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THE UNFORESEEABLE NARRATIVE. ON TURNING A LIFELONG
CORRESPONDENCE INTO A LIFE STORY
Erla Hulda HALLDÓRSDÓTTIR *
“Life cannot be lived like a story, because the story always comes afterwards, it results; it is
unforeseeable and uncontrollable, just like life”, argues the Italian philosopher Adriana Cavarero in
her fascinating book Relating Narratives. 1 While some autobiographical writing is written as a
narration on past life, as memoirs and autobiography, or to comprehend life as it happens (e.g.
diaries), others, as letters, reflect the “unforeseeable and uncontrollable” life as it passes by. That is
the case with Sigríður Pálsdóttir who wrote 250 letters to her brother during half a century, and
whose life and correspondence I am exploring.
The letters, fragmented yet coherent, form Pálsdóttir’s narrative of life and will be turned into a
biography by me – the historian. Thus two forms of life writing are weaved together, the genre of
letter writing and the genre of biography. I use the term life writing because it offers a space for
using different but related narratives when exploring and constructing a life from fragmented
sources. 2 As Barbara Caine argues the concept of life writing encompasses:
[M]any different kinds of writing which record or describe an individual life, including
not only diaries, memoirs, letters, autobiography and biography but also travel writing and
indeed many other form of writing which involves a construction of the self. 3
Furthermore, the concept simultaneously includes the source and the product, in other words the
letters and the biography, and thus enables me to work with different forms of writing when
narrating Sigríður Pálsdóttir’s life.
The focal point of this paper is the “unforeseeable” life story of Pálsdóttir as it materialises in her
letters, in particular when using the letters of an “ordinary” individual as the core of historical
biography.
By using Cavarero’s argument of the “unforeseeable and uncontrollable” (life)story I am by no
means denying my protagonist her agency, of being able, in some respect, to control her own life or
make her own choices. However, Cavarero’s theorising is inspiring and useful when dealing with a
patchy life story, derived from letters. The pattern of life, revealed in letters, only comes visible when
read in retrospect.
Life and context
Pálsdóttir was born into a socially well situated family in east Iceland in 1809. Her father was a
county magistrate (in Icelandic: sýslumaður) who died in 1815 leaving behind a widow and five young
children. With the help of her own mother the widow continued farming on a smaller scale. While
the two daughters, Sigríður Pálsdóttir and her younger sister, were raised at home the future
prospects of the three brothers were secured by appropriate education and upbringing in learned
households. In 1817 the eldest brother, Páll Pálsson (b. 1806) 4 , was sent to a friend of the family in
another part of the country to be fostered and educated. Immediately his mother, grandmother,
siblings, other relatives and friends started corresponding with him. Most of these continued as long
as both parts lived. Sigríður Pálsdóttir’s first letter to her brother is written in 1817 and the last one
shortly before her death in 1871. Pálsson’s side of the correspondence has not survived.
*
University of Iceland, Faculty of History and Philosophy. This is an ongoing research funded by Rannis,
the Icelandic Research Fund, IRF no. 130811-051.