Western Icelanders: Our Story Our Legacy

Joint Webinar of the INLNA and the INLUS on February 20th, 2025, at 8 PM Eastern/7 PM Central/ 6 PM Mountain/ 5:00 PM Pacific. The link to the webinar is found at INLUS-INLNA Webinar – Icelandic Settlements in North America – Icelandic National League.

Icelandic settlers founded communities all across North America, coast to coast. Each has a unique story to tell and legacy to celebrate. Please join us online as Susan Bearnson Huff shares the story of the Westman Islands emigrants to Spanish Fork, Utah, which is the oldest continuous Icelandic settlement in North America, first settled in 1854. Descendents have remained strongly attached to their Icelandic roots not in a small part due to the Icelandic Association of Utah which was established 127 years ago in 1897. http://www.utahicelanders.org/home.html  Susan will bring history alive with personal stories passed down from her great grandparents.  

In the second part of the webinar, come forward in time, and travel east with us, to Markland, Nova Scotia where a weary group of Icelandic emigrants arrived from the failed settlement in Kinmount, Ontario in 1875. PhD candidate Jay Lalonde will tell us how their story was shaped by the local conditions and government policies. Markland was deemed “another failed settlement” and many of the Icelanders moved west to join relatives in Manitoba, North Dakota and Minnesota. However, a few stayed, and their descendants proudly formed the Icelandic Memorial Society of Nova Scotia. See their website  https://novascotiaicelanders.ca/

Both stories are significantly different from the narrative of the Icelanders who settled on the Prairies, and weave together to create a rich tapestry of Icelandic heritage for us to take pride in. In this special year of sesquicentennial celebrations of Nýja Ísland, there will be many ways we will be remembering and sharing the stories of our roots – in Lögberg Heimskringla, in local newsletters, during our celebrations and at the INLNA Convention. These video recordings will add an expanded dimension to the preservations of our narratives.  Thank you for participating. 

Our Presenters

Susan Bearnson Huff grew up in Spanish Fork, Utah (the first permanent Icelandic settlement in North America) surrounded primarily by neighbours of Icelandic descent. She lived next door to her Icelandic grandfather, Gisle Bearnson, who was born in Reykjavik and emigrated with his parents and other relatives when he was three years old. Her grandfather and father were farmers and cattlemen. Her grandfather named each farm they acquired, even though none of the other local farmers had names for their farms. It wasn’t until Susan visited Iceland for the first time in 2012 that she realized her grandfather was following a long-standing Icelandic tradition in naming his farms.

Susan’s love for her Icelandic heritage grew even stronger when she and her husband, Richard Huff, were asked by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to volunteer their time and resources to spend 18 months (March 2017-September 2018) in Iceland as records preservation missionaries.

Susan has a Bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education and Master’s and Doctorate degrees in educational leadership - all from Brigham Young University. She retired after 34 years as a teacher and elementary school principal, but continues her work as an education consultant, mentoring principals and working with schools to improve student learning.

Jay Lalonde is a PhD candidate in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of New Brunswick. Jay received the prestigious SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship in 2023 for the project, “Model Settlers, Dirty Foreigners, and Colonial Agents: Icelandic Settlers in Nova Scotia and Atlantic Canada's Immigration Policy, 1850-1900”. 

Jay was always fascinated with Iceland. In 2015, Jay went to Iceland to take a summer course in Icelandic and then was awarded a scholarship to do a BA degree in Icelandic as a Second Language at the University of Iceland. They also completed a Master of Arts in Inter-American Studies from the University of Iceland.  Sometime in 2017, Jay learned about the existence of a nineteenth-century Icelandic settlement in Nova Scotia and decided to do their PhD dissertation research around it.  They are currently working on a chapter describing how there were three competing plans for Icelandic settlements in 1874-76: Nova Scotia, New Iceland in Manitoba and, as Jay describes it, “a rather fanciful plan for an Icelandic colony in Alaska”. 

Jay was also, until January this year, a Research Intern at The Arctic Institute: Center for Circumpolar Security Studies, based in Washington DC. (https://www.thearcticinstitute.org/ ) Jay is interested in the effects of resource extraction and climate change throughout the Arctic, its impact on Inuit homelands, as well as Icelandic Arctic policy. They regularly contributed articles to The Arctic This Week. https://www.thearcticinstitute.org/the-arctic-this-week/ 

Join us for the webinar on February 20, 2025, 8 PM Eastern/7 PM Central/ 6 PM Mountain/ 5:00 PM Pacific. The link to the webinar is found at INLUS-INLNA Webinar – Icelandic Settlements in North America – Icelandic National League.