Pretty self explanatory, once you realize that the 'Ninette San' refers to the Manitoba Ninette Sanatorium. Sanatoriums were basically places people went to be cured of (or die of) tuberculosis in the 1900s. All accounts I can find of the Ninette Sanatorium are quite positive, with many former patients going on to work there later.
Drangey is an island in Iceland, and Grettir is an Icelandic folk hero.
Anyway, it seems to me that the narrator is a recent immigrant from Iceland who has developed TB and now lives in the Sanatorium. He (or she, but I'll use he for simplicity) is writing to a sibling(?) about his life there, starting the letter off fairly positively, but unable to stop thinking about his illness. He tells his sibling to seize the day by leaving the people and things that weigh him/her down behind.
Pretty self explanatory, once you realize that the 'Ninette San' refers to the Manitoba Ninette Sanatorium. Sanatoriums were basically places people went to be cured of (or die of) tuberculosis in the 1900s. All accounts I can find of the Ninette Sanatorium are quite positive, with many former patients going on to work there later.
Drangey is an island in Iceland, and Grettir is an Icelandic folk hero.
Anyway, it seems to me that the narrator is a recent immigrant from Iceland who has developed TB and now lives in the Sanatorium. He (or she, but I'll use he for simplicity) is writing to a sibling(?) about his life there, starting the letter off fairly positively, but unable to stop thinking about his illness. He tells his sibling to seize the day by leaving the people and things that weigh him/her down behind.