Books – Icelandic Studies
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Icelandic Heritage in North America
An in-depth examination of Icelandic immigrant identity, linguistic evolution, and legacy.
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My Parents
Memoirs of New World Icelanders
My Parents: Memoirs of New World Icelanders is a collection of essays written by second-generation Icelandic immigrants in North America, describing the lives of their parents. A prevailing sense of community emerges from the writers’ stories, showing how Icelandic culture and tradition sustained the immigrants through hardship, illness, and isolation. My Parents also details some of the genealogy of the New World Icelanders who settled in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and Minnesota.
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The Book of Settlements
Landnámabók
Iceland was the last country in Europe to become inhabited, and we know more about the beginnings and early history of Icelandic society than we do of any other in the Old World. This world is vividly recounted in The Book of Settlements, first compiled by the first Icelandic historians in the thirteenth century. It describes in detail individuals’ daily life during the Icelandic Age of Settlement.
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A History of the Old Icelandic Commonwealth
Islendinga Saga
The founding of the Old Icelandic Commonwealth in 930 A.D. is one of the most significant events in the history of early Western Europe. This pioneering work of historiography provides a comprehensive history of Iceland from 870 A.D. to the end of the Commonwealth in 1262.
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Laws of Early Iceland, Gragas I
The laws of Mediaeval Iceland provide detailed and fascinating insight into the society that produced the Icelandic sagas. Known collectively as Gragas (Greygoose), this great legal code offers a wealth of information about early European legal systems and the society of the Middles Ages. This first translation of Gragas is in two volumes.
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North American Icelandic
The Life of a Language
North American Icelandic evolved mainly in Icelandic settlements in Manitoba and North Dakota and is the only version of Icelandic that is not spoken in Iceland. But North American Icelandic is a dying language with few left who speak it. North American Icelandic: The Life of a Language is the only book about the nature and development of this variety of Icelandic.
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Icelanders in North America
The First Settlers
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, thousands of Icelanders emigrated to both North and South America. Although the best known Icelandic settlements were in southern Manitoba, in the area that became known as “New Iceland,” Icelanders also established important settlements in Brazil, Minnesota, Utah, Wisconsin, Washington, Saskatchewan, and Nova Scotia. Earlier accounts of this immigration have tended to concentrate on the history of New Iceland. Using letters, Icelandic and English periodicals and newspapers, census reports, and archival repositories, Jonas Thor expands this view by looking at Icelandic immigration from a continent-wide perspective.
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Laws of Early Iceland, Gragas II
The laws of Mediaeval Iceland provide detailed and fascinating insight into the society that produced the Icelandic sagas. Known collectively as Gragas (Greygoose), this great legal code offers a wealth of information about early European legal systems and the society of the Middles Ages. This first translation of Gragas is in two volumes.
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Writings by Western Icelandic Women
This collection of short stories and poems spans 75 years of writings. It includes translated work by little-known authors such as Undina, “a modest poet,” as well as works in English by prominent writers such as Laura Goodman Salverson, twice a winner of the Governor-General’s Award. From the hopefulness of the early immigration in the 1870s to the conflict of assimilation in the 1950s, the pieces reflect a range of experiences common to immigrant women from many cultures.
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Western Icelandic Short Stories
This selection of Western Icelandic writings, the first of its kind in English, represents a wide collection of first and second generation Icelandic-Canadian authors. The stories, first published between 1895 and 1930, are set mainly in North America (especially Manitoba). They reflect a weath of literary activity, from the numerous Western Icelandic newspapers and journals, to the reading circles and cultural and literary societies that supported them.
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