Reykjavík Grapevine - 12.08.2016, Síða 33

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Culture Feature 32
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 12 — 2016
When president Guðni Th. Jóhannes-
son took the stage at Reykjavík Pride
on August 6 followed by a group of drag
queens and kings dressed in their fin-
est rainbow-patterned outfits, you’d
be excused for thinking Iceland has
always been the queerest rock in the
North Atlantic. But try to scratch the
surface of queer history in the country
and you’ll soon realize you won’t get
very far.
The theme of Reykjavík Pride this
year was “Our History,” and the festi-
val featured a number of events that
commemorated the people, places
and events that have shaped Ice-
land’s queer communities. However,
this history, as with queer histories
around the world, is one that is largely
undocumented and patchy at best.
A people without a his-
tory
There were no queer role models for
Þorvaldur Kristinsson when the for-
mer Reykjavík Pride president was
growing up in the 1960s. “The word
was hardly spoken in my hometown
of Akureyri, and I never came across
any discussions in my college about
gay people,” he says. When Þorvaldur
came out in 1979, he says he wanted to
learn more about the history of queer
people in Iceland, but after doing some
research he came back empty-handed.
“We were a people without a his-
tory,” Þorvaldur says about the lack of
written or oral histories that have been
preserved. Since then, he has taken it
upon himself to collect the stories of
queer Icelanders over the centuries, a
task which has proven difficult. “Let-
ters and diaries have simply been de-
stroyed,” he explains. “I have incred-
ibly little written material to create a
history from before 1970.”
There are, however, some diaries
that remain in the National Library,
of people such as Ólafur Davíðsson,
a prominent folklore collector in the
late 19th century. When Ólafur was a
student at Menntaskólinn í Reykjavík,
a prominent local upper secondary
school, Þorvaldur says he developed a
relationship with Geir Sæmundsson,
another student. “When the diaries
of Ólafur were published in 1955, all
those places were omitted where he
spoke about his love for Geir,” Þorval-
dur adds.
From the years prior to the inau-
guration of Samtökin ‘78, the national
queer organization, fragments of sto-
ries such as these are all that remain
as evidence of queer life in Iceland.
However, this of course does not mean
that queer people have not lived and
created queer spaces on Iceland since
the island’s settlement.
Spaces in the silence
Historian Íris Ellenberger has been re-
searching how queer history is framed
in Iceland, and she criticizes most
popular tellings of this history for its
narrow scope. “Somehow the story we
tell about queer history in Iceland re-
volves mainly around the right to get
married and have children, which is
framed as the end goal of the strug-
gle,” she says. “Of course, queer people
have a much longer history.”
Although terms such as “gay,”
“queer” or “transgender” are relatively
new, Íris is interested in finding out
how queer spaces were formed prior
to the advent of this terminology. “The
problem with talking about queer his-
tory in Iceland is that there is so little
research,” she explains, although she
follows that up with a much more
exciting and tantalizing proposal.
“There is room for queer spaces in the
silence,” she says.
For example, Íris says there are ru-
mours that there existed an associa-
tion of queer men who played glíma,
the traditional Icelandic martial art.
However, she’s also quick to point out
that understandings of sexuality and
queerness have changed over time.
“It would be wonderful to see if there
really were queer spaces in Iceland
or Reykjavík before 1976,” Íris says. “I
think it’s very likely that there were
and I’m not sure if we’re ever going
to find them, but we can’t exclude the
possibility.”
Þorvaldur has also found that
WWII provided unique opportunities
for queer Icelanders due to the influx
of foreign soldiers. “It was easy for
a young man or also probably young
women to disappear into the crowd
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GPV.IS/QHIST
From Silence
To Utopia
Tracing queer history in Iceland
Words ISAAC WÜRMANN Photos ART BICNICK and BÁRA KRISTINSDÓTTIR