Icelandic Connection is a quarterly magazine celebrating the cultural heritage of people of Icelandic descent in North America. Formerly named The Icelandic Canadian, the literary magazine has been in continuous publication since 1942.
In 1942, members of the Icelandic Canadian Club of Winnipeg decided that the future of Icelandic heritage preservation in North America did not lie with publications in the Icelandic language and so The Icelandic Canadian magazine was launched. The magazine started as a project of the Winnipeg club and grew from there.
Many second and third generation Canadians of Icelandic background were fluent in the Icelandic language, especially if they lived in the rural districts but the majority of those born in larger cities never learned to speak the language. None the less the will to preserve the Icelandic component of our heritage is still very much alive even though the language component is no longer being preserved. There was also a need in the Icelandic Canadians to offer their community a venue for publishing literary works separate from the other Icelandic Canadian publishing endeavors which were more newspaper based.