By Dennis McLane
The Icelandic Roots Database is one of the greatest sources for what could be called your “instant Icelandic family tree.” As I page through my Icelandic ancestors, I am delighted to find that the research I had done years ago followed the database exactly. I was not left wondering where the information came from because I had researched my Icelandic family tree back in the “microfilm and letter writing days” long before the Icelandic Roots Database or even Ancestry.com, for that matter.
I started my research about 25 years ago with a conversation I had with my mother. She shared that she had barely known her Icelandic mother Elizabeth Samson as she had died in 1936 when my mother was 16. All she knew about her mother was that her mother was born in North Dakota and she was raised by a foster family after her mother had died and her father remarried and moved to Canada. She passed on to me a collection of letters she had received and collected in 1977. She captured my curiosity and I took over the task of finding out more about my Icelandic grandmother.
The letters had come from relatives and friends who knew Elizabeth Samson in her lifetime. Some letters from persons in Canada had identified some of her siblings (with their birth dates) and the name of her father as Jónas Samson, but they didn’t know her mother’s name.
I then took a trip back to North Dakota. Here I must explain a little about my family names. My surname of 'McLane’ comes from my father. My mother’s maiden name is “McLean.” She is the daughter of Harvey McLean and Elizabeth Samson. Harvey McLean’s sister Marie McLean married Elizabeth Samson’s brother Lewis (Icelandic name was Kristlauger) Samson. That meant that Lewis Samson and Marie McLean’s children were my mother’s “double cousins.” On my trip I paid a visit to my mother’s double cousin Wanda Samson Hall.
Wanda let me look through her box of “family stuff.” I found a picture of Elizabeth’s parents Jónas Samson and Katrín Ásmundsdöttir. But the biggest find was a letter dated September 27, 1977, that Wanda had obtained from an Icelandic genealogist named Indriði Indriðason (I have since learned that he was a significant genealogist and author who contributed greatly to the study of Icelandic genealogy) in Reykjavik. This was a fascinating letter that described my grandmother’s entire family. Attached to the letter was a somewhat difficult-to-figure-out chart named Æettarskrá that went back about five generations on my grandmother’s family tree.
I would use the Indriðason letter as a template for further research. First I sent a records request to the Pembina Hills Lutheran Church in North Dakota. I requested copies of vital records of my grandmother’s family. I obtained the baptism/birth records of my Grandmother Elizabeth and her sister Helga at Akra, ND. These were the only children of Jónas Samson and Katrín Ásmundsdöttir who were born in North Dakota.
The older siblings were all born in Iceland. The church had also found the death and burial of Katrín Ásmundsdöttir at Akra and buried in the Vidalin Church cemetery. A death and burial at Vidalin were also found for my grandmother’s sister Kristrun. Then there was the surprise find of a death and burial record for Katrín’s mother, Guðrún Björnsdóttir. Finally, the reply included the marriage record of my grandmother’s father Jónas Samson to his second wife Sigríður Pálsdóttir.
I obtained some “look-ups” of some Saskatchewan sources concerning my great-grandfather Jónas Samson’s life including his death date and location of the cemetery in which he was buried.
I then set out to do some “paper trail” research. This would involve “scrolling through”
microfilms of Icelandic census and church records. I use the term “scrolling” because there were very few indices that you could use to quickly find the record that you needed. You had to painstakingly scroll through every page looking for the names you wanted. There were two essential sources for conducting my research. One was: Tracing Your Icelandic Family Tree, by Eric Jonasson, this 1975 book was the absolute essential guidebook for Icelandic genealogy at the time. The other was: Vesturfaraskrá, A Record of Emigrants from Iceland to America, by Június H. Kirstinsson. Consulting Vesturfaraskrá was a first step to determine when my family came to North America so I would then know approximately when and where to start looking in Icelandic records to find them. The various census records help to locate my ancestral family and give me an estimated year of birth. The 1845 census was especially helpful. That census had the names of my ancestors, their age, occupation, and location and it provided the name of the parish in which they were born.
