Family Treasures

What we can accept, and how to preserve what we can't

We hear this every week: "I have my grandmother's photographs (or books or furniture or other items). I am moving. No one in the family wants them. I can't throw them away. Will you take them?"

That question deserves an honest answer. The universities, archives, and museums that once accepted collections have strict collecting policies, and most will not take additional Icelandic material unless it is extremely rare and in excellent condition. That is not indifference. It is shelf space, climate control, and staff hours — the real costs of keeping an object safe for another hundred years.

The Icelandic Rootshús faces the same limits. We are a heritage, educational, interpretive center. We want to tell our shared story and not serve as a storage facility. So here is our collecting plan so that every family knows where it stands.

What the Rootshús is actively looking for now

We collect a small number of objects, chosen because each one teaches something specific along the Emigration Trail or in other exhibits within the Rootshús. We will cross items off this list as we obtain them.

The Icelandic Rootshús is being furnished as we speak, and we still need a few specific things. If you have one of these, we would be grateful — please write to us.

From family farms and attics in North America

An ox yoke or a breaking plow. For the story of the Norwegian neighbors who lent tools and taught Icelanders to farm the prairie.
A koffurt — an emigrant trunk, ideally painted with a name and a date.
Vaðmál — homespun wool cloth.
A christening cap or similar small keepsake carried from Iceland.
Icelandic household objects (from Iceland, or from families who brought them)
Lýsislampi — a fish-oil lamp. Our highest priority. It was the only light in the baðstofa, and without it the room reads as a bedroom instead of a workplace.
Askur — the lidded wooden bowl each person ate from.
Sheep skins, dried sheep bones, wool from sheep
Rúmfjöl — a carved bed board.
Kambar — wool cards. Snælda — a drop spindle.
Strokkur — a butter churn. Trog — a wooden trough. Skyr barrels.
A balance scale with brass weights — for the story of the Danish trade monopoly.
Old fishing net and net floats - Lake Winnipeg or Iceland or the Pacific coast

We also need hands

Not everything we need already exists. Some of it has to be made, and we would far rather have it made by someone in this community than ordered from a catalog.

We are looking for:

A carpenter or joiner to build the three beds in the baðstofa and the bunks in the ship's hold. This is the largest single build in the building and the one visitors will climb into.
A woodturner for askar — the wooden eating bowls.
A woodcarver for a rúmfjöl, carved with initials the way they were.
Knitters. Socks, mittens, and a half-finished sock to leave on a bed, as though someone had just stood up. Please keep to plain period work rather than modern lopapeysa patterns — the yoke sweater came later than our story.
Anyone who wants to make food props for the pantry.

Your name goes on the work. Tell us what you'd like to build.

One excellent example of each

That's the rule that governs the list. If we already have that one, it doesn't mean your family's matters less. It means the story is already being told — and yours can join it in another way.

If you have something on that list, please contact us. We would be grateful, and we'll walk you through a simple deed of gift.

The rule that governs the list: one excellent example of each kind of object. One spinning wheel on the floor, with a family name and story on the label. It stands for every spinning wheel that crossed the ocean.

If we already have that one, it doesn't mean your family's is less important. It means the story is already being told, and yours can join it in the digital collection.

What people actually want

When someone says "I want this preserved," they very rarely mean "I want this in a box." What they mean is: I want a descendant to stand in front of this someday and know it belongs to them.

That is a real wish, and it can be granted. It just usually doesn't require us to take the object.

For photographs, letters, diaries, and documents: digitize and keep

This is the right answer for the great majority of what families offer us.

Scan it. Send the digital copy to Icelandic Roots, where we will catalog it and attach it to the people and places it belongs to. We will publish the donor and the story. You keep the original in your family, where a descendant can inherit it.

What this achieves:

The image and the story are preserved permanently and are searchable by anyone looking for that family for generations to come.
Your descendants in Reykjavík, Seattle, or Winnipeg can see it without traveling to North Dakota.
The physical object stays with the people who love it.

How to do it

Scan them and take photographs of the items. It's easier than most people expect, and it means your photographs and treasures never leave your house. We've written step-by-step directions covering resolution, file naming, and what to do with the files afterward.

Read our scanning directions → CLICK HERE

If you can't scan them, bring or send them to the Rootshús. We'll scan them here and get them back to you. Contact us first so we can set aside the time.

Either way, the originals go home with you.

Email us:

What it is, in a sentence or two.
A photograph.
The family it came from, and where they settled.
Its condition.

We answer every message. If it isn't a fit for us, we'll tell you honestly, and we'll tell you what we would do with it if it were ours.

What we cannot accept

We want to be direct so nobody drives three hours with a trunk full of items for nothing.

Books. The Rootshús library is already substantial but we will take books. If we have duplicates, they will go for sale or as give-aways each year.
Magazines and periodicals.
Photograph albums as physical objects - unless it is to be used as a special display. See the above note as we WANT all photos to be attached to people and places in the database, and we have an 'Unknown Photos' project that identifies photos families do not recognize.
Newspapers.
Duplicates of anything we hold.
Objects in poor condition, or with no connection to the Icelandic North American story.

Most Icelandic periodicals, newspapers, and journals are already digitized. The National and University Library of Iceland has scanned an enormous run of Icelandic newspapers and magazines — including Lögberg and Heimskringla — and made them free and full-text searchable at timarit.is.

For the rest:

Offer them to your local library or a Scandinavian heritage group.
Bring them to the Deuce of August for the used book table.
Offer them to family first, with a deadline.
Recycle what nobody claims.

Another way to give

If you're reading this because you want your family's connection to this story to last, there is a second answer: the building itself.

The Rootshús is being built now, in Mountain, North Dakota. Every named space, exhibit, and displayed object carries the name of the family who made it possible. A gift toward the building preserves the story for everyone's descendants, not only your own — and it takes up no shelf space at all.

Learn about giving

Thank you so very much for your support!

Contact the Rootshús

Icelandic Rootshús · 277 Main Ave., Mountain, ND · icelandicroots.com