Settling New Iceland 
The four circumstances behind it 

Author: Stefan Jonasson

There were four circumstances that led to the creation of New Iceland,” according to Ryan Eyford. “The first was that it was an established policy of the Canadian government to grant blocks of land to immigrants as a way to encourage immigration.” First introduced in 1872, these colonization reserves set aside a million acres of land in Manitoba over the next decade, the most widely remembered reserves being those for the Mennonites and the Icelanders. The Icelanders chose the land that would become New Iceland partly because it was the largest block of land near the proposed mainline of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which would eventually be built south of the originally planned route. A second circumstance was Iceland’s increasing integration into the emigration and transportation network of the North Atlantic. A third circumstance entailed the decisions of influential individuals in Canada who looked favourably on Icelandic immigration to Canada, including Lord Dufferin, who was governor general at the time, and John Lowe, a senior civil servant responsible for immigration. The fourth circumstance was Icelanders’ own desire to settle somewhere as a group.

These four circumstances offer an answer to the first of four questions that Ryan posed: Why were they here on the western shore of Lake Winnipeg? Who were they? What did they find when they got here? What happened to them? He was speaking on “New Iceland: The First Settlers” at the Icelandic National League of North America convention in Gimli on Saturday, May 3, 2025.

Who were they? “There were about 250 people in that first group in 1875, and they were composed primarily of families with young children.” The group included 50 couples, whose average age was 37 for men and 35 for women, and there were 114 children, three-quarters of whom were under 11 years of age. There were 29 unmarried men and six unmarried women. Some of the immigrant families included three generations travelling together. Virtually all of the members of the group came from northern Iceland, specifically Eyjafjörður, Skagafjörður, and Þingeyjarsýsla. Most of them had come to Canada in 1873 and 1874, spending a year or two in Ontario.

What did they find when they got here? Firstly, there was already a lot going on in the area, including Indigenous fishing and fur trading. There was also a party of surveyors. “They’re not alone; they were surrounded by a rich social context that they come into and eventually become part of.”

What happened? “They came here hoping to build new lives for themselves, to establish a future for their families. … It didn’t work out for many of them. What they found was, unfortunately in many cases, tragedy.” Ryan described the fate of 10 people in the area of Arnes, six adults and four children, who died from scurvy and smallpox during the first two years of settlement. “There was quite a bit of mortality among that very first group. … Many of them only found a grave in New Iceland.” Those that survived tried to settle as best they could, many of them seeking to settle near family and friends from Iceland.

“Homesteading, as you know, is extremely difficult. People were not experienced at evaluating the quality of land, and the quality of land within New Iceland is uneven. There are some places that are better than others, and in a lot of cases, they picked their land when it was covered in snow. So they didn’t know, necessarily, what they were signing up for.” While families worked diligently to clear the land, many found the land unproductive and “suffered through crop failures and flooding and other setbacks along the way.”

It was common for the settlers to try to combine farming with paid labour, with many seeking employment in Winnipeg when they could in order to earn cash income. In some cases, the adults in a household might alternate working in the city.

“As all of you know, there was a lot of outmigration from New Iceland. In 1878 and 1879, more than 50 percent of the original settlers left for Winnipeg and Dakota Territory, and then the exodus became general in 1880 and 1881 during the flooding.” In some cases, the flooding swept farmers’ outbuildings into the lake. “In 1897, when New Iceland’s reserve status was rescinded, only 12 members of the original group of 250 still lived in the colony. Most died or moved, but, of course, by that time others had come along and had settled on the farms that had been abandoned in the flooding and difficult times early on. The rest went on to communities in Western Canada and the western United States.”

Ryan insisted that there is still much to be discovered by researchers who are curious about what happened to the earliest settlers – but “that’s a research project for somebody else,” he said.

Following his presentation, Ryan was asked about the route that the immigrants followed. He noted that the route wasn’t as simple or easy as it appeared on the simplified maps that potential immigrants would have seen. People would first sail from Iceland to Scotland, “often in very uncomfortable circumstances,” and, crossing Scotland, would then sail to Quebec. From there, they would take the train to Toronto, followed by another train to a lake port, where they would catch a steamer to Duluth. Then, they would cross Minnesota by train and ride a flatboat downriver to Upper Fort Garry before travelling further downriver to Lake Winnipeg.