Once I had located my ancestral families in their parish in the several censuses, I began the “scrolling” process of the church records. Here is where I found the vital records (birth, marriage, and death) of my ancestral families at least going back to the starting dates of the parish registers. I soon found that I was able to trace back many of the families to the 1703 census.
I borrowed a microfilm from the National Library of Canada through my local library. This microfilm was for the Lögberg newspaper in Manitoba for the period of time around my Great-Grandmother Katrín Ásmundsdöttir’s death. I found her obituary that had been published in the newspaper in the Icelandic language. I then found a person who offered to translate. So I typed up the obit and sent an email in 2001 to Magnús Haraldsson. He not only translated the obit, but since he now had the names of my Great-Grandparents Jónas Samson and Katrín Ásmundsdöttir, he attached two Word documents (over 100 pages each) that were the genealogies of my great-grandparents going back several centuries. I am not sure exactly what the source of these
documents was. I think that it may have been an early version of Íslendingabók. It might also have been the “Forefather Finding Facility.”
I would spend many months entering the data from those two documents into my personal genealogy database. I was confronted by the many different ways the documents identified place names. It was then that I discovered the wonderful website The Emigration from Iceland to North America run by Hálfdan Helgason, which I now know was a predecessor of the Icelandic Roots Database. His pages in which he displayed the farm names sorted according to parish and county became invaluable to me. I “blocked and copied” them into a document on my own computer. In that way I was able to use my word processing to do a search for place names I came across and
determine their correct location.
In one exchange of emails, Hálfdan even provided me with some specific information about my Great-Great-Grandfather Samson Björnsson. Hálfdan made the following commentary on the situation of Samson’s illegitimate birth, “Margret, Samson’s mother, was a working hand at Björn Björnsson’s farm (Orrastaðir). Margret’s father, Þorsteinn
Steindórsson tried to make her leave but she was reluctant and Björn was not willing to let her go either.”
After sort of completing my Icelandic genealogy research, I put it away as I pursued work on other projects. So for several years, I didn’t give it much thought, other than I always retained the dream of someday visiting Iceland. I had already journeyed to North Dakota and Saskatchewan to see the places my ancestors had lived. I had even taken a trip to L'Anse aux Meadows to see where my Viking ancestors had reached North America.
A few years ago I was looking to find Hálfdan Helgason’s website and found only his newsletter pages. In doing so I discovered the Icelandic Roots Database and joined right away.
It was through the Icelandic Roots Database that I learned about the Snorri Plus program. My wife, my brother, and I attended the 2023 Snorri Plus program. The trip was the delayed culmination of my many years of Icelandic research. There were so many wonderful things that I learned, saw, and experienced. But a highlight of our adventure tour was when we were not able to visit a site on our itinerary because of road conditions. I inquired with our guide, Guðrún Georgsdöttir if we might make a detour to the Þingeyrar church, which we did.
Þingeyrarlaustur (Þingeyrar monastery or cloister) was a very significant place. It is the oldest stone church in Iceland. My Great-Great-Grandfather Samson Björnsson was baptized here on October 17, 1815. The current stone church building dates from 1877. However, the altarpiece dates to the 14th century, and the pulpit and baptismal font were in the previous church building since 1696/1697. So it is the actual baptismal font where Samson was baptized. So seeing this place was where it all came together for me.
Due to his illegitimate birth, Samson likely had no inheritance or other opportunities available to him in the Húnavatns region. So he migrated 200 miles to the area around Þistilfjörður. His sons, Friðbjörn and Jónas emigrated to North Dakota and Samson’s first name became our North American surname. I have since found out that Samson was a poet in Iceland. I hope to someday find a copy of some of his poetry. My third cousin that I met on our Snorri Plus adventure told me that she thinks the family in Iceland may have such a copy and told me she would look into it.
Growing up, my siblings and I had little exposure to our Icelandic heritage. The death of our Icelandic grandmother long before our lifetimes and the fact that our parents had migrated to Southern California from North Dakota in 1939 brought about a separation of time and place that would remove us from exposure to our Icelandic relatives.
Thanks to the Icelandic Roots Database and the Snorri Plus program, I have refreshed my interest in my Icelandic heritage and I am sharing it with my family.
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