The Women’s History Archives of Iceland was founded on New Year’s Day 1975 in the home of Anna Sigurðardóttir at Hjarðarhagi 26, Reykjavík. Anna was the head of the Archives and established the collection with the help of the librarians Else Mia Einarsdóttir and Svanlaug Baldursdóttir.
Anna had started to collect documents relating to women’s history in 1946. At the time she was a teacher, housewife and a women’s rights advocate in the town of Eskifjörður in east Iceland. To begin with, the gathering of materials was random. Anna scribbled notes on scraps of paper she had at hand, such as the paper packaging for fish. The idea of founding the Archives came much later, in 1968, under the influence of Nordic historians of women’s history.
The Women’s History Archives has typically only had a single full-time employee. A special interest group focusing on the preservation and proceedings of the Women’s History Archives was founded in 1987, and it worked towards the Archives being housed at the National and University Library of Iceland, which was Anna’s goal from the beginning. Anna passed away in January 1996. On her birthday, the 5th of December that same year, her dream became reality.
