Sharron Arksey

Three of Sharron Arksey’s four grandparents were of Icelandic descent. While her maternal grandparents settled along the east shores of Lake Manitoba in the Ashern area, her paternal Amma’s family took a more circuitous route. The family settled first in Mountain, North Dakota (where Sharron’s Amma was born in 1891), before moving to Saskatchewan and eventually Manitoba near Langruth along the west shore of Lake Manitoba. Although Sharron’s Dad did not speak Icelandic, her mother and both grandmothers did.

A graduate of the Ryerson School of Journalism in Toronto, Sharron has spent much of her life writing for various community publications. Her weekly column “Rural Routes” appeared in local community newspapers for 25 years. In 2000, she published a compilation of those columns. Prior to her marriage, she worked for Logberg-Heimskringla, and her articles continue to appear in its pages. Most recently, she did a series on Icelandic folklore with information gleaned from the “Icelandic Folklore in a European Context” course she took at the University of Manitoba in its 2020 fall session. She has also written for Icelandic Connection and joined the board of that organization in 2020. In addition to non-fiction, she has published fiction and poetry in several literary magazines. Her debut novel “The Waiting Place” was published by Turnstone Press of Winnipeg in 2016 and was a finalist in two categories – first book and woman writer – for the 2017 High Plains Book Awards.

After 40 years on the family cattle farm at Langruth, MB, Sharron and her husband Kerry retired to Winnipeg in 2018 to be closer to their two adult children.