The synod was founded in June 1885 at a constitutional convention[citation needed] in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
[2] The early churches in this body were located in Manitoba and North Dakota.
Later churches could be found in Minnesota and Washington in the United States and in Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan in Canada.
In 1910, the synod trained Steingrímur Octavius Thorlakson, a teacher from Manitoba, to serve as a missionary in Japan.
It had trouble reaching out to the small number of Icelandic immigrants spread across North America.