sempozyum_bildiri_kitabi

the years. While a child Pálsdóttir writes one or two letters each year; as a young woman she writes
one to five letters per year. From 1839–1863 there are one to nine letters each year but in the final
years of her life there are eleven to fifteen letters yearly. How much do these “snapshots” tell about
her life?
Sigríður Pálsdóttir’s correspondence consists of familiar letters whose principal purpose was to
preserve relationship between siblings apart and to maintain the family network. As a child she
writes about the work she’s doing, about sheep and horses, about people and occasional events.
Developing into young adulthood her letters begin to take the shape of the adult discourse and she
becomes an agent of her own life – as far as it was possible for a woman in the late 1820s. The
“trivial” things are there too: weddings, golden earrings, clothes.
While living at the childhood home, 1817–1829, Pálsdóttir’s narrative benefits from the voices of
her sister, mother (d. 1824) and grandmother (d. 1828). Their letters to Pálsson are intertextual – a
collective narrative so to speak. Together their letters depict a fascinating picture of this women’s
household where the knowledge of writing was strategically used to strengthen relationships and
secure their position in society. 20
Her letters change when she moves to Reykjavík in 1829. She is a grown up woman, there is love
and marriage. As already mentioned there is a six years gap in her correspondence during her first
marriage. Traces of Pálsdóttir’s voice can be detected in her husband’s letters but she is not
“speaking” herself.
Pálsdóttir performs and stages herself in the letters. As a child she tries to impress her brother
and recites what she has been learning (and if her work has been praised); she apologises for her
handwriting and style, as well as her “trivial” subjects. Apologies are common rhetoric in women’s
letters.
Pálsdóttir frequently sought advice from her brother, both on private and public matters.
However, most often she has already made her decision but needs his formal approval, as she was
not financially independent. It is as if she is testing the flexibility of the space she lives in as a woman,
a widow and a wife. Hence, to some extend her letters can be described as a platform to perform
and practice, to discuss, to mull over opportunities, even to tell (write) things that could not be said
aloud.
When Pálsdóttir resumed the correspondence with her brother after the six‐year gap there is one
more change in her letters. Now there is the air of a mature woman who has been a housewife, who
has loved and lost a husband and one daughter. She writes differently, more eloquently, and uses
more Danish and “Icelandicised” Danish words in her letters – as is a distinctive feature in the letters
of learned men of the time. Evidently she has learned from her husband who had studied for years in
Copenhagen. Using learned words and thus adopting the rhetoric of well‐educated men may have
helped her to situate herself as a woman of knowledge and power. Furthermore, when picking up
the pen again she did not sign with her usual Sigríður Pálsdóttir or S. Pálsdóttir as she used to but as
S. Helgasen, using the Danish version of her deceased husband’s surname (Helgason). Although it
was not customary in Iceland that women took their husbands surnames upon marriage it was quite
common among officials and the learned. In that way they distinguished themselves from the lower
classes and were more similar to the customs of Denmark. Pálsdóttir used “Helgasen” for several
years but gradually changed into Pálsdóttir again and used that for the rest of her life. Changing her
name from Pálsdóttir to Helgasen therefore seems to be a part of her identity making and
empowerment. Her epistolary practices may thus have helped her formulating the ‘real’ and in some
way new Sigríður Pálsdóttir: The widow that must be strong and stand on her right.
But performing in letters or identity formation does not only go in one direction. Both brother and
sister staged themselves. As they seldom met eye to eye after the age of eight and eleven their
correspondence became their relationship. As Gerber argues: