Day of the Icelanders

Hope you are having a wonderful summer! It has been such a fun-filled and busy summer here at Icelandic Roots. The IR Team continues to add about 2,300 new people each month into the IR database. The number of photos, stories, obituaries, biographies, and more are growing every day, too. The “My Page” and “Relationship Calculator” features have been very popular with our members. The interactive maps showing places in Iceland, Canada, USA, and other places around the world where Icelanders have lived is so very valuable and interesting.

The 119th annual Deuce of August Icelandic Heritage celebration, "Day of the Icelanders," in northeast North Dakota was a huge success. This was our 16th year providing genealogists at the celebration. Many people from the area and from a distance came to see us on Thursday. Here is a link to the Prairie Public News article where they write, "One of the most popular attractions is the Genealogy Center, staffed by Icelandic Roots genealogists." http://news.prairiepublic.org/post/deuce-august

Friday, we had Halldór Árnason’s busload of Icelanders come to visit the Genealogy Center and they were thrilled with the “Cousins Across the Ocean” project and all the features of the IR Database. One of our IR Volunteers and one of the originators of this Genealogy Center during the Deuce is George Freeman. He drove up to Mountain for a visit and we were so happy to see him in Mountain again. He brought a box of books for the IR Library, too!

Saturday, before the parade, the Prime Minister of Iceland, Katrín Jakóbsdóttir along with many other dignitaries from Iceland, Canada, and the USA came for their official visit. The entire day, everyone was kept very busy. Everywhere we looked, people were smiling and excited to learn more about their living cousins, ancestors, GPS coordinates of the family farms, and much more.

Cathy Josephson explaining Icelandic Roots to Prime Minister, Katrín Jakóbsdóttir and with Sunna Furstenau

Our 2018 team consisted of the following volunteers starting with those who live the furthest away. See the two photos below of the IR Team.

Cathy Josephson from Vopnafjörður (Membership Director / Translator / Genealogist) Þordís Edda Guðjónsdóttir from Kópavogur (IR Library / Documentary / Translator) Doreen ‘Kristy’ Kristjanson Marston from Tennessee (Media Specialist / Genealogist) Bruce Marston (Production and Facility Crew / Assistant to Kristy) Russ and Gwen Lanoway from Winnipeg (Dynamic Duo Genealogists) Sunna Olafson Furstenau from Fargo (President / Genealogist) Ron Baker from Cavalier (our Norwegian friend helping with etc Genealogy)

Thanks again to each of these wonderful volunteers (plus the rest of the team who did not attend The Deuce but were hard at work behind the scenes keeping the website whirring). Thanks also to those who came to the 16th Annual Genealogy Center, the Icelandic Communities Association for hosting this fun feature of the celebration, and also to the IR supporting members whose paid memberships help us to "Pay it Forward" for scholarships, heritage grants, education, and much more to preserve and protect our shared Icelandic story.

Let's make each day a "Day of the Icelanders!"

#DeuceofAugust #IcelandicGenealogy #IcelandicRoots