Icelandic Canadian

Icelandic Canadian

Canada has the largest ethnic Icelandic population outside Iceland, with about 88,875 people of Icelandic descent as of the Canada 2006 Census. Many Icelandic Canadians are descendants of people who fled an eruption of the Icelandic volcano Askja in 1875.

The history between Icelanders and North America dates back approximately one thousand years. The very first Europeans to reach North America were in fact Icelandic Norsemen, who made at least one major effort at settlement in what is today Newfoundland (L'Anse aux Meadows) around 1009 AD. Snorri Þorfinnsson, the son of Þorfinnr Karlsefni and his wife Guðríðr, is the first European known to have been born in the New World. In 1875, over 200 Icelanders immigrated to Manitoba establishing the New Iceland colony along the west shore of Lake Winnipeg, this is the first part of a large wave of immigrants that settled on the Canadian parries.