Ólafur S. Þorgeirsson, the publisher of the Almanak in Winnipeg, lived in Akureyri in 1874 and was involved in preparations for a westward journey that summer. He writes about Friðrik and his and Sigríður’s courtship that year in Almanak in 1916 and says: “The writer remembers telling that their courtship began in Akureyri while waiting for the westbound ship, for which, as often, there was a long wait that year.”
Friðrik Sigurbjörnsson and his fiancee, Sigríður Jónsdóttir from Litla Strönd by Mývatn came to Winnipeg in the fall of 1875. There, Friðrik must have built a shack in the so-called Hudson’s Bay Flats together with several other Icelanders, and this wretched shack neighborhood was called Shanty Town. Reverend Páll Þorláksson was on his way to New Iceland in the fall of 1876 and on September 6 he married them in Winnipeg and they were the first Icelandic couple married there.