Stephansson House

Stephansson House

Stephansson House is a provincial historic site located approximately 30 km southwest of Red Deer, Alta near Markerville, a small community settled by Icelanders in the late 19th century.

Stephán G. Stephansson left Iceland in 1873, settling first in the US before moving to Markerville in 1889. While in Markerville his political and philosophical thinking evolved, and he wrote extensively in Icelandic. He was deeply disillusioned by World War I, and during the war he was an outspoken pacifist. His opposition to the war alienated him from many of the more conservative Icelanders in Western Canada and the US. Nonetheless his written works, in particular his poetry, attracted attention and were published in North America and Iceland, and many consider him one of the greatest modern writers in Icelandic.

Stephansson died at Markerville in 1927. In 1976 his house was declared a provincial historic site and restored to its 1927 appearance. It is open to the public from mid-May to early September.