Byltingin Í Rússlandi - The Revolution in Russia

In 1921 socialist students in Reykjavik published a little book called The Revolution in Russia, Byltingin í Rússlandi. The author Stefán Pjetursson was then studying Law in the University of Iceland. He was assisted by Stefán Jóhann Stefánsson, Jón Thoroddsen, Tómas Jónsson, Sigurður Jónasson who were all undergraduates and Einar Olgeirsson who was still in High School.[1] The young Icelandic socialists wanted to counter the misinformation of  the opponents of the revolution. Various authors in right wing Icelandic papers such as Morgunblaðið were writing about the horrors of the revolution and the Civil War and blaming the Bolsheviks for the chaos, hunger and violence.

Byltingin Í Rússlandi 

These young people were not merely writing about world shaking events from the isolation of their rocky outcrop of Europe. Icelandic young people with sponsors or family money[2] often went to the capital cities of mainland Europe to work and study. Before the University of Iceland was founded in 1911 there was no other way to gain a degree. Hendrik Ottósson[3] had met Swedish communists in Copenhagen when he was studying there in 1918-9 and was invited to the 2^nd Congress of the Communist International [Comintern] in 1920 by telegram from Fredrik Ström.[4] On his way there he met his old school friend Brynjólfur Bjarnason and with Ström’s help they both managed to attend the Comintern as observers. They joined the meetings held in Russia, organised by the Bolsheviks, with delegates from all the foreign communist parties that agreed to the conditions for membership of the Communist International, A year later Hendrik and Brynjólfur went to the Third Congress of the Comintern with Ólafur Friðriksson, editor of the Social Democrats paper Alþýðublaðið and Ársæll Sigurdsson who represented the Icelandic left in Copenhagen, mostly students.

When Byltingin Í Rússlandi was published the Civil War in Russia was over and the Red Army led by Leon Trotsky had won. The cost of this achievement in the face of an international blockade and invasion by at least fourteen countries was terrible. The infrastructure was almost wrecked and the working class almost wiped out as people from cities left for the countryside to avoid starvation and disease.  Lenin and the Bolsheviks knew that if the revolution did not spread to Germany[5], then their own revolution would be strangled.  The millions, who wanted to see the working class and oppressed peoples running the world for themselves - for the benefit of the majority - expected the revolution to spread throughout Europe and then rest of the world soon.

Byltingin Í Rússlandi is a defence of the Russian Revolution in the face of the Icelandic establishment, its capitalists and their mouthpieces. It also tries to shore up the confidence of the Icelandic left and trade unionists and arm them against pessimism.

“The Revolution cannot develop if it is hemmed in by capitalists on all sides, says Stefán, but there is a growing proletariat in all countries and neither mourning nor Old Wives Tales will prevent the progress of our party because it is based on Marx’s golden words from the Communist Manifesto.”

Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution.

The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

Proletarians of all countries, Unite!

Unfortunately Byltingin Í Rússlandi is not available online. It also does not appear in the National Library of Iceland’s database, at least not in the online search engine. In 2003 it did appear on their database as a reference book unavailable for loan but it could not be found during the week I spent four days in the library. At the time there was at least one copy in a private collection in Reykjavik and two copies in the library in Ísafjörður. I have since found a copy in the Kolaport market but it is fragile, and though I photocopied it to read I’m reluctant to unwrap it again for scanning when there maybe very few copies left. That said if no one else puts it online in the next six months I will have too. In the meantime I will put up a translation a chapter at a time.

Finally a note about the language of the book which is remarkable; it is full of Danish spellings of Icelandic words, so ‘jeg’ is used instead of ég, ‘sjer’ instead of sér and dozens of others. This is the kind of language that appears very often in Morgunblaðið at the time. Meanwhile the workers’ papers such as Verkamannablaðið use direct Icelandic without any Danish-isms.  I’ll come back to this subject later as the fight for ‘pure’ Icelandic is part of the two struggles for Icelandic independence. One bourgeois and the other working class and peasant.  

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[1] Kommúnistahreyfingin á Íslandi 1921-34, Þór Whitehead p10

[2] Ólafur Friðriksson, future editor of the Social Democrats paper Alþýðublaðið, was sent out to Copenhagen by his father to learn double-entry bookkeeping in 1906 when he was twenty. He met Jack London and was employed by him to review books, which Ólafur said paid well. Klukkan var Eitt, p24-28

[3] Hendrik Ottósson, Hvíta Stríðið p15 and Frá Hlíðarhúsum 294-5 cited  Kommúnistahreyfingin á Íslandi 1921-34, Þór Whitehead, p10

[4] Fredrik Ström had sided with the far left of the SDP headed by communists. The group supported the Bolsheviks and formed the first Swedish Communist Party

[5] At the time Germany had the largest, best educated and most highly organised working class in the world.

The Lost Revolution: Germany 1918-23, Chris Harman; How the Revolution was Lost, Chris Harman and The German Revolution 1917-23, Pierre Broué

The Olympics: Raining on their parade

The 2012 Olympics opening ceremony has started tonight in London where the Olympic torch has lit a big bowl of fuel in East London. The torch relay was introduced in 1936 by the Nazi German government whose dreams of Aryan glory were shaken by African American Jesse Owens' multiple gold medals.
Halldór Kiljan Laxness, Iceland's greatest novelist, left-winger and future Nobel Laureate, was in Germany at the time visiting Leipzig. He went to see potential publishers for a German translation of his great novel Salka Valka and stopped off at Berlin when a friend managed to get him tickets to the Games. Unlike other Icelandic commentators, Halldór wasn't impressed that Icelandic athletes were there at all;

'It can be said in praise of the Icelandic "athletes" who were taking their ease there, that none of them had even the lowest level of ability that was required for these games, but got to be there, as far as I could understand, because they belonged to the fairer race, as the Germans consider themselves, and the only way they drew attention to themselves was by giving the fascist salute on the field and denying at the same time the one thing that they could have shown: respect for their own nation.'

Normal Service Will be Resumed

For the next seven weeks or so  I will be submerged in preparation for and the aftermath of Europes largest festival of the Left Marxism 2012. So apologies for the hiatus but I will return in late July with Stefán Pjetursson’s book Byltingin í Rússlandi, the Revolution in Russia,first published in Reykjavik 1921. This was designed as a straightforward explanation of Russia's history and the background to the Revolution, and to counter the