Until recently, very little was known about the Icelandic women who live and work on fishing boats. As it turns out, these women have been braving Iceland’s treacherous waters for centuries.
University of Washington anthropology professor Margaret Willson will present her research on the “Seawomen of Iceland” tonight at 5:30 pm at the Pratt Museum. KBBI’s Shahla Farzan spoke with Willson about her research and the upcoming talk.
Farzan: How did you first become interested in studying the seawomen of Iceland?
Willson: I went to Iceland and at that time I found out about one of the early seawomen who was an amazing person. She was a captain, she was renowned for getting more catches than anybody else. She never lost a crew member in the 60 years she fished, which is pretty remarkable because they were fishing in the Arctic in open row boats in the 1700s. So I asked my friend, ‘Are there any other seawomen around? That’s fascinating.’ She said, ‘I don’t think so, I haven’t heard of anybody.” So I just got curious, that's all.
Farzan: In your research, how were these women in the 1700s and 1800s breaking into what’s known as a traditionally male-dominated industry?
Willson: What I found, what is one of the more remarkable things, is in the 1700s and 1800s, even into the 1600s, women were expected to go sea. After all the research, I can say with confidence that at least a third of the fishing fleet were women. The thing that was intriguing is the sea was not a ‘male space.’ It wasn't considered a male occupation. Everybody did it; there wasn't a gender divide. Women were captains, women were helmsmen. When sales came in, they were acclaimed for handling the sales. They were respected just as men. The change occurred in about 1900 when...the steam trawlers came in and also when Iceland got connected to Europe. At that time, it shifted to the sea was a man's place. The iconic image of the woman at home being the sea wife, that only started in the 1900s. That's what's remarkable. Then women sort of clawed their way back, but now it was women entering a man's profession. It was really different.
Farzan: You conducted years of research in Iceland and I'm wondering, what were some of the more surprising things you found?
Willson: What has been written on women going to sea, they all talk about it as women coming into a ‘man's place’ and the major reason more women don't do it is because men on the boats don't want them there. That is what people say again and again and again and again. What all the women said, every single successful seawoman that I talked with in Iceland, is not that at all. As a woman if you go onto a boat, you do have to prove yourself. Once you prove that you can do the work, then the women all said the guys on the boat became their best comrades, their best buddies and the discrimination against them on the boat evaporated. They were part of a team. It's not women making an incursion into a man's world, so much as it’s people doing what they love together.
Willson will present her research tonight at 5:30 p.m. at the Pratt Museum’s annual meeting. The lecture is free and open to the public.