A Snorri West Participant Experiences an Icelandic Roots Success Story
Note: The Snorri West program brings Icelanders 20 – 30 years of age to North America for a four-week summer trip. The 2025 program application deadline is Monday, February 17. The cost for the 2025 program will be USD 3000. To learn more, go to the Snorri.is website.
By Jody Arman-Jones, Co-Director Snorri West Program
Mars, Hilla and Unnar on their 2024 Snorri West adventure. (Photo Courtesy the Snorri Program)
One of the tenets of the Snorri West program is to attempt to identify and facilitate meeting relatives of the participants while on their trip to North America. Often participants are unaware of any emigrant family members, let alone any relatives actually living in Vestur Íslandi. Frequently we discover “the sister of a great-grandfather” or “the cousin of a 3 X great-grandmother,” but regardless of how close or distant the relationship, thanks in large part to the Icelandic Roots database, it’s always a delight to be able to share with participants that they do indeed have relatives to meet.
Mallory Swanson at Buðadalur. (Photo courtesy of Jody Arman-Jones)
In 2024 we decided to take a slightly different tack in addition to the usual methods of identifying relatives. Again, using the Icelandic Roots database, we tasked IR volunteers, Mallory Swanson and David Johnson, with researching the closest emigrant relative to each Snorri West participant. In addition to their work with Icelandic Roots, Mallory has a long and ongoing history at the Hofsós Emigration Center (Vesturfarasetrið) dating back to her 2016 Snorri Alumni Internship, where she worked with David who served as the 2024 Snorri Alumni Intern at the Hofsós Emigration Center.
Mallory and David found direct ancestors of two participants, Hildur Sigurbergsdóttir and Mars Baldurs (they/them/their), in the form of their great-great-great-great-grandparents – who emigrated to North America from Iceland in the 19th century. Luckily, the IR database had fairly extensive records of these two people and as we looked further into these records, we found Hilla’s 4 X great-grandmother settled, died and was buried in Blaine, Washington and was able to connect her to resources to discover more. Furthermore, we were very excited to see Mars’ 4 X great-grandfather settled in Wynyard, Saskatchewan, one of the Icelandic communities the 2024 Snorri West trip was scheduled to visit!
David Johnson (photo by Julie Summers)
Bjarni Helgason was the 4 X great-grandfather of Mars on the maternal side. Bjarni was born in 1832 and spent most of his first 68 years in Vestur Húnavatnssýla, a “county” in northern Iceland, which includes the Hvammstangi area where Mars grew up and their family still lives. Bjarni emigrated in 1900, following several of his 15 children who left for North America ahead of him in the 1880’s and 1890’s. As in Iceland, once Bjarni settled in Wynyard he farmed before eventually passing away in 1922, and was then buried in the Pleasant View Cemetery in Wynyard. How do we know all of this information? Thanks to the IR database, not only is there access to census and emigration records, but also a link to his obituary published in the Lögberg on August 3, 1922!
Bjarni Helgason headstone (Photo by Betty Ann Bjarnason)
Once we had the information about Bjarni’s gravesite, the next step was to contact the Snorri West local coordinators in the Wynyard area, sisters Betty Ann Bjarnason and Cindy Goodman, members of the Vatnabyggd Icelandic Club of Saskatchewan. Betty Ann scouted the cemetery ahead of Mars’ arrival and was able to locate Bjarni´s grave, sending us a photo of the headstone.
Excitement built once we informed participants Hilla, Mars and Unnar of our discoveries regarding their emigrant ancestors. Mars wrote [It was really surprising when Snorri West Project Managers told me that they had found out that my 4 X great-grandfather had moved to Canada. In fact, I was so surprised that I’m still scared that the people who work on the Snorri West program think I’m a really rude person, because when they told me this, I was so surprised that I gave them absolutely no response…I immersed myself in Icelandic Roots for a few hours after receiving the news… ](translated from Icelandic).
Plans were made by Betty Ann and Cindy to visit the cemetery once the Snorri West trio arrived in Wynyard. The entire group went to the gravesite and Mars later wrote [Seeing the grave was a bit surreal and I think I still don’t fully realize that it was my great-great-great-great-grandfather’s grave. I don’t think I’ve even been to an ancestor’s grave here in Iceland that goes back that far…it was an interesting experience and it was good to see how well thought out the visit was.] “After the trip I used the database to show my grandmother information about her relative that moved to Canada, where I was able to show her both a picture of him (she thought he looked a lot like other people in our family), his death date and cause of death (he sent her grandmother letters after moving but then they stopped coming and my grandma’s family never knew what happened to him – I think it was a certain closure for my grandma).”
Mars beside Bjarni Helgason’s headstone (Photo by Cindy Goodman)
This year’s success story of Mars’ experience is just another demonstration of the magic of the Icelandic Roots database and how much amazing information there is to be had on it. As part of the program, Snorri West participants are given a three-month subscription to the database as well as training in how to use it. This is very useful not only for pre-trip research which allowed Mars’ to uncover more of the family story, but especially to determine relationships to all the Vestur-Íslendingar they met during their four-week travels. We are very grateful for the existence of Icelandic Roots, a not-for-profit organization, and its database, as well as the all-volunteer team that continually updates and improves it as well as shares their knowledge, expertise and resources with Snorri West and the entire Icelandic community.
Snorri West, founded in 2001, is a cultural and heritage experience that brings Icelanders 20 – 30 years of age to North America for a four-week summer trip and is a sister program to the Snorri Program (which celebrated 25 years in 2024!) that brings 20 – 30-year-old North Americans of Icelandic descent to Iceland. In 2024 Snorri West visited the “Mountain Corridor” of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Canada and was scheduled to visit Utah in the USA, though that stop was canceled due to a WestJet strike. In 2025 plans are underway to visit the “Eastern Corridor” including Utah (celebrating their 170th anniversary of Icelandic settlement in 2025), Ontario and Nova Scotia in Canada. For more information please see www.snorri.is.