The Life of a Working-Class Woman: selective modernization and microhistory in early 20th-century Iceland

Abstract

The methods of microhistory are applied to the narrative of one woman's life – Elka Björnsdóttir. She was a working-class woman in Reykjavík, Iceland, at a critical time in the development of the city; when the country was moving slowly but steadily from a peasant social structure towards an urban way of living. The life of Elka Björnsdóttir provides an interesting opportunity to analyse how old ways die hard – how the Icelandic society managed to take aggressive, yet progressive, steps to a more modern society in the early 20th century without ever losing its sight on traditional cultural standards. This process is here named ‘selective modernization’ and illustration of its effect on the Icelandic people's general outlook on life is provided.