65° - 01.09.1967, Blaðsíða 12

Engagement and Marriage in Iceland
by
BJORN BJORNSSON
In current sociological discussion on marriage
and the family, Iceland is often referred to as
presenting the highest rate of illegitimacy in
Western Europe. In fact Iceland has in recent
years averaged 25% while other European nations
have seldom averaged as high as 10% illigiti-
macy. Compared with the Scandinavian countries,
which are similar to Iceland in regard to marital
legislation and historical background, Iceland
stands all by itself. In 1963 the illegitimacy rate
in Iceland was 27.3%, in Sweden 12.6%, in
Denmark 8.9%, in Finland 4.2%, and in Nor-
way 3.9%.
Considering these figures by themselves, one
would think that the structure of family life in
Iceland today was seriously threatened by such
social problems as are commonly correlated to
the incidence of illegitimacy. It is argued by
family sociologists that legitimacy is the keystone
of the family system in any society. High rates of
illegitimacy are, accordingly, seen to indicate the
disintegration of the family with far reaching
implications for the health of the social structure
as a whole. Even though the contemporary family
has been stripped of many of the social functions
it used to have in pre-industrial times, most socio-
logists will agree that the basic family unit still
holds a place of immense importance in the
constitution and development of modern society.
Bearing these considerations in mind, it stands
Dr. Bjorn Bjornsson graduated as a theologist
from the University of Iceland in 1963 and from
the University of Edinburgh in 1966. His Ph. D.
thesis was entitled, The Lutheran Doctrine of
Marriage in Modern Icelandic Society. He is cur-
rently working with the Child Welfare Depart-
ment in Reykjavik.
to reason that the question of illegitimacy suggests
itself with great urgency as soon as one becomes
engaged in a study of marriage and the family in
Icelandic society.
During the summer of 1965 the present writer
undertook a study of this nature in an urban
community not far from Reykjavik. The object
of this study was to relate the incidence of ille-
gitimacy to the existing forms of family organiza-
tion. In doing so, it was hoped to learn two things:
to what extent illegitimate children are taken care
of within a family setting, though within a non-
marriage family, and how serious a problem il-
legitimacy presents within this particular social
context. These two points are of course initima-
tely related.
The present article does not allow for any de-
tailed discussion of the findings of our study, but
it can be stated that approximately two thirds of
the illegitimate live children were born into a
family of some sort. This finding has immediate
implications for the seriousness of illegitimacy as
a social problem in our community and is also a
clear indication of the prevalance of families
founded on something else than the institution of
marriage. We shall waste no time in explaining
that this “something else” was practically always
found to be the institution of public engagement.
The engagement-family was accordingly identified
as one of the basic forms of family organization
in the community, the others being the marriage-
family and the cohabitation-family.
The social importance of the institution of
public engagement is strengthened still more as
we note that most marriage-families have initi-
ally started as engagement-families, a fact which
is borne out by the figures indicating illegitimate
first births. These figures averaged 70% over a
period of fifteen years, as compared to around
10
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