
  • The Mechanization of the Inshore Fisheries and the relationship to Fisheries Development in Ceylon, The Development of Ceylon's Fisheries (A Symposium), Printed From Bulletin of the Fisheries Research Station, Ceylon, Vol. 17, No.2, Printed at the Government Press Ceylon, 1965
  • The Effect of Labor Costs on Investment and Management Patterns in the Fishing Industry, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, International Conference on Investment in Fisheries, Rome, Italy, 1969
  • Marine Fisheries Potential in the Philippines and South East Asia, Marine Science Seminar, Xavier University, June 17–20, 1971, Cagayan de Oro City, Philippines, pp 45–54

Lögberg-Heimskringla publications

Einar published a series of articles entitled Our Ancestors about significant Icelanders of the past, populating it with figures such as "Killer Glumur,"Unnur the Deepminded", "Olafur Peacock", "Ulfur the Cross-eyed", "Thorstein the Handsome", "Thorkell Badmouth" and Ketill the flat-nosed.

In the introduction to the Our Ancestors series Einar describes it as not "a history of Iceland" but "more like a family photo album from which most of the snapshots have been lost".[14]

See also

References

Notes
  1. (July 15, 1922 - May 11, 2016)
  2. Lögberg-Heimskringla, February 24, 1989 p.6
  3. Lögberg-Heimskringla, March 31, 1989 p.7
  4. Lögberg-Heimskringla, April 7, 1989 p.7
  5. Lögberg-Heimskringla, April 21, 1989 p.6
  6. Lögberg-Heimskringla, May 12, 1989 p.3
  7. Lögberg-Heimskringla, May 19, 1989 p.5
  8. Lögberg-Heimskringla, June 2, 1989 p.3
  9. Lögberg-Heimskringla, June 7, 1989 p.6
  10. Lögberg-Heimskringla, June 23, 1989 p.7
  11. Lögberg-Heimskringla, October 6, 1989 p.5
  12. Lögberg-Heimskringla, October 13, 1989 p.4
  13. Lögberg-Heimskringla, October 27, 1989 p.7
  14. Lögberg-Heimskringla, November 24, 1989 p.2
  15. Lögberg-Heimskringla, December 1, 1989 p.3
  16. Lögberg-Heimskringla, December 8, 1989 p.6
  17. Lögberg-Heimskringla, December 15, 1989 p.6
  18. Lögberg-Heimskringla, March 30, 1990 p.5
  19. Lögberg-Heimskringla, January 26, 1990 p.7
  20. Lögberg-Heimskringla, February 2, 1990 p.6
  21. Lögberg-Heimskringla, February 9, 1990 p.8
  22. Lögberg-Heimskringla, April 6, 1990 p.6
  23. Lögberg-Heimskringla, May 11, 1990 p.7
  24. Lögberg-Heimskringla, May 25, 1990 p.6
  25. Lögberg-Heimskringla, September 28, 1990 p. 7
  26. Lögberg-Heimskringla, October 12, 1990
  27. Lögberg-Heimskringla, November 23, 1990 p.4
  28. Lögberg-Heimskringla, January 25, 1991 p. 2
  29. Lögberg-Heimskringla, February 1, 1991 p. 3
  30. Lögberg-Heimskringla, September 13, 1991 p.7
  31. Lögberg-Heimskringla, September 20, 1991 p.6
  32. Lögberg-Heimskringla, December 13, 1991 p.11
  33. Lögberg-Heimskringla, February 14, 1992 p.7
  34. Lögberg-Heimskringla, April 17, 1992
  35. Lögberg-Heimskringla, April 22, 1992, p.7, continued from, previous edition
  36. Lögberg-Heimskringla, January 22, 1993 p. 2-3

Citations
  1. "Iceland Review - Einar Ragnarsson Kvaran". Iceland Review. December 28, 2012. Archived from the original on June 17, 2018. Retrieved 10 June 2018.
  2. "The Icelandic Unitarian Church Rev. Philip M. Pétursson, D.D., M.L.A." (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on March 4, 2016. Retrieved June 10, 2018.
  3. "Skólinn fyrr go nú". www.mr.is (in Icelandic). Retrieved 10 June 2018.
  4. "Inspector scholae". www.mr.is. Retrieved 10 June 2018.
  5. Thor Thors (October 29, 1941). "Bréf frá New York". Heimskringla (in Icelandic). Winnipeg. p. 1.
  6. Register - University of California. University of California Press. 1946. Retrieved 10 June 2018.
  7. Kay, Ernest, Dictionary of Scandinavian Biography second edition, International Biographical Center, Cambridge, England, 1976
  8. Pueblo Chieftain, Pueblo center offers test for new citizens, Mary Jean Porter, October 6, 1997, p. 6A
  9. Pueblo Chieftain, Volunteers spell tax relief: H-E-L-P R. Chris Burnett, (undated clipping) Einar R Kvaran pictured.
  10. Meals on Wheels' needs intensify, Loretta Sword, Pueblo Chieftain, undated
  11. Association of Former International Civil Servants, Directory of members, 2008, Office of the President, AFICS(NY), Room DC!-580, United Nations, New York
  12. Review, Iceland (28 December 2012). "Re: Einar Ragnarsson Kvaran". Iceland Review. Retrieved 10 June 2018.
  13. "EINAR KVARAN - Thursday, December 13th, 2012". Retrieved 10 June 2018.
  14. Lögberg-Heimskringla, February 3, 1989 p. 6
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