Saga - 2018, Page 214

in Icelandic historiography: female emigrants to North America and female entre-
preneurs.
The extant writings of the two women, Pálína the older and Pálína the
younger, are examined here concerning entrepreneurship, as well as Pierre
Bourdieu’s concept of capital and of the concept of transnationalism. The main the-
ory proposed by the article is that Pálína the older, who was characterised by
unusually strong agency, acquired symbolic capital as an entrepreneur in her local
East Iceland surroundings, while Pálína the younger seems to some extent to have
inherited her predecessor‘s entrepreneurial capital. Neither of these female entre-
preneurial agents, however, ever received nationwide recognition.
An examination of entrepreneurship and related concepts, as they have been
used in Icelandic (entrepreneurship = athafnasemi), reveals that they are highly
gendered. Entrepreneurship is thereby associated not only with masculinity, but
also with nationalism, advantageous family relations and social capital. While
entrepreneurship basically refers to activities in trade and commerce, the term
connects such commercial activities to a variety of further undertakings. The
inferences of female entrepreneurship, on the other hand, are generally restricted
to traditional female spheres such as the family and women’s organisations. The
personal source materials left by the two women reveal that the older Pálína’s
entrepreneurial activities surpass the female implications of the concept. She was
in fact recognised in the Seyðisfjörður vicinity as an entrepreneurial agent, a
recognition which seems to have applied to her granddaughter as well.
In Icelandic national history, however, both these women have remained
entirely unknown and have never acquired any nationwide recognition. This rais-
es the question of whether these women belong to a significantly larger group of
female entrepreneurial agents who continue to lack recognition in Icelandic his-
toriography.
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