About Vesturheimsrit

Between 1870 and 1914, thousands of Icelanders emigrated to North America, bringing books and handwritten manuscripts with them. Many remain in family homes, churches and libraries — uncatalogued and at risk.

Vesturheimsrit supports the Fragile Heritage Project’s aim to build a digital collection of Icelandic-language manuscripts held in public and private holdings across Canada and the U.S.A. Each item is photographed and described so it can be studied wherever it is kept.

We work in connection with the Fragile Heritage Project — in Icelandic, Í fótspor Árna Magnússonar í Vesturheimi — named for Árni Magnússon (1663–1730), who gathered Iceland’s medieval manuscripts and saved many from loss.

The collections in the gallery document an attempt to catalogue the Icelandic book collections of Daren Gislason of Minneota, Minnesota, photographed at his farmhouse, his house in town and the Opera House.