The New Iceland Heritage Museum will be unveiling a captivating exhibit in May that will take people back to 1975 when thousands of visitors descended on Gimli to celebrate 100 years of Icelandic settlement in the New Iceland colony.
Playing Vikings at the New Iceland Heritage Museum
The first Icelanders to the colony – which the Canadian government created on land along the southwest shore of Lake Winnipeg – arrived on Willow Island, south of present-day Gimli, on Oct. 21, 1875, during a winter storm. They learned how to survive a harsh Canadian winter with the help of Indigenous people in the area.
The museum is paying tribute to the 1975 celebration, a key moment in time when the settlers’ descendants and other people of Icelandic heritage threw a massive celebration in Gimli to mark 100 years of surviving and thriving in the region.
“It’s going to be a spectacular exhibit that will focus on our centennial celebration to mark the 100th Anniversary of New Iceland,” said NIHM executive director Julianna Roberts. “That was a huge celebration. Thousands of people from Iceland came to Gimli and we didn’t have enough accommodation in Gimli for everyone. [Resident] Hedy Bjornson was phoning around to get more people billeted because there were so many Icelanders here.”
It took a year of research to pull the exhibit together, she said. The gallery space in which it will be displayed is already painted thematic blue with recognizable Icelandic elements, and museum staff will be installing the exhibit this week.
Components of the exhibit will include colourful, expressive 1970s garments, which Roberts obtained from the Winnipeg-based Costume Museum of Canada, television footage from an Icelandic broadcaster that came to Gimli to cover the 1975 event, clothing that was sold by an Icelandic store located in the Eaton’s department store in downtown Winnipeg, lava pottery, a wool blanket made specifically for the centennial and family photos.
“One of our favourite photos shows Icelandic women walking in the 1975 celebration parade. There were about 50 or 60 women wearing Icelandic costumes and sunglasses. We’re calling them the Cool Ammas,” said Roberts.
Although the exhibit’s focus is on the 1975 celebration, it will include a panel that looks forward to the future, she said.
The opening of the exhibit will coincide with the first day of the Icelandic National League of North America’s (INLNA) biennial convention, which the Gimli Icelandic Canadian Society is hosting this year, and it will remain in place until May 2026.
Roberts said she and a team of people put together the exhibit. Winnipeg-based graphic designer Aniko Szabo designed it and Laurie Bertram (curator, historian) and University of Winnipeg associate history professor Ryan Eyford carried out the research.
Eyford, who is the curator of the exhibit, has family ties to the New Iceland area. He moved to Winnipeg Beach with his family when he was a child and went to Gimli High School.
His research interests are western Canada, Indigenous-settler relations, migration and Iceland, has written a number of scholarly papers and a book titled, White Settler Reserve: New Iceland and the Colonization of the Canadian West.
He said he has helped out with exhibits in the past, but the NIHM project was different in that it entailed a fair amount of research, writing and photo-finding, and it was the “most I’ve ever done for an exhibit.”
In the wider context of the time, the 1975 centennial celebration was more than a significant event celebrating 100 years of Icelandic endeavour in the region. Much like today, with many Canadians concerned about the U.S. tariff war, inflation and job security, people in Gimli in the 1970s were facing a period of economic uncertainty.
“The centennial was a major event in the community’s history and it happened at a really critical moment in time. And I thought it was worth re-visiting that time period,” said Eyford. “In the immediate years prior to the centennial, the air force base closed. And just before that the fishery had closed for a couple of seasons because of concerns about mercury contamination in the lake. People were really concerned there was no future for the community. Two major economic drivers were in question. One was definitely disappearing and it was unclear what would happen to the fishery. This celebration falls within that context in which there was an emphasis on celebrating the Icelandic heritage as part of the identity of the community.”
Despite the economic stressors of the time, the 1975 celebration gave rise to economic opportunities that included the birth of Viking Travel. Its founders – Ted and Marjorie Arnason and Stefan and Olla Stefanson – realized there was strong interest among the community to visit Iceland, and they subsequently organized charter flights directly from Winnipeg.
As a history professor, research and writing are part of Eyford’s everyday job in addition to teaching. For the NIHM exhibit, he said he pored over newspapers from 1975, including The Winnipeg Tribune, The Winnipeg Free Press and a local paper called Lake Centre News to find coverage of the Gimli celebration.
He also looked for historical material, photographs and film footage in the Archives of Manitoba and in the Icelandic Special Collections at the University of Manitoba.
“For the video component of the exhibit, we’ll have excerpts from a documentary that was shot by the Icelandic public broadcaster, and footage from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that was shot in 1975 and shown in 1976,” he said.
The NIHM had also put out a call to the local community, asking them to lend the museum any memorabilia and/or photos they had from the centennial celebration. Those items are part of the exhibit.
“We couldn’t have done this without the local people contributing their photographs and artefacts,” said Eyford. “And I and the NIHM are thankful for that and for all the help that everyone has given us in putting this together.”
He said he’s also grateful that Szabo, whose clients include the Mennonite Heritage Village, could work with them on the project as she’s a “fantastic exhibit designer.”
The NIHM’s 1975 exhibit opens on Thursday, May 1 from 7-9 p.m. and includes wine, cheese and refreshments.
Eyford will speak briefly about the genesis of the exhibit and thank everyone who contributed to it.
In addition to having the 1975 exhibit in place for a year, Roberts said the NIHM is organizing a bus tour of the New Iceland area on Sunday, May 4 for people attending the INLNA’s convention.
But there are plans to offer additional bus tours of New Iceland for the general public in July, August and perhaps September.
The NIHM is located in the Waterfront Centre on First Avenue. Call (204) 642-4001 for more information.
