On the day we spoke, Dave Helgi Johan was wearing a Gimli shirt – one of the familiar designs seen around the Interlake, printed with the vegvísir, the Icelandic wayfinding symbol. It was one of those small details that quietly explains a lot. Even on the other side of the world, New Iceland has a way of showing up in the everyday: on clothing, in names, in the music people keep, and in the stories that get told and retold around kitchen tables and cabin decks.

Dave’s connection to Gimli is both straightforward and complicated, which – if we’re being honest – is also a very New Iceland kind of answer.

“My family is from Gimli,” he explained. “My mom and dad grew up in Gimli.” When Dave and his brother were very young, the family moved to Winnipeg so his father could study education at the University of Manitoba, while his mother worked as a cashier.

“We were really, really poor,” Dave said plainly, and then added the part that matters most: they kept going anyway.

After his father graduated, the family moved north for his first teaching post – first to Little Grand Rapids, then Cormorant, then Cross Lake – a childhood shaped by movement, northern communities, and adaptability. Yet every summer, Dave returned “home” to Gimli.

“I always went back to Gimli every summer of my life,” he said. “We had a little cabin in South Beach, and we spent every summer there.” Eventually, the family returned permanently, and Dave completed Grade 12 at Gimli High School.

That pattern – leaving, returning, leaving again – is deeply familiar in New Iceland history. Icelandic settlers came to the Interlake seeking opportunity, built community, and never entirely stopped moving. Dave’s life follows that same rhythm.

“Gimli is a very creative town”

When Dave talks about Gimli, he doesn’t romanticize it – he remembers it.

He remembers South Beach summers, the pull of festival season, and the creative confidence that defines the town. “Gimli is a very, very creative town for arts and music,” he said. “I grew up being very proud of my Icelandic heritage. We had the Icelandic Festival every year.”

For anyone raised in or around Gimli, Íslendingadagurinn needs no explanation. It is a living expression of New Iceland culture – language, music, dance, family, and pride renewed annually.

Dave also remembers the town’s quieter mythologies, including huldufólk stories tied to familiar places. “Memories of Gimli, and the huldufólk … at Gimli Public School, which is now the town office,” he recalled.

Music, however, was everywhere.

Dave credits his biggest influences as close to home as possible: his father, his brother, and the wider Interlake music community.

“My dad played in a couple of local bands from Gimli,” he said. “One was called Abon, and one was called Shadow Force.”

His brother, James Robert Debrecen, now runs a recording studio in Selkirk called Pick This Production. “He’s raising a family and has a career,” Dave said. “Music is still a huge part of his life, even if it’s not his full-time job.”

When asked about Icelandic music more broadly, Dave admitted he’s not deeply connected to the contemporary Icelandic scene, though he hopes to visit Iceland one day. What he is deeply connected to is New Iceland music.

“I’m a big fan of Sól Sigurdsson,” he said. “I have a couple of his records at home: Lake Winnipeg Fisherman and New Iceland Saga. I even have them physically. Those are major keepsakes for me.”

They are more than records. They are portable pieces of identity.

Leaving home, landing elsewhere

Dave’s move to Australia began casually and then became very real, very fast.

“On a whim, I said, ‘Let’s go to Australia,’” he recalled. His partner at the time immediately committed. “And I was terrified. I’d never really travelled before, other than touring across Canada with bands.”

He arrived in Australia in February 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped everyday life. Lockdowns came in uneven waves, varying by region, opening and closing unpredictably.

Dave adapted. He spent time in Byron Bay, toured parts of the east coast, and eventually crossed into Queensland. On what was meant to be a single overnight stay in Airlie Beach, something clicked.

“I thought, ‘I’ll stay here for one night,’” he said. “Fast forward a few years, and I’m playing music full-time here. This is my job now. This is my life.”

He was candid about the work involved.

“I thought I would be great,” he said. “And I wasn’t. I really wasn’t.”

So he learned. He practiced. He kept showing up.

“I just kept at it,” he said. “Worked really hard.”

Since October 2023, Dave has been earning his living entirely through music, performing regularly in one of Australia’s busiest tourist regions, the gateway to the Whitsundays.

Þetta reddast – and patience

At one point in our conversation, I mentioned the Icelandic phrase þetta reddast – the cultural shorthand for it will work out.

Dave immediately connected with it. “I love that,” he said.

He also spoke about an Icelandic proverb he has tattooed, which he understands as a reminder of patience and endurance – of accepting that progress and consequences arrive in their own time. In conversation, the phrasing shifted, as proverbs often do across languages and memory, but the meaning was clear to him: persistence matters.

Whether framed as patience, inevitability, or resilience, the sentiment fits both Dave’s journey and a broader New Iceland worldview: you keep going, even when things are uncomfortable, and trust that effort accumulates.

A name that carries history

Dave’s stage name, Dave Helgi Johan, is not a performance choice. It is family history.

“My mom’s dad was Helgi Sigurdsson,” he explained. “I was named after my afi.”

Helgi Sigurdsson was born on Hecla Island, worked as a commercial fisherman on Lake Winnipeg, and served during the Second World War at the Gimli Air Base, fueling planes as part of the Royal Canadian Air Force.

That lineage matters not because it is grand, but because it is grounded. It ties one musician’s life to the working history of New Iceland; water, labour, and service.

And the name still does its work. Dave recalled Icelanders stopping mid-walk at Australian music festivals when they recognized it.

“They see my name and immediately want to talk,” he said. “People tell me it’s hard to pronounce, but I’m too proud of it. It’s too important to me.”

The dream, practically speaking

Dave’s goals are both ambitious and grounded. He is saving for an RV that he hopes to convert into a mobile recording studio – a “studio on wheels” – and is exploring ways to expand his work through recording and online platforms.

At the same time, he is navigating visa appeals and sponsorships as he works toward permanent residency in Australia.

And if that doesn’t work out?

“That’s not the end of the world,” he said calmly. “Leaving a first-world country to go to another first-world country – it’s just another adventure.”

It is a distinctly New Iceland way of seeing the world: deeply attached to home, but unafraid of departure; realistic, but optimistic; practical, but creative.

Dave Helgi Johan may be playing music under tropical skies, but Gimli remains close – on his shirt, in his records, in his name, and in the steady, unshowy confidence that so many New Iceland families recognize immediately.

Sometimes the most New Iceland thing you can do is simply decide I can do this – and then keep going until you prove yourself right.