Rootshús-A Tribute to Icelandic Settlers in North America
- Rob Olason
- 2 hours ago
- 5 min read
By Rob Olason
On the April 20, 2026, Samtal Hour, participants learned the latest updates to the Icelandic Rootshús project from Sunna Furstenau, the visionary force behind this ambitious venture.
Ambitious? Really?
Most definitely.
First, a little backstory.
Icelandic Roots, the organization Furstenau championed for over a decade, began as a non-profit online Icelandic genealogy database on November 12, 2013. Building on the database nurtured for decades by Halfdan Helgason in Iceland, Icelandic Roots has focused on building an international community between Western Icelanders in Canada and the U.S. and Icelanders in Iceland.
Icelandic Roots volunteers have been expanding on Halfdan's original database over the years, where today it has become the premier online Icelandic genealogy database with over 863,000 individual records of Icelandic “cousins” and nearly 66,000 photos and other media documents that “tell the story” of the Icelandic people in Iceland and North America. Today, over 80 volunteers spread across the three countries keep the organization running. The database volunteers add around 2,500 records each month.
An offshoot of the genealogists created a special Emigration Team that has worked for thirteen years to find records documenting every person who left Iceland for North America. This project greatly expands on the work of Júníus H. Kristinsson in his monumental 1980s publication, Vesturfaraskrá 1870-1914. In 2026, the team began releasing periodic "Issue Papers" that drill down into that rich trove of data to reveal new insights into the Icelandic Diaspora. Sunna credits the team's research for being a huge catalyst in the determination to build Icelandic Rootshús.
During the early years of Icelandic Roots, new features were continually added to the Icelandic Roots project. With a focus on the community Icelandic Roots was building, educational webinars explored Iceland and its people in both Iceland and North America. Informal online gatherings like Samtal Hour, hosted by Judy Dickson, began featuring interesting guests who make short presentations on an Icelandic topic, and then engage in conversation with the participants. These community activities continued to expand to include database usage training and even a monthly book club, hosted by Heather Lytwyn, that focuses on Icelandic works. Bi-weekly newsletters for members and non-members alike provide a steady stream of Icelandic-focused information to satisfy the wants of Icelandic descendants and the Icelandic-obsessed alike.
But it wasn’t enough.
Sunna told the viewers attending the April 20 Samtal Hour that she has been working on another "side" project for over eight years that would launch the Icelandic Roots vision beyond the online world into the real world.
It’s not easy, or even a given, that dreams and visions can make the leap into reality. Many flights of fancy crash and burn before their first appearance. For Furstenau, there were many obstacles along the way.
One big issue was where to site this physical representation of Icelandic Roots. After all, Icelandic settlers wandered far and wide in North America. Hundreds of communities could make the claim that they were the logical choice for a marker for the Icelandic diaspora. And now, several generations later, Icelandic descendants are everywhere.
However, two areas were the key focus of Icelandic migration in the late nineteenth century: first, Nýja Ísland (New Iceland) in Manitoba, which was meant to be an Icelandic enclave. After some buyer’s remorse, a second location developed in 1878, when Reverend Páll Þorláksson led settlers to Dakota Territory, which became the focus of a mass exodus. As decades passed, this quest for the ideal home was followed by a later explosion as Icelandic settlers decided that the entire North American continent was theirs for the taking.
Or, at least they could move freely about the continent.
These were the pieces of settlement history and locations that Sunna began to work with.
In Mountain, Dakota Territory, the Reverend Páll Þorláksson filed his own land claim. His original claim included the area that later became the site of the Vikur Icelandic Church (on the National Register of Historic Places), and much of the town of Mountain. The land across the street from the church was also a part of Reverend Þorláksson’s Homestead land claim. With its link to the history of Icelandic settlement in the area, this land is the site of the Icelandic Rootshús. Thanks to generous donations of property and additional purchases, the site for the Rootshús was secured.
The dreaming continued.
What would this Icelandic House contain?
Over the years, Icelandic Roots had acquired donations of thousands of Icelandic books: genealogies, histories, and fiction. They need a home. The story of the Icelandic journeys to North America also needs a home. The descendants of those Icelandic settlers, trying to understand what that journey a century and a half ago means to their lives today, need a home to explore that aspect of their past. Sunna was quick to point out that every initiative Icelandic Roots undertakes is only possible because of the contributions of the 80+ volunteers across three countries, the thirteen years of patient genealogy work, the support of members, the online environment maintained by the IT team, the outreach community, and the donors, all of whom share the spotlight in making Icelandic Roots of today and Icelandic Rootshús of tomorrow.
The Icelandic people find their roots in story as well as family. The story of their past, their lineage, their shared history. The passions that inspired their ancestors to dream and live their lives. Those stories were embedded in the Icelandic sagas. In the future, that story will be embedded in the Icelandic Rootshús.
Sunna shared architect drawings of the building at Samtal Hour. She also shared images of heavy equipment being used to remove abandoned buildings on the property to make way for this new vision.
In the drawings she displayed, a key component of the building was a permanent exhibit that told the story of Icelandic migration to North America. This story was shared from the multi-generational perspective of a family: the life of hardship in Iceland caused by natural calamities of volcanic eruptions and weather extremes, but also by the grinding restrictions of the political and economic structures governing the population. This led to the risky opportunity of trading the seemingly unending difficulty of servitude in Iceland for an intoxicating but possibly unrealistic future in a new land. And once traded, they faced the difficult journey across the ocean, followed by the challenging journey to shape their new lives, and finally, the often less-than-promised results they encountered.
This exhibit will tell the saga of those who exchanged a difficult life in Iceland for a different, yet still difficult life in North America. Throughout the writings of the settlement period, we hear again and again the refrain that these settlers made this sacrifice for the benefit of their future descendants' lives. This is a remarkable story that is a legacy for their descendants to contemplate.
Icelandic Rootshús will be a perfect setting to engage in that contemplation.
The groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of the Icelandic Rootshús will take place during the 2026 Deuce of August celebrations in Mountain on August 1, 2026. The Grand Opening is scheduled for the next Deuce of August celebration, on July 31, 2027.
On May 5, 2026, the Icelandic Roots Rootshús project received a $300,000 Destination Development grant from the North Dakota Department of Commerce to support the creation of the new Icelandic Rootshús heritage center with exhibits, genealogy research areas, a library, children’s space, and a coffee and gathering area, along with interior systems, furnishings, display cases, and signage.
If you would like to help make Icelandic Rootshús a reality, you can read more about it here.
