August 17, 2025
My summer project
I haven’t mentioned this before, but I’m creating a coloring book for the museum, set to celebrate its 30th anniversary in 2026. I’ve selected various photographs and scenes from the museum and have been transforming them into coloring book pages using just a pencil and a micron pen. This project has given me a unique connection with many of the images. By closely examining each photo, I’ve picked up on details I might have missed if I weren’t drawing them.

For example, one of my drawings features a little boy inside an old turf house. The scene is crowded with various objects, and next to the stove was an indistinguishable blob. When I zoomed in to figure out what to draw, I realized it was actually a cat! The cat must have moved just as the photo was taken, making it blur into obscurity. The boy’s sullen expression made me wonder what he might have been going through at the time, but there’s some comfort in knowing he had his furry companion nearby.

I just finished the last page today and am proud to say I completed the entire project with only one pencil, which is now a little under an inch long! Now, I’ll begin scanning each image to prepare for printing. Keep an eye out for the coloring book’s release next summer!

[...]

Being here has fostered a deep connection to this place. Having lived in Hawaii for the past decade, I’ve learned a great deal about Hawaiian culture. One concept I had heard of but never truly understood until coming to Iceland is the idea of a “sense of place.” For the Hawaiian people, this concept is vital—it represents a lifestyle deeply rooted in familial relationships with the land and all its features: the physical terrain, the stories tied to it, and those who lived there before. Where you come from and where your ancestors come from are central to your identity. I feel this profound “sense of place” here in Iceland. Connecting with the land and learning more about the stories of my ancestors has helped me gain greater insight into who I am. I’ve spoken a lot about connecting with others, but this trip has brought me just as much connection to myself, which has been truly priceless.

August 23, 2025
Last full day in Hofsós
On my last full day in Hófsos, I woke up early. Right after opening my eyes and looking out the window from my bed, I saw a blue sky with small pink clouds floating by as the sun began to rise. I got ready earlier than usual because we were scheduled to welcome another cruise ship into the harbor, which would double the population of Hófsos for the fourth time this summer. It was a gorgeous day; the sun was shining, and the bright blue sky was only interrupted by a few wispy clouds.

I took out my bagpipes and stood on the rocks by the harbor, welcoming the guests with some music. After about half an hour of playing, I was assigned to my group, which I would guide on a tour of the town. This time, I assisted a small group—just one older couple from London. They had some mobility limitations, so I took them on a shorter tour, but we talked a great deal about the exhibits, and they had all sorts of questions. They were lovely, inquisitive, and very appreciative. They felt fortunate to have a private tour, as it allowed them to ask more questions instead of getting lost in a crowd.

After most of the guests returned to the ship, the tour guides and I sat outside to enjoy the sunshine. I even started to sweat! As we soaked in the warmth and sipped our coffee, David and I reminisced about how much more confident we had become in our ability to guide tours since our first one. We have both learned a great deal since arriving and have found our rhythm in providing an excellent experience for our guests.

Once the cruise ship set off for its next destination, the other tour guides headed home, and David and I stayed at the museum to greet any guests who might visit. Valgeir joined me for a while to chat before he left to tend to some horse-related duties. He mentioned how quickly my time here has flown by. I expressed how special this internship opportunity has been and how much I’ve learned about my ancestors and myself. He gave me a long hug before he left to tend to his horses.

The remainder of the day was slow-paced, much like the past few weeks, and I did my best to soak up the last moments of this year’s internship. We closed up a bit early, and I had the honor of lowering the flags for the final time. After locking up, I headed over to Brimnes to unwind a bit before my cousin Þora arrived. She arrived shortly after, and we briefly caught up on what we had been doing over the past few months before heading over to Vatn for dinner with Valgeir and Gunna.

Upon our arrival, we admired the stunning view; the whole day had been so gorgeous. The water was like glass, perfectly reflecting the clouds above. Valgeir had prepared a lovely meal for us, and Mallory, David, and one of Valgeir’s granddaughters joined us. We talked about our day, laughed, and shared stories, leaving my face sore from all the smiling. We also reflected on how special this experience had been. I shared some herbs I had gathered around Hófsos, presented in recycled jars that I had adorned with some hand-drawn labels. In return, they gave me some thoughtful gifts, including an authentic Icelandic flag from their flag shop and a hat featuring the name of their farm along with their farm number, which is displayed on all their sheep tags.

As we said our “see you later” goodbyes, I lingered a bit longer after David and Mallory left, wanting to savor each moment. I hugged both Valgeir and Gunna tightly, and we all got emotional; there was not a dry eye in sight. The most challenging part of this experience has been having to depart and say goodbye, at least for now. I have left a significant piece of my heart here in Hófsos, and they promised they would look after it until I return.

