1874 saw the celebration of 1000 years of settlement in Iceland, the country’s first national celebration of any kind. It also saw the arrival of Iceland’s first constitution, with the first visit from the Danish king, Christian IX, who arrived in August with it in hand. The nationalist artist Sigurður Guðmundsson and his comrades in the secretive “Evening Society” (Kvöldfélagið) were deeply involved in the preparation of nationally-tinted festivities surrounding the event. A culture war of sorts erupted between these nationalist intellectuals and the more pro-Danish burghers of Reykjavík, which resulted in dual festivities: one near Reykjavík prepared by the authorities, the other at the old parliamentary site of Þingvellir, largely prepared by Sigurður and his fellow-member of the “Evening Society”, Sigfús Eymundsson (1837–1911). Both occasions were attended by the king, but Governor Hilmar Finsen withheld funding from the Þingvellir ceremony and cold-shouldered Sigurður.

Celebrations of Iceland’s 1000 years were also held in settlements in the North American Mid-West and in Canada. The sentiments that developed in the New World generated a more intense symbolism, the emigrant population producing its own symbols of Romantic Nationalism. These eventually resonated back to Iceland, merging with and solidifying the symbolism Sigurður and his collaborators had created.

The conduit across the Atlantic was formed by Jón Ólafsson (1850–1916), another “Evening Society” member, who had fled Iceland the year before after being convicted of seditious lèse-majesté having written an article libelling Governor Finsen. (In 1870, he had been fined for writing an anti-Danish version of the Marseillaise.) On his travels through the Icelandic settlements in Wisconsin in 1874, Jón joined the committee organizing the first Icelandic festival in “the West”. He thus helped set the tone for the affirmation of Icelandic identity in the New World. Though small in numbers, the community managed a display of national identity, sporting a number of new symbolic elements of Sigurður´s design: women wore as “national” dress the newly-created skautbúningur alongside the more habitual peysuföt, and the newly-designed white falcon flag was carried at the head of the procession, alongside the Stars and Stripes, by men in a newly designed national costume of medievalist style.

That very same day the first Icelandic Association in the New World was formed, setting in motion a movement that would resonate back across the Atlantic a generation later. Its motto was “Freedom, Culture, Progress”, aiming to “maintain and strengthen the sense of national identity among Icelanders in this continent and to foster a connection between Icelanders in the West and our countrymen back home in Iceland and elsewhere”. Jón Ólafsson was elected secretary. The dream of a Greater Iceland in the New World provided motivation to not only maintain but to intensify ethnic identity. Thus in 1890, when Jón was editor of the Winnipeg-based Icelandic newspaper Lögberg (est. 1888), he hailed the first “Icelanders’ Day” (Íslendingadagurinn) in that city as follows: “We are attempting to turn us, the Icelanders, into a respectable ethnic group, a bit of an empire among the nationalities assembled here. We will all receive honour and benefit from a heightened reputation of Icelanders, and so will our descendants for untold years.”

Although 1 August became the established “Icelander’s Day” in many of the emigrant communities, it was eventually supplanted in Iceland itself by 1 December and 17 June, celebrating home rule and independence. The Westman Islanders, however, continue to hold a festival each year at the beginning of August under the heading of “National Holiday.”