What can be discovered in letters written by an unknown woman from the nineteenth century?
Lecture performed in Icelandic!
In this lecture, Erla Hulda Halldórsdóttir discusses her book Strá fyrir straumi: Ævi Sigríðar Pálsdóttur 1809–1871, published in 2024. The book is based on 250 letters that Sigríður Pálsdóttir wrote to her brother Páll Pálsson, a clerk at Stapi, from the time she was eight years old in 1817 until her death at nearly 62 years of age in 1871.
Sigríður married twice and was widowed twice. She had six daughters, though only three survived to adulthood. In the lecture, Erla Hulda will speak about Sigríður’s life and the main challenges involved in telling the story of a woman whose life followed different paths than those usually found in men’s biographies and the so-called “grand narrative” of the nineteenth century. She will also explain how she uses the letters and other sources to piece together Sigríður’s life and shape it into a coherent narrative.
Erla Hulda Halldórsdóttir is a professor of history at University of Iceland. She specializes in women’s and gender history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She has published numerous research articles both in Iceland and internationally. She is one of the authors of the book Konur sem kjósa. Aldarsaga (2020), and in 2023 she published Ég er þinn elskari. Bréf Baldvins Einarssonar til Kristrúnar Jónsdóttur 1825–1832.
Where: Aðalstræti 58
When: March 12
Time: 17:00
Admission: Free
The Past in a New Light is a collaborative project between Akureyri Academy, The Icelandic Historical Society, and Akureyri Museum.
The lecture series is supported by Hótel Akureyri.
March 19 at 17:00
“Decorations in Later Manuscripts and the Work of a Northern Scribe” – by Kjartan Ísleifsson, historian.