Fonds consists of personal documents created and kept by Stefan Arnason, mostly in the form of diaries which document his family’s life from 1936 until his death in 1956. Some earlier diary entries, from 1906-1912, document Arnason’s life before his marriage, in Winnipeg and Piney. Diary entries pay particular attention to employment, family occasions and important events, and the weather. Fonds also contains some loose correspondence and notes, and several notebooks which appear to have been used during Arnason’s school days (including one “Nokkur sönglög,” containing Icelandic songs).

The IABC fonds reflects the community collecting practices that the IABC undertook to preserve the history of Icelanders in British Columbia. Fonds is arranged in eight subfonds that reflect the various community organizations from which the archives originally collected.

Fonds documents the IABC’s commitment to preserving the lived experiences of its Icelandic community and is arranged into seven series that correspond to the IABC’s activities: administration and operation; providing educational programs and collecting biographies as well as written and oral histories; collecting Icelandic music; compiling a collection of Icelandic newspapers and publications; holding exhibits and events; acquiring photographic collections; and lastly acquiring collections of textual records, ephemera, and artifacts from its community.

Fonds also contains eight other subfonds of textual, photographic, audiovisual, and ephemeral material of Vancouver-based Icelandic Societies including the Sólskin Society, the Icelandic Canadian Club of British Columbia (ICC of BC), the Icelandic National League of North America (INL of NA), Icelandic Care Home Höfn Society, the Scandinavian Cultural Society (SCS), Ströndin Internet Radio, the Danish Archives, and the Icelandic Lutheran Church.