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The Women’s History Archives are closed for the summer holidays. We’ll be back up on August 6.  Until then you can browse our website as well as our digitized media:   

The Women’s History Archives (Kvennasögusafn) wishes to congratulate Hvítabandið (the White Ribbon) on their 130th year since their foundation, making them one of the oldest women’s associations still running in Iceland today! To remark this anniversary, the Women’s History Archives has reproduced the association’s first book with minutes of meetings from 1895 – as well…

The Women’s History Archives was founded on January 1, 1975 by three women: Anna Sigurðardóttir, Else Mia Einarsdóttir and Svanlaug Baldursdóttir. It was founded in Anna’s home, on the fourth floor of a block building at Hjarðarhagi 26 in Reykjavík, and she served as its director for 20 years. The Women’s History Archives emerged as a…

The call for applications to the Nordic Gender Fund is open for a little while longer. The purpose of the fund is to strengthen infrastructure in the Nordic region for research on gender and other power structures. The call is open from 15 October to 15 November.   Since the late 1990s, the Swedish Secretariat for…

We can‘t wait to watch with you the documentary „The Day Iceland Stood Still“ about the Women‘s Day Off in 1975. The documentary was made by Pamela Hogan and Hrafnhildur Gunnarsdóttir. It will premiere in Iceland on 24 October 2024, 49 years after the original event. It has been a pleasure watching the documentary come…

Kvennasögusafn (the Women’s History Archives) will be closed 8.-19. July due to summer leave. During that period it will be possible to contact Íslandssafn (Icelandic Collection) for loans (hjá) landsbokasafn.is]. Furthermore, the National and University Library of Iceland will be closed from 22 July and reopened on Tuesday 6 August.  We are looking forward to seeing…

This month there are 160 years since the birth of Kristín Vídalín Jacobson, the founder and first chairman of the women’s charity Hringurinn that celebrated it’s 120-year anniversary last month. She also founded and sat on the board of the Reykjavík Women’s Association (BKR).   Kristín was also a trained painter and is thought to have…

Hringurinn, a Women’s Society in Reykjavík, celebrates its 120th anniversary on January 24th. It is a non-profit charity organization established in 1904 with the aim to help those in financial needs whilst being hospitalized with an illness. Its archival collection was donated to Kvennasögusafn (the Women’s History Archives) in the early 2000s following an impressive publication of the…

19 October 2023, 7-9 PM At the National and University Library (Arngrímsgata 3) with the Icelandic Drawing Center. Women and non-binary persons come together to draw up slogans for the Women’s Strike 2023. We will look into past Women’s Days Off and strikes by examining photos and videos from 1975, 1985, 2005, 2010, 2016 and…

The highlight of the month is a drawing from the Redstocking Movement’s archive, which is preserved at The Women’s History Archives. The movement had a strong visual component and used images purposefully in their fight for equality. They used drawings made by members of the Redstockings as well as found materials such as cut-outs from…