Unlike reserves established for First Nations through the Indian Act, where political enfranchisement was withheld from those living on reserve, inhabitants of New Iceland, created through the Dominion Lands Act, were eligible for full Canadian citizenship over time. The immigrants were favoured by the Canadian government “in part based on ideas about who they were in terms of their racial fitness to be colonists in the northwest,” according to Ryan Eyford, author of White Settler Reserve: New Iceland and the Colonization of the Canadian West. However, after a few years of failed fishing, homesteading and politicking, public opinion began to turn against the Icelandic transplants. 

In an 1877 piece, a writer for the Manitoba Free Press described New Iceland’s population as an “effete and unprogressive race, who were not equal to the struggle of life on this continent and must inevitable [sic] succumb to the fate of the ‘least fit’.”

Ironically, given that New Iceland’s establishment displaced many First Nations people, New Iceland’s early successes were largely thanks to cooperation with local Anishinaabe, Cree and Métis, who passed along valuable knowledge that helped the newcomers survive. Indeed, my own great-great-grandfather, Gestur Oddleifsson, endured and eventually prospered thanks to Joseph Monkman, a half-Cree, half-Scottish man who taught him survival skills after Oddleifsson’s father died of smallpox when he was just 11. 

Today, a hulking Viking statue stands proudly in the centre of Gimli’s Viking Park. It was erected in 1967 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Canadian Confederation. The surrounding park opened in August 2017 for the125th Islendingadagurinn and just after Canada 150 festivities.