Hot Docs Interview: The Day Iceland Stood Still's Producer and Director on a Game-Changing Women's Strike
By Jim Slotek
It is touted now as “the best place in the world to be a woman,” both in politics, socially and in the workplace. But in the ‘70s, there was not much to distinguish their life in North America from one in Iceland – save for occasional volcano activity.
Women in Iceland were barred from various organizations, including the Farmer’s Association. Piloting a ship or a plane was out of the question. Meanwhile in North America, a husband’s signature was needed for a credit card, and many organizations and even public establishments were men-only. Feminist movements sprung up everywhere, but only Iceland saw its women go out on a full national strike with 90% participation.
That would be Oct. 24, 1975, a day Icelandic men called The Long Friday. Children were left to fathers to care for or take to work, many workplaces were emptied, shops closed, crews at sea left unfed and the ships uncleaned.
Tens of thousands of women demonstrated at Reykjavik’s Laekjartorg Square. Five years later, Vigdís
Finnbogadóttir would be the first democratically elected woman president in the world, and would serve for 16 years.
“If you don’t tell this story, it never happened,” says director Pamela Hogan of the Hot Docs feature The Day Iceland Stood Still. “This is the last chance for the women to put it in their own words, which are so powerful - as opposed to someone sometime in the future writing something based on archival material.”
Says producer Hrafnhildur “Hrabba” Gunnarsdóttir, who was in the square as a girl with her mother: “There’s a famous saying: ‘There’s nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.’”
So why, having started from essentially the same place, did U.S. feminists achieve mixed results (the U.S. ranks 43rd globally on the gender parity index,) with setbacks that include the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and the resurgence of reactionary politics?
One seldom considered difference might be the weaponization of humour.
The “Redstockings,” as the chief feminist organization in Iceland was called, strongly believed in public theatre. Protesting “women’s work” at home – especially during Christmas when copious amounts of food were expected for family and guests – they created an effigy of a housewife and displayed her in a shopping thoroughfare, crucified on a Christmas tree. When the Miss Iceland Pageant took place, they dressed up a cow in a pageant dress to represent the “meat market” aspect of the event. Both displays created a public uproar, despite the cuteness of the cow.
Let the record show, I laughed out loud at both. Were these uniquely Icelandic approaches to social change?
Gunnarsdóttir, who has made films about the Icelandic women’s movement in the ‘70s and ‘80s, agrees that humour was extensively used. “I would really like to investigate this further, exactly where this strategy of using humour came from. Because I think it’s quite unique in this struggle. The women of the ‘80s also used humour to make their point. I guess sarcasm really got them a long way. But is it Icelandic? I don’t know.”
President Finnbogadóttir was adept at sarcasm. “There are always stories about Vigdis. She had breast cancer and had had a mastectomy, and somebody said, ‘How can somebody like that run a country?’ And she said, “I do not plan to breastfeed the country.’ She was up to the resistance and hugely popular.”
In the U.S., Hogan says, the mood was different. “When I was a high school student in Boston during our feminist movement, and my mother was in the middle of becoming an activist, anger was the lead feeling, not humour.
“I think humour was more pervasive in Iceland. And I think it’s brilliant and so effective.
“But I think they also used the humour to keep their spirits up, because they were under attack. They were called the worst things you could be called, op-eds in the newspapers, people coming up to you in the streets, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“You’re all lesbians. You all hate men,” Gunnarsdóttir adds.
The Day Iceland Stood Still was made with the intent of being showcased during next year’s 50th anniversary celebration of the “day off” (a name given to the event, to placate some conservative women who objected to the idea of being on strike). Icelandic artists Bjork and Kvennakórinn Katla contributed to the soundtrack.
A 90% decrease in the wage-parity gap would be something most countries would boast about. But Gunnarsdóttir says the work isn’t done. “We like to complain still. Pamela coming from an American perspective looks at Iceland like it’s a Utopian society. And it’s sometimes that way, but we’re still struggling in some places. I’m in the film industry and it’s extremely hard on women. Most of them fall out of the industry at my age.”
“I talked to an Icelandic woman here who was doing a piece on us, and she’s 40 years old,” Hogan adds. “And she said, until she saw the film, she didn’t understand that she’s on the shoulders of what those women did.”
The Day Iceland Stood Still. Screening at Hot Docs. Monday, April 29, 2:15 p.m. TIFF Lightbox 1, Wednesday, May 1, 4:30 p.m. Scotiabank Theatre 5.