In Vopnafjörður he showed inclination for music, and in his twenties Björgvin moved with his family to the Icelandic colonies in Canada, where he stayed until 1926.
In 1923 Björgvin married Hólmfríður Frímann, a Canadian-born woman of Icelandic descent.
The cantata was performed in Winnipeg, Manitoba in the fall of 1925, after which the Icelandic Canadian population organized to support Björgvin to study musicology in London.
Björgvin moved back to Winnipeg, where he completed his last major composition in 1929, Íslands þúsund ár (English: Iceland's Thousand Years), a cantata to Davíð Stefánsson's Alþingishátíðarljóð.
He wrote articles for journals, the play Skrúðsbóndinn from an Icelandic fairy tale, and his memoirs.