August 28, 2025
Goodbye to Hofsós
This week, I had to say goodbye to Hofsós, and it turned out to be more difficult than I had anticipated. Words cannot truly express how special my time there was, and I will cherish this summer forever. I packed my belongings and cleaned up Brimnes for David to enjoy during his last few weeks there. When I closed the door of Brimnes for the final time, I was overwhelmed by a mix of sadness and gratitude. I felt sad that this chapter of my life was coming to an end, but I was also deeply grateful for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity I had experienced.

Soon it was time for the museum to open, and the day was about to begin. I said my final goodbyes and made sure to take a photo with Valgeir and Gunna, who all gave me long hugs. I have grown to love and care for them deeply. As Þóra and I drove out of Hófsos, I couldn’t help but cry for a while. I am so grateful to have had this beautiful experience, to have established such strong connections, and for the opportunity to connect more with my roots. I left a big piece of my heart there, and I can’t wait to return.

I recognize that this has been a life-altering experience, and I am grateful for the incredible opportunity I had. Throughout this journey, I explored many aspects of my heritage and discovered new and better ways to live. I gained a wealth of knowledge about history, which reinforced my belief that life is all about connection. Additionally, I developed a newfound confidence in myself, as I accomplished a significant amount independently and learned to enjoy my own company more than I had before. I realized that most of the time we are capable of far more than we give ourselves credit for, and if we remain open and curious, many incredible things can happen.

July 27, 2025
One Month in Hofsós
I can hardly believe it’s already been a month since I arrived in Hofsós! This place has been a true sanctuary for me, filled with peace, a deep connection to nature, and meaningful interactions with others — many of which have been wonderfully serendipitous. This past week has been full of adventure, quiet moments, delicious food, and new connections. Before diving into the week’s escapades, I’d like to take a moment to highlight the work I’ve been doing at the museum.

Connections made at Vesturfarasetrið
I’ve realized that I haven’t shared enough about my experiences working at the museum and what it truly means to me. In a previous post, I briefly touched on the museum’s purpose and provided details about each of its buildings; however, I didn’t delve into the day-to-day interactions that make this place so special. 

Some days are pretty slow, with only a handful of guests passing through, while others bring a steady stream of visitors eager to explore. It’s fascinating to see people from all corners of the globe come to visit us, including India, Belgium, Switzerland, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Austria, England, Norway, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain, the USA, Canada, and many more countries. Each visitor brings their unique perspective and stories, enriching our museum experience and reminding me of the importance of cultural exchange.

Among the many encounters I have had with travelers, some have particularly stood out to me. I am constantly reminded of the incredible interconnectedness in our universe, as there have been many instances where I have made wonderful connections with people, even in the far north, in the tiny town of Hofsós.

When guests arrive, I usually start by asking where they're traveling from, how long they'll be visiting, and what brings them to the museum. In return, they often inquire about my background and ask why I'm volunteering here. Many are surprised to learn that I'm a Western Icelander from Hawaii. Sharing these personal details often sparks engaging conversations, especially since many guests are excited to connect with someone from a place that holds cherished memories for them or who shares a common interest.

[...]

Many visitors to the museum are of Icelandic descent, and their experience here offers a deep understanding of their familial origins. The museum does an excellent job of illustrating the harsh realities of life in Iceland, where many people believed that emigrating west was their best chance for survival. As I learn more about the journeys of various Icelanders, I often find myself wondering how they endured such hardships. Many visitors also ponder the same question.

Visitors with Icelandic heritage have varying degrees of familiarity with their family history. Some come with a wealth of information, while others know just a few names. For those who do have a name, we can help shed light on their ancestors' immigration stories. Occasionally, guests passionately share their family tales, and their Icelandic pride truly shines through. 

One day, an Icelandic couple returned many years after their first visit to the museum, eager to track down a photograph they remembered seeing in our genealogy library. As we searched for the book containing the photo, they regaled me with stories about their family, many of whom ventured west while others remained in Iceland. After about an hour of friendly conversation and diligent searching, we finally located the photograph. Their excitement was apparent; it turned out to be a picture of his great-grandmother, accompanied by a brief paragraph about her life. He snapped a photo of the page, thrilled to have found it. A fun little anecdote: he shared that his great-grandmother had earned the nickname "the machine gun" due to her lively chatter. He joked that his own talkative nature was likely inherited from her. We all shared a good laugh before they departed.

Yesterday, I met a couple who are related to Valgeir and are from the Big Island of Hawaii. They were excited to meet me, and Valgeir asked me to give them a tour of the museum. It was clear that it meant a great deal to them to have someone from their home state dedicate time and attention to them, highlighting the stories in the museum that featured their family members.

