The Day Iceland Stood Still

In the snow the footprints are so quickly filled.

It’s very Icelandic.

And if you say that, it is a symbol for remembering.

Take care that the snow doesn’t fill the footsteps.

For some reason, this day I was alone.

And I remember -

I remember the clothes I was wearing.

And I don't have a clue

what is waiting for me there.

I have no idea how many women will show up

or what will happen.

I just knew I had to be there.

And this is one of those

frozen moments in your life.

Oh, I get the shivers when I think back about this.

It was probably the biggest event in my life

apart from having my babies.

That day I was just totally nervous

from here to the toes.

We are going to show them

that we can stop this society

by walking out.

THE DAY ICELAND STOOD STILL

Today my country, Iceland

is celebrated as one of the best places

in the world to be a woman.

But it wasn't always that way.

This is the story of one day

that changed everything.

I always knew that I would like to see the world.

I was asked, What are you going to do when you grow up?

And I said, I want to be a captain of a ship.

They said very sweetly to me

No, no dearest you cannot. Because you are a girl.

From the time I was 12

I said that I wanted to be a lawyer.

Everybody said

Oh no, you will be married before you're 18.

In the 1970s

we had this growing middle class

and the image of the housewife

happy about her new home.

Every woman wants to be in her own home, of course

with her own laundry and her own washing machine.

Taking pride in her beautiful children

and her successful husband.

You were told you have to wake up before him

and put on your makeup

because he is not supposed to see you

not at your best.

The man wasn't supposed to know how to make a coffee.

Those were the happy days for men!

I remember being small, hiding under a table

and listening to my mother and her friends smoking

and talking about what kind of world they would like to live in.

At this time, women didn't have education they didn't have their own money

their salaries were much lower than the salaries of men, if they had any work.

My mom raised six children.

She made all our clothes herself.

She didn't like it, but she did it.

I remember her once say that she would like to be locked up in jail

for about three months with a good book

just to be able to read.

I grew up on a farm. A very isolated one in the mountains.

To collect the sheep we had to go horse riding almost a whole day.

I learned to milk the cows and fetch them and ride horses and collect the hay.

The farm I was brought up on there was very much equality between the sexes.

But I discovered that the world wasn't like that everywhere.

On the farms around it wasn't the same.

Girls were not supposed to be as good as boys in many ways.

I remember one day, on another farm

all the men were building a stable...

I was helping, serving food.

They were talking about politics and everything and I started to participate.

Then I suddenly saw

nobody heard what I said.

It was like

I hadn't said anything.

It was strange.

I wanted to be more like a man working outdoors on the farm

using the machinery, and being with the sheeps and collecting them from the mountains.

But in 1970

a woman on the farm

she was a housewife!

My husband he was in the farmer’s society.

And I find out

that a woman can’t be there.

It was not a place for them.

Sometimes you had a woman among the farmers

but they had to be widows.

I got a point there to tell them

do I have to kill my husband

to be recognized as a farmer?

And I wanted not to be Mrs. Pálsson.

I wanted to be myself.

I was married to him

but I was not a part of him.

I was working in Landsbankinn.

It was a national bank.

So we were all working for the state, really.

Everything was done manually -

no computers.

So the bank was full with women

but the men were upstairs.

They were running the bank. We were not.

Young guys they come in very young like 10 or 15 years younger than you

and you show them the ropes

and before you know it, they are my boss

after I taught them everything I know.

It's always been like that.

People would say - You don't need more money.

Your husband is earning the money you need

and what you are earning is just for you

to spend on makeup and clothes.

So why should we make your wages higher?

It was like that.

I mean, we had lower pay than men

all over.

I was working at a very big newspaper in Iceland.

Morgunbladid. The conservative paper.

Of course they had to have a lot of girls that were very good in typing.

It was only women that did this.

The journalists were all mostly men.

One woman, she corrected everything.

We were very good friends and we wanted better pay.

But some of them were like -

No, I think it's okay.

It's just like that.

It was the favorite.

It is just like that.

But there were so many women in Iceland that wanted something.

They wanted to change the society!

We were not isolated here in Iceland.

We had sisters all over the place -

strong women wanting to change the world, just like us.

We knew about the Dutch women

influences from America,

Norway, Sweden and Red Stockings in Denmark.

We could feel it.

There were waves in the air.

The earth was all ready.

Everything was prepared

for doing something.

It only needed this to start.

INTERNATIONAL WORKER'S DAY, MAY 1, 1970

On the 1st of May, the radical people had a parade for worker's rights.

I went down to speak on the radio

and I just said

Women in red stockings

let's meet at the square in the morning.

They were all ready.

I just said, Yes!

We started making slogans straightaway,

Wake Up Woman!

Women want to have the same rights as men.

And we decided to wear red stockings.

The Red Stockings movement came in with a lot of noise.

It was a revolt.

You had to kick-start things.

I heard that women were gathering to change the world

and I jumped at it!

SOKKHOLT RED STOCKINGS HQ

There were not only we, the troublemakers -

there were fantastic young women

gathering together so we had a very broad scope.

We decided that we would not dress

like our mothers and grandmothers

and we would not use makeup

and we would not do anything about our looks.

That was not important.

We did not want to enter

the power structure that was we wanted to change it.

No leader.

We were all leaders.

You could be a Red Stocking

one time in your life

or just in the afternoon

or when your husband was not there.

There was no telling who was a Red Stocking or not

because there was no formal society.

We wanted equality, equality with men.

We thought that what we were doing was very positive for everyone.

For the society, for the individuals

for the world.

When I joined I was the sole man in the movement.

I was 18 and I was a revolutionary.

I found it very strange that women were not allowed

to do the same things as men.

So I chose to go over to the Red Stockings -

the movement with the greatest chance of changing the society radically.

The state radio opened up its door to us

which was very brave of them.

And we did a very popular program.

Popular?

I don't know if I should use that word.

We were saying things that had never been said.

RED STOCKINGS RADIO PROGRAM

I asked my 15-year-old students to write about their parents’ jobs.

"Why didn’t you write about what your mother does?" I asked them.

"What? My mother? She’s just at home.