11 minute read
GLOBETROTTER
The story of Anna from Moldnúpur farm
WORDS BY FRANK WALTER SANDS PHOTOGRAPHY BY VIGFÚS SIGURGEIRSSON, JÓN KALDAL & GOLLI
Already suffering from nausea in anticipation of a long voyage at sea, a middle-aged, red-headed Icelandic country woman with a modest suitcase nervously climbed a narrow gangplank in Reykjavik harbour to board the Brúarfoss, an Icelandic passenger and cargo ship. It was a bright, calm evening in mid-July 1946 and Anna – a weaver by trade and farmer and fisher by birth – was embarking on her first ship journey, which would take her around the island of Iceland in 10 days, stopping in all the major ports along the way. It would be a rare opportunity to visit remote parts of the country, meet the locals, and see for herself what the wondrous island of fire and ice had to offer.
It was at once a moment of liberation and realisation that she could indeed travel great distances safely by herself, despite the admonition of authorities and acquaintances alike, who justifiably thought unaccompanied women simply did not travel. In the mid20th century, for that matter, even men did not often travel for pleasure, but the trip that Anna took was an adventure of which women of her standing did not even dream.
The year following Anna’s intrepid voyage around her motherland, she set her sights on leaving Iceland for the first time. In order to earn the funds for such a voyage, she wove cloth for demanding customers and worked long hours in fish processing factories. A trip to Denmark was Anna’s goal, but shortly after the Second World War, tourism was practically non-existent in warravaged Europe.
Despite the country’s millennium of history, Iceland had only gained independence from Denmark two years earlier, on June 17, 1944. The established colonial bureaucracy that formed the fledgling Icelandic state was mired in red tape; permission to travel had to be applied for and approved, and any form of currency exchange was an onerous process. In the absence of international jet planes, the mode of travel for those leaving Iceland at that time was restricted to multi-day bare-boned passage on cargo or fishing vessels that rode the notoriously rough high seas of the North Atlantic. To make matters worse for Anna, after inquiring at all the shipping offices in Reykjavík, she could find no passage abroad: all available passenger ships were filled to capacity.
Fortunately, Anna resorted to seeking inside help and support from a female acquaintance known to hold influence within the powerful Reykjavík Fishing Company, which owned and controlled most of the international seafood business and the ships that carried their exports. Sure enough, for a modest fee, she was granted passage on the fishing boat Ingólfur, which would set sail later the same day. Once on board and with the ship leaving the harbour, Anna stowed her suitcase in the simple cabin shared with five other passengers and took a stroll on the smelly, unkept deck.
“It didn’t please me that the deck should be entirely covered with fish guts, so I asked the boys to wash it. But they put on the faces of wise men and said that if they did such a thing, we would not be granted favourable weather on the voyage. I took it as a scheme hatched by tired mariners in order to spare themselves needless exertion, since it was naturally the sea’s job to come and wash the deck, in its own time.”
Born in 1901, Sigríður Anna Jónsdóttir spent most of her early life occupied with traditional farm chores, such as herding cows and gathering hay on Moldnúpur farm, under the pristine Eyja mountains in South Iceland.
“From there, I have all the best memories. It was said that the finest people in Iceland live under the Eyjafjöll mountains because the sun shines nowhere brighter, and the poor never lacked for food there.”
Today, the handful of farms under Eyjafjöll remain one of the country’s most productive agricultural areas and are blessed with mild winters, accessible hot springs, and numerous waterfalls already harnessed by 1928 to provide hydro-electric power to the locality. Among her ancestors, Anna was especially proud of Reverend Jón Steingrímsson, the charismatic clergyman who, during a devastating volcanic eruption of 1784, seemingly stemmed the flow of encroaching lava that threatened to destroy his church in the village of Kirkjubæjarklaustur in southeast Iceland. It may thus be no coincidence that as an adult, Anna was especially devout and rarely missed mass, regardless of where she found herself in the world.
A precocious and endlessly curious child, Anna spent much of her free time reading books and asking copious questions of everyone she encountered. The eldest of three siblings, Anna lost her mother in childhood and mostly grew up with her father, who she says gave her a cultural upbringing and, somewhat atypically for a traditional farmer and fisherman, never tried to curb her desire for adventure. As a teenager, she regularly went line fishing off the south coast of Iceland, rowing in an open boat with the rest of the crew and hauling large codfish onboard. The pay was surprisingly good, and Anna was delighted with the 24 Danish kroner (a modest sum by today’s standards) that she earned on her first tour. She also established herself as a skilled craftswoman and weaver; she crocheted a lot of bespoke projects, and many churches in Iceland feature altar cloths by her hand.
At the time, it was common for Icelandic children of Anna’s standing to learn to read and write from their parents before they received any schooling. Though she read every book she could get her hands on, Anna’s formal education lasted only four years, consisting of eight weeks of tutoring annually in the winters of 1911-1915, administered by a travelling teacher at a local school. Eager for knowledge and passionate about the greater world, Anna was autodidactic and quick to learn foreign languages, gaining a good command of English and Danish, which she knew would be vital to her future travel plans.
Despite the world travel that awaited her, it wasn't until 1929 that Anna would finally leave her home region for the first time to attend a year at the private school of Laugarvatn. To finance her studies, she took a 400-króna loan, a considerable sum in those days, which she got her father and brother to guarantee. She admired many of her teachers, and her studies went so well that Anna yearned to continue her learning, dreaming of eventually becoming a teacher or even a priest because she was ardently religious. The following summer, Anna moved to Reykjavík. There, she rented a small, unheated room at Sjafnargata 10 and took various classes at the Learned School, the famous wooden building known today as Menntaskólinn í Reykjavík (Reykavík
College), as well as working independently, particularly with weaving. The worldwide Depression had hit Iceland hard; inflation and shortages made life a struggle for almost everyone. Her room was so cold that she spent most of her free time reading in the National Library. When Anna could not earn enough from her weaving, she washed and ironed other people’s clothes, which stole time from her studies. Following her ambition, she applied for formal acceptance to the highly competitive Learned School but was refused and never went on to further her formal education. Nevertheless, Anna avidly pursued self-study throughout her life through reading, language learning, and travelling.
Anna’s first published writings were newspaper articles. She burst onto the scene in late 1942 with a series of scathing articles about how once-prized church buildings around the country were left to fall apart. Her strong opinions eventually led to a literary dispute with historian Sverrir Kristjánsson. He suspected that Anna from Moldnúpur was just a nom de plume and that her writings were too sophisticated to originate from a simple country woman, the irony of which Anna enjoyed immensely. She responded by inviting the famous historian to visit her modest residence in Reykjavík if he truly wanted to confirm her identity. In the following years, Anna had numerous literary disputes with other prominent Icelanders about politics and culture, always appearing as a representative of the people, something not often seen elsewhere in Icelandic media of the period. She was convinced that her voice and opinions were right, at least as much as those of the “high lords.” But she also wrote extensively on issues touching her hometown, such as the plight of farmers following the Hekla eruption in 1947, and losses suffered by her community when their library caught fire.
By the time she was approaching 50, the longing for adventure had captured Anna’s mind entirely. Her first trip abroad, in 1947, was followed by others in 1948, 1950, 1958, and 1959. She travelled widely around Denmark, England, France, and Italy. As late as 1964, Anna travelled across the United States. She was very interested in the culture of the countries to which she travelled and visited churches, museums, and monuments with great diligence. Wherever she went, Anna made an effort to get to know and occasionally befriend the locals. She maintained decades-long written correspondence with many of these foreign friends.
While saving diligently for her trips, Anna had to live frugally to make them happen. She would save on food by skipping meals entirely, much to the chagrin of her niece, who once travelled with her to Rome.
Given the many obstacles she faced, the genuine possibility of failure loomed over all her trips, but optimism and diligence always got her through. She travelled according to her grandmother’s motto.
In spite of her shoestring travelling budget, Anna managed to be welcomed as a guest of the King’s residence in Copenhagen and travelled extensively in England and France, making friends and forging bonds with people most everywhere she went. In Paris, taking in the “lightness that lies in the air,” she would spend her time wandering the groves of the Boulogne forests or the banks of the Seine, “where the joys and the sorrows of the city of Paris live together in fateful cohabitation.” She saw the Pope at the Vatican and wrote extensively about Rome, marvelling at the Eternal City’s art treasures and splendid cathedrals. In Denmark, she visited most of the better-known churches and relished classical paintings in fine art museums. Coming across the sublime “Christ in the Kingdom of the Dead” by Joakim Skovgaard, Anna wrote:
“This painting had such a profound effect on me that I stood there completely like a fool and could do nothing but stare at this magnificent masterpiece, which was at the same time a moving sermon, in which the terrifying power of death and the devil must give way and submit to the overwhelming force of the divine love and dignity of Jesus Christ.”
With an open mind, an excellent memory, and the sharp eyes of a visitor, Anna from Moldnúpur surveyed the nations across the sea and recorded what she saw with humour and empathy. Although she is perhaps not one of the most well-known writers in Iceland, she wrote full-length books about all her trips. Her travel stories are long and extensive, with detailed descriptions of what she saw and how she managed to get by in difficult situations. Despite being self-published, her books were read widely in Iceland and managed to get the nation’s attention, which in itself was a significant accomplishment. Perhaps Anna’s humble background was the very thing that helped her connect to a broader base of readers, who could see the world through her eyes and maybe even start believing they could one day see it through their own.
