Iceland review - 2014, Qupperneq 25

ICELAND REVIEW 23
nurturing tHe rOOts
The house was a home until 2007 when Ragnheiður Jóna
and her family purchased it. “We came in here by chance
and found it in a state of deterioration. This wasn’t just
any house; it was the house of Hannes Hafstein. As a
child I listened to my grandfather talk about Hannes and
his poetry with admiration. The house stayed with us
after that and a few weeks later we decided to rescue it
and open it to the public.” Ragnheiður, who is a teacher
by trade, could undertake this endeavor on account of
an inheritance from a family business. “I have a PhD in
Education and an MA in Literature. I figured I could cre-
ate something meaningful by using my education and my
family’s inheritance in adopting this house and creating
the center. I wanted to create a venue for togetherness
and conversation between different generations, different
fields and different dimensions in society. Working on my
degree, I kept thinking about all the people who are walk-
ing treasure troves of wisdom and experience and have no
place for sharing it. Back in the day, everyone sat together
at night in the baðstofa sleeping loft but nowadays, people
are more isolated. Icelandic cultural life is flourishing
but my main focus is nurturing our roots. It is especially
important to help the younger generations realize where
their roots lie and giving them a historical context.
Learning from the past, enjoying the best the present has
to offer and giving future generations a more solid cul-
tural identity is equally important everywhere. Ordinary
people—and their daily lives—is really what makes up the
fabric of a culture. That aspect of a culture tends to get
lost and forgotten, precisely because it is ordinary, mun-
dane. So, retrieving cultural memory is something we can
do wherever we live; we can do it within our family, in our
community, in the workplace. That’s what tourists could
gain by visiting Hannesarholt. They could return and see
if there isn’t something in their local surroundings that
is worth honoring, and rescuing from being lost and for-
gotten. Enjoying a nourishing moment in Hannesarholt
they could take home something more meaningful than a
souvenir from a shop.”
a natiOnal HerO
To Icelanders the name Hannes Hafstein is a familiar one.
In 1904 he became the country‘s first Minister for Iceland,
appointed by the Danish king. He was a visionary, a poet and
a politician. “He was the right man at the right time: his role
was to lead the nation into a new era leaving behind years
of hardship, natural disasters, plagues and harsh weather
conditions,” explains Ragnheiður Jóna. “Hannes brought
many revolutionary changes to the nation. In collaboration
with Iceland’s leading suffragette, Bríet Bjarnhéðinsdóttir, he
was instrumental in giving women the right to vote in 1915.
He implemented compulsory education for children and
connected us with the world by bringing us the telephone.
He was the nation’s biggest cheerleader. His poetry is full
of vigor, full of love for the nation and the elements which
served for him as fuel to move forward. Hannesarholt is not a
museum about Hannes Hafstein. It was his home and a place
where we remember his legacy and that of his contempo-
raries who really laid the foundation for our modern society.
Around this time, at the beginning of the 20th century, most
of the institutions which carry modern life in the city were
founded.”
history
ragnheiður Jóna Jónsdóttir,
owner of Hannesarholt.
“I figured I could create something meaningful by
using my education and my family’s inheritance in
adopting this house and creating the center.”