The Icelandic Canadian - 01.04.2009, Qupperneq 20

62
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 62 #2
educational activities through her leader-
ship and service to the Icelandic communi-
ties. As is the case with effective educators,
they also acted as role models as they lived
their lives driven by their passions for
social justice, music, poetry, literature, lan-
guage and health care. As you will read,
each of these five women brought their
own unique way of acting as educators
within their communities.
Margret (Jonsdottir) Benedictsson
No history of Icelandic pioneer
women in Manitoba is complete without
highlighting the influence of Margret
Benedictsson. Her role in the woman’s suf-
frage movement in Manitoba is well docu-
mented in several articles and texts
(Armstorng (2002); Crippen (2004);
Johnson (1994); Kinnear (1987);
Kristjanson (1965) ). Her contribution
towards securing the vote for women in
Manitoba makes her influence widespread
beyond just the Icelandic community.
Her life as Margrjet Jonsdottir began in
Iceland, where she was born in 1866.
Strong feelings of independence were a
necessity, as she was on her own at age thir-
teen years, but they were also fueled by her
reading of Iceland’s patriot Jon Sigurdsson
and women’s rights activists Lucy Stone
and Elizabeth Cody Stanton. She left
Iceland at the age of twenty-one and settled
in North Dakota where she worked to put
herself through grade school and later
spent two years studying at Bathgate
College. She continued her education after
moving to Winnipeg, where she attended
night school and took a clerical course.
Margret soon met Sigfus Benedictsson
and they were married in 1892. Margret
was twenty-six years old. They went on to
have two children, and Margret was devot-
ed to her role as wife and mother. The
Benedictssons lived most of the time in
Winnipeg with a short stay on Mikley in
New Iceland and a few years in Selkirk. She
and Sigfus shared a love of writing and a
strong and outspoken belief in women’s
suffrage. Together they set up a printing
press in Selkirk and began publishing
Freyja, the Icelandic word for woman and
the goddess of love and beauty from old
Norse mythology. It was monthy women’s
suffrage paper, the first of its kind in
Canada. Most articles were written by the
Benedictssons, though much material was
from other sources and translated into
Icelandic for publication in Freyja. All
issues of Freyja were published in the
Icelandic language. The paper became
hugely successful and by the second year
there were over 500 subscribers, both men
and women across Canada and the United
States. Most saw Margret as the editor of
Freyja, and because of her other role of
wife and mother, she did most of her edito-
rial work and writing in the evenings.
In addition to suffrage and temperance,
the paper tackled radical topics such as
divorce and labour rights for working
women. Freyja also brought to light the
plight of women living in poverty and mar-
ried women’s lack of choice in bearing chil-
dren. Disagreement and strain began to
show in the Benedictsson marriage and in
the editorials of Freyja towards the end of
the twelve years of publication. In 1910
Sigfus blocked Margret’s access to the
printing press, which he owned, and Freyja
ceased to exist. Margret left Winnipeg in
1913 to go and live with her daughter who
was married and living in Washington
State. Her son stayed behind with his