June 21, 2025
As this year's US Snorri Alumni Intern, I’ll be supporting new participants in the Snorri Program and volunteering at Vesturfarasetrið, the Icelandic Emigration Center in Hofsós. My days will be spent welcoming museum guests and helping both Icelanders and Western Icelanders trace their family histories - a rewarding way to connect with heritage and community. Hofsós itself is a charming northern village of fewer than 200 residents, perched on the edge of a fjord and steeped in history. I’ll be staying in Brimnes, the former home of renowned Icelandic-American poet Bill Holm - a cozy cottage with breathtaking views over the water.

July 6, 2025
First Week in Hofsós
The first week in Hofsós has been both eventful and peaceful. Volunteering at the museum is extra special for me, as the museum tells the story of Icelanders who left their homeland and headed west, including my own ancestors. It’s been a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with my roots, uncover details about why my family left, and share their story with travelers from all over the world.

I’m joined by two other lovely Western Icelanders, Sydney from Edmonton and David from Indiana. Getting to know them has been an absolute pleasure! The first few days were spent familiarizing myself with the surroundings and absorbing as much information as possible at the museum. I’d visited once before during my Snorri adventure tour back in 2018, so there was a sense of familiarity, but I still needed to refresh my memory.

Brimnes 
I have the honor of staying in a charming cottage right on the fjord, just a three-minute walk from the museum. This house, called Brimnes, was once the summer residence of the renowned Icelandic-American author Bill Holm. He lived in Minnesota and bought the home here to spend summers in Iceland, where he found inspiration for his writing. He even wrote a book called The Windows of Brimnes, which I read before arriving. His wife still owns the property and kindly allows volunteers to stay here during the summer.

Besides his job at the school and his yearly gigs with the Snorri Program, Kent leads group and private tours both in Iceland and abroad and even teaches at the guide school he once attended. He is an avid traveler himself, having visited 50 countries. Cuba has long been one of his favorite destinations for both his own holidays and guiding groups. In 2023, Kent took a sabbatical from his day job and embarked on an epic journey around the world, traveling a total of about 37,000 kilometers in six weeks. He flew from Winnipeg to Miami to Istanbul to Mumbai to Singapore to Manila to Taiwan to Seoul to Minneapolis to Winnipeg – and then of course back to Iceland. Since May 2001, Kent has taken 392 flights, flying a total distance of over 1.1 million kilometers! 

Many of those flights over the years have taken Kent back to Canada to visit family and friends in Manitoba, and he attends the Icelandic festival in Gimli whenever he can. In 2022, when Snorri West returned after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic, Kent even stepped up to serve as a local coordinator for North Dakota and Manitoba. Drawing on his experience in the tourism industry and his deep familiarity with the area, Kent created an itinerary for the two weeks Snorri Westers Sigfús and Erla spent there and served as driver and guide, showing them around the Interlake and the Icelandic communities in North Dakota. He even guided them through three international border crossings!  

Granted Icelandic citizenship in 2008, Kent has no plans to leave Iceland just yet, though he hopes to spend more time in Canada in the future. In the meantime, he says he’ll keep working with the Snorri Program as long as he keeps being asked back. 

DID Y0U KNOW? Kent has driven around 33,000 kilometers with Snorri groups over the past 19 years – usually around 1700 kilometers each year! 

Diann Barbacci 
Winston Salem, NC 
Snorri Plus 2024 

Most Snorri and Snorri Plus participants are several generations removed from their Icelandic ancestors, descended from those thousands of Icelanders who emigrated across the Atlantic starting in the mid-19th century. In that regard, I’m a bit of an outlier, since I was born in Iceland and raised there to the age of 10. My Snorri journey began at my mom’s funeral in 2022. After the service, my cousin Magnea started talking about our great uncle Óli, who emigrated to Canada in 1911. As our family historian, Magnea had done some research in the Íslendingabók genealogy database and found that Óli departed Iceland with his wife and four children. This was all news to me, and we had little else to go on, but I promised her I would continue the search and find a living descendant of Óli’s in North America. That research led me to the Icelandic Roots database and the Snorri Programs.   

After moving to the US as a child, I spent many subsequent summers traveling back “home” with my mom, Alda, to visit Amma and Afi and the rest of the family. My American father, John Barbacci, was stationed in Iceland during World War II. A little history refresher may come in handy here: After the Nazis invaded Denmark and Norway, Britain invaded Iceland on May 10, 1940, to prevent a potential German occupation and secure a strategic location for British naval and air patrols. On June 16, 1941, with British troops needed elsewhere and the US having entered the war, the US military officially took over the occupation of Iceland.  

At the end of the war, having been in Iceland for a little over two years, Dad returned to Pennsylvania and quickly found work as an aircraft mechanic for Lockheed Airlines. That job took him to France for a year, and at the end of that year, he was asked if he would like to return to the NATO base in Iceland and continue working there. 

It was upon Dad’s return to Iceland that he met my mother, Alda. The establishment of the NATO base at Keflavík at the end of the war had brought commercial air travel to Iceland. American Airlines began service to Iceland, and my mother got a job as a waitress at the American Airlines café on base. That’s where she met my dad, who was a prolific coffee drinker! Dad later transitioned to working with the US Department of Defense as a civilian contractor.   

Mom and Dad were married and raised me and my siblings, all while living off base with my Icelandic grandparents in Ytri-Njarðvík. My grandfather was a highly respected fisherman in the community and did quite well for himself. My dad spent a total of 20 years in Iceland and assimilated well, even learning the language. My siblings and I attended the NATO school on base at Naval Air Station Keflavík, but Mom made sure we spoke Icelandic fluently – and kept it up after we moved to the US. ​

When we were growing up in Iceland, my grandfather and his siblings (brother Valdi and sister Magga) were all very close, and we visited them in Reykjavík often. Even after moving to the US, every subsequent family trip to Iceland included visits with Valdi and his wife Binna, and Magga and her husband Steini. My cousin Magnea (Valdi's granddaughter) and I are of the same generation. She once shared with me that my great-grandfather Konráð moved in with Valdi and Binna in his later years. She recalled Valdi often saying that Konráð regretted never finding his brother Óli. It took me over a year, but with information gleaned from Icelandic Roots, a great amount of research, and many, many phone calls to churches and funeral homes, I found our living relatives - Óli’s descendants – in Canada.   

I will never forget the phone call I received from a Lutheran church secretary in Ft. Francis, Ontario: “I have found your cousin Helen,” she said. “She asked that I share her phone number and she’s expecting a call from you.” A few months later, my husband and I made a special trip to Fargo, North Dakota for an event. I called Helen and we drove north to meet her for what I thought was just going to be coffee in International Falls, Minnesota. Instead, Helen, her brother Oliver, and their families took us out for dinner – all 30 of us. When Helen and I met in the parking lot, we immediately got goosebumps because we even look alike!  

On one of our earlier family trips to Iceland, we had visited the Emigration Center in Hofsós, but at that time we were still completely unaware of our personal connection to the emigration story – Óli’s journey to Canada. Now I know that Óli, while still living in Iceland, had a daughter with a woman name Þórunn Bjarnadóttir. Óli and Þórunn never married, but in 1898, Óli married Jóna Gísladóttir from Ísafjarðarbær, a small fishing village in the Westfjords. Óli and Jóna had four children together in Iceland. Throughout this period, many members of Jóna’s family had emigrated to Canada and begun farming there. In 1912, a year after Óli and Þórunn’s daughter Sigríður Elín tragically died at the age of 17, Óli and Jóna followed in Jóna’s family’s footsteps and emigrated to Canada with their children. They would go on to have three more children. 

Though I’d made countless trips back to Iceland over the years, the Snorri Plus program last summer gave me a different experience of my home country. I learned more specifics of Icelandic history, from Leifur Eiríksson to Danish rule. I connected with two cousins, one I grew up knowing but hadn’t seen in years and another I had never met before. And I was able to further feed my curiosity about life in Iceland during WWII. Before embarking on my Snorri trip, I had begun reading G. Jökull Gíslason’s book Iceland in World War II: A Blessed War. Little did I know that Jökull himself would give a presentation to our Snorri group and that I’d have the chance to meet with him one-on-one for a chat and personal tour of Fossvogur Cemetery, where almost 200 WWII casualties are buried. Our group also visited the War and Peace Museum in Hvalfjörður, where I enjoyed chatting with the founder, Gaui Sigmundsson, and seeing all sorts of memorabilia he’s collected from the Allied occupation of Iceland. 

As part of the Snorri Plus trip, I also visited Hofsós again. This time, I viewed the museum through a different lens, but I was still unable to imagine how difficult the journey must have been. Leaving your homeland for a chance at a better life, but not knowing what may await you on the other side of the ocean. While still only scratching the surface of all there is to discover, Snorri Plus allowed me to delve deeper into Icelandic history and gain a greater appreciation for our culture.   

Both of my parents are now buried in Iceland. My grandfather was once asked, “What’s it like having an American as a son-in-law?” His response? “He is the best there is.” Needless to say, we all had a close relationship with my grandparents. It was Dad’s dying wish to be buried at the foot of their grave. Dad passed away in 2015, but it was not until 2017, when my Aunt Jóna also passed, that we took Dad's ashes to Iceland. Mom passed in 2020, two months before the pandemic lockdown, so we waited until 2022 to bury her ashes alongside Dad’s.   
​
I have been working on a family book about my parents’ time in Iceland for a while. As my Icelandic cousin Birna once said to me, “You must tell the story. Þetta deyr með þér.” And she’s right; being the youngest in my family, if I don’t tell this story, it will die with me. ​