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Abstract
The methods of microhistory are applied to the narrative of one woman's life – Elka Björnsdóttir. She was a working-class woman in Reykjavík, Iceland, at a critical time in the development of the city; when the country was moving slowly but steadily from a peasant social structure towards an urban way of living. The life of Elka Björnsdóttir provides an interesting opportunity to analyse how old ways die hard – how the Icelandic society managed to take aggressive, yet progressive, steps to a more modern society in the early 20th century without ever losing its sight on traditional cultural standards. This process is here named ‘selective modernization’ and illustration of its effect on the Icelandic people's general outlook on life is provided.
Notes
1 See the following work on the development of the Icelandic society in the period under investigation in this article: Gunnlaugsson, Family and Household in Iceland; Hálfdanarson, Historical Dictionary of Iceland; Jónsson and Magnússon, Hagskinna; Magnússon, Iceland in Transition; Pétursson, Church and Social Change.
2 Magnússon, Wasteland with Words, 222–58.
3 Hálfdanarson, ‘Íslensk þjóðfélagsþróun’, 9–58.
4 Gunnlaugsson, Family and Household in Iceland, 139.
5 See revisionist arguments on this development in Valdimarsdóttir, Sveitin við sundin; Ásgeirsson, Iðnbylting hugarfarsins; Magnússon, ‘Hugarfarið og samtíminn’, 28–39.
6 Stearns, ‘Modernization’, 3–12.
7 See for example, Karlsson, Iceland's 1100 Years; Kjartansson, Ísland á 20. öld.
8 See Ginzburg, ‘Microhistory’, 10–35; Magnússon, ‘The Singularization of History’, 701–35; Ginzburg and Poni, ‘The Name and the Game’, 1–10; Pomata, ‘Close-Ups and Long Shots’, 99–124; Szijártó, ‘Puzzle, Fractal, Mosaic’; Szijártó, ‘Four Arguments for Microhistory’, 209–15; Brown, ‘Microhistory’, 1–20; Gray, ‘Microhistory as Universal History’, 419–31; Appuhn, ‘Microhistory’, 105–12; Peltonen, ‘Clues, Margins and Monads’, 347–59.
9 See for example an interesting studies dealing with class issues with the support of life writing or autobiographical sources: Maynes, ‘The Contours of Childhood’, 101–24; Graff, Conflicting Paths. Graff's book is among the most interesting yet produced in which personal sources take centre stage: see my review, ‘Harvey J. Graff, Conflicting Paths’, in Journal of Social History. See also: Maynes, Schooling in Western Europe; Heywood, Childhood in Nineteenth-Century France; Stearns, Schools and Students in Industrial Society; Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen; Stearns, Anxious Parents.
10 See the following articles written by me on the topic of microhistory: Magnússon, ‘Social History as “Sites of Memory”?’; ‘The Singularization of History’, – the article was republished in an international collection of essays called: ‘Cultural History’. In Burns, Historiography: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies, vol. 4. The general ideas presented in the Journal of Social History article from 2003 have received strong responds from both Peter N. Stearns and Harvey J. Graff; see Stearns, ‘Debates About Social History’, and Graff, ‘History's War of the Wor(l)ds’. See more about microhistory my articles: ‘Social History – Cultural History’, ‘The Contours of Social History’, and ‘What is Microhistory?’.
11 Magnússon and Ólafsson, ‘Barefoot Historians’.
12 See an intresting collection of essays, which mostly deals with the use of personal sources, Lorenzen-Schmidt and Poulsen, Writing Peasants. See also: Ólafsson, ‘Wordmongers’; Driscoll, The Unwashed Children of Eve. On memory and life writing (ego-documents) in Iceland, see Magnússon, Fortíðardraumar.
13 National and University Library of Iceland. Lbs 2234-7, 8vo. ‘Dagbækur Elku Björnsdóttur 1915–1923’. See also Guðmundsdóttir, ‘Elka, verkakona í Reykjavík’, 24–6; Björnsdóttir, ‘Hvíta stríðið’, 97–103; Guðmundsdóttir, ‘Alþýðukonan og listin’, 16–25.
14 On the development of the Icelandic peasant diary-writing, see Ólafsson, ‘Að skrá sína eigin tilveru’, 51–88.
15 National and University Library of Iceland, Lbs 2234-7, 8vo. 25 April 1915.
16 Magnússon, ‘From Children's Point of View’, 295–323.
17 Magnússon, ‘Kynjasögur’, 137–77.
18 National and University Library of Iceland. Lbs 2234-7, 8vo. 24 June 1915.
19 Ibid., 8vo. 7 September 1915.
20 Ibid., 8vo. 15 September 1915.
21 Gunnlaugsson, Family and Household in Iceland, 143–69.
22 Magnússon, Iceland in Transition, 15.
23 Gunnlaugsson, Family and Household in Iceland, 156.
24 See discussions in Magnússon, Wasteland with Words.
25 Valdimarsdóttir, Sveitin við sundin, 50.
26 ‘Vöxtur Akureyrar’, 149
27 See further discussion about the nature of this seasonal migration from coastal to rural districts in the 19th century in Jónsson, ‘Þættir um kjör verkafólks’, 63–80. Jónsson points out that the seasonal migration was considered to be a welcome diversion from the everyday affairs in the coastal areas, despite the fact that people worked extremely hard and long hours (that was something to which they were accustomed at home). They worked in rural areas during the two to three month haymaking season every year. See also a description of seasonal migration in the 1920s, in Magnússon, Lífshættir í Reykjavík, 123–41.
28 Eggert Briem discussed the relationship between these two social forms in a 1916 article where he dealt with the occupational character of both areas. He maintained that farm work was much healthier for people, both physically and mentally, and for that reason rural areas should enjoy some support from the government. He also points out that many thought ‘that the countryside brings up so many people for the urban areas, that it is only fair that they are repaid in one way or another’. Briem, ‘Landbúnaðurinn og sjávarútvegurinn’, 57.
29 Gunnlaugssson, Family and Houshold in Iceland, 136.
30 Magnússon, Undir tindum, 153–7.
31 Kristjánsson, Í útlegð, 153.
32 Hannesson, ‘Um skipulag bæja’, 14.
33 Ibid., 14, 16–17.
34 Matthíasson, ‘Fátæku heimilin’, 69.
35 Matthíasson, ‘Fátæku heimilin’, 69. See also an article by Guðmundur Björnsson, the Surgeon General of Iceland, on the turf houses in the capital and the social situation of the people who lived there. Björnsson, ‘Bæjarbragur í Reykjavík’, 94–100.
36 Einarsson, ‘Reykjavík fyrrum og nú’, Ísafold, 17 May 1919, 3 and 24 May 1919, 3.
37 See Skýrslur um húsnæðisrannsóknina, 7, 9.
38 Ísberg, Líf og lækningar.
39 National and University Library of Iceland. Lbs 2234-7, 8vo. 3 September 1919.
40 Ibid., 8vo. 29 January 1919.
41 Ibid., 8vo. 21 June 1919.
42 Ibid., 8vo. 1 January 1921.
43 Ibid., 8vo. 20 January 1922.
44 See an important research of Sigríður Matthíasdóttir who wrote her doctoral dissertation on nation-building in Iceland in the early 20th century from a gendered perspective. See Matthíasdóttir, Hinn sanni Íslendingur.
45 See for example the economic determinism which overshadows all other aspect of the human experience in the argument of Kjartansson's book Ísland á 20. öld. See my criticsm in ‘Aðferði í uppnámi’, 15–54.
46 See fuller dicussions of this argument in Magnússon and Ólafsson, ‘Barefoot Historians’, 175–209; Magnússon, Wasteland with Words, 123–73.
47 For further discussions on the development of the methods of microhistory see the following monographs and collections of essays: Castrén, Lonkila, and Peltonen, Between Sociology and History; Brooks, DeCorse, and Walton, Small Worlds; Ulbricht, Mikrogeschichte; Budde, Conrad, and Janz, Transnationale Geschichte; Lima, A micro-história italiana; Amato, Jacob's Well; Ouwenell, The Flight of the Shepherd.