Kathy Thorbjarnarson

Kathy grew up in the New York City region with an Icelandic father and Canadian mother. She has attended university in upstate New York (BS Biology-Geology), North Carolina (MS Marine Science) and California (PhD Environmental Engineering). She retired after 30 years of teaching hydrogeology at San Diego State University. Her genealogical investigations led her to discover the Icelandic Roots database.

Her father was the only member of his family to immigrate to another country. He was a well-known surgeon in New York City. Kathy has twin half-sisters and many cousins in Iceland. Traveling through Iceland has instilled an appreciation of Icelandic history and the lives of her ancestors.

Besides genealogy, she is enjoying reading the Icelandic sagas and researching the saga people and places. In the past, travelling through Iceland with her father and other relatives always entailed saga place discussions. Being able to travel herself with saga information as well as the knowledge of the geology is something she appreciates (although her kids don’t). Finding a like-minded group at Icelandic Roots, she will be working on enhancing the database to identify people who are mentioned in the sagas. She hopes that information on the Icelandic ancestors and saga places will inspire reading of the sagas.