Torfhildur Þorsteinsdóttir

Torfhildur Þorsteinsdóttir Hólm
This is an Icelandic name. The last name is a patronymic, not a family name; this person is properly referred to by the given name Torfhildur.

Torfhildur Þorsteinsdóttir, also known as Torfhildur Hólm (2 February 1845 – 14 November 1918) was an Icelandic author, who lived for many years in Canada. She was perhaps the first Icelander to make a living as an author,[1] and is frequently cited as the first Icelandic woman novelist.[2]

Biography

Torfhildur was born at Kálfafellsstaður in Skaftafellssýsla (now in Austur-Skaftafellssýsla), where her father, Þorsteinn Einarson, was a clergyman. She went to Reykjavík at age 17 and studied there and in Copenhagen and worked as a private teacher[3] before marrying Jakob Hólm when she was 29. He died a year later and in 1876 she emigrated to Canada, where she lived in New Iceland and Winnipeg for 13 years.[4] After working as a teacher for a number of years, she returned to Iceland in 1889 and two years later was granted a writer's pension by the Althing, the first woman to receive such artistic support; there was disagreement about the appropriateness of the award and it was reduced and ultimately made part of her widow's pension.[3] She died in Reykjavík.

Work

She published her first short story in 1879 in Framfari, the first Icelandic newspaper published in North America.[3][5] Her first novel, Brynjolfur Sveinsson biskup, was published in Reykjavík in 1882[3] and was both the first novel and first work by a female author to be formally printed in Iceland.[6] Elding (1889) is a historical novel.[7] Some of her work appeared in a Danish periodical published in Chicago, Illustrered Familjeblad. After her return to Iceland she edited two literary journals, Draupnir and Dvöl, in which her short fiction and two later novels appeared,[4] and a children's magazine, Tíbrá.[3] The folk tales she collected from Icelanders in Canada during her first few years there were published in 1962,[3] and point, according to folklorist David Buchan, to an interesting difference between the Icelandic and the Faroes traditions; in the latter the ballad tradition is one of male public performance, where the Icelandic tradition is found in the female, domestic sphere.[2]

Her writing shows both romantic and realist traits; some of her short stories are fables and allegories, but others deal with contemporary life, with the importance of women's education as a recurring theme.[3] As a historical novelist, she is credited with giving the genre "its most capable treatment" among Icelandic authors.[8]

List of publications

Novels

Short fiction

References

  1. ↑ Shaffner, Ruth. "The Women of Iceland." In The Chautauquan, Volume 22. Edited by Theodore L. Flood and Frank Chapin Bray. 1896. 270.
  2. 1 2 Buchan, David (1987). "Rev. of Ólason, The Traditional Ballads of Iceland". The Journal of American Folklore 100 (397): 367–68.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Wolf, Kirsten. "Þorsteinsdóttir, Torfhildur (Holm)", Dictionary of Canadian Biography Volume 14 (1998).
  4. 1 2 "Skáldkonan Torfhildur Hólm", Lesbók Morgunblaðsins, 11 February 1945, p. 77 (Icelandic)
  5. ↑ Lamonde, Y., Fleming, P.L., & Black, F.A., eds. History of the Book in Canada, Volume Two. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005. 46-47.
  6. ↑ "Continental and Foreign Jottings." The Printing Times and Lithographer. XIII (15 Nov 1882).
  7. ↑ Luschan, F. von; et al. (1894). . "Sitzung vom 17. Februar 1894" Check |url= value (help). Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 26: 81–136.
  8. ↑ Williams, Charles Allyn (1903). "Rev. of Küchler, Geschichte der isländischen Dichtung der Neuzeit (1800-1900)". The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 5 (2): 222–24.

Further reading

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