Saga - 2013, Page 93
Abstract
erla hulda halldórsdótt i r
LITeRACy PRACTICeS 1817–1829
The Case of the Women at Hallfreðarstaðir, Iceland
In 1817, 11-year-old Páll Pálsson was sent away from home, to be brought up and
educated in South Iceland at the church farm Oddi in Rangárvellir. There, he
began a regular, lifelong correspondence with his family in east Iceland, who
lived on the farm of Hallfreðarstaðir in Hróarstunga. In the light of Barton and
Hamilton’s theories on vernacular literacy practices (1998), this article examines
letters written from 1817 to 1829 by his mother, grandmother and two sisters. The
focus is on what these women did with literacy and how they utilised their ability
to write at a time when only a minority of Icelanders — including far fewer
women than men — knew how to write.
The letters of these women indicate a strong dependency on various external
circumstances, such as mail services (officially only three trips a year) or other
opportune trips, as well as close internal links, with the letters being carefully
planned or even edited to prevent everyone telling the same news. The women
clearly utilised the correspondence not only to maintain personal ties but also,
and just as importantly, to cultivate a network of relationships and power.
Their letters exemplify how writing can be learned informally within a family
rather than in school or through mandates from the authorities, thus demonstrat-
ing how literacy practices can be passed on between generations. The existence of
a gender gap in letter-writing is evident: during this period, women had less time
and usually received less instruction than men, so that women sometimes
requested men to write for them those letters which were intended for high-rank-
ing men.
The article argues that letters must always be studied in the social and
cultural context of their origins, considering both external conditions and internal
relationships. Only then is it possible to understand the nature and purposes of
the correspondence.
kvennabréfin á hallfreðarstöðum 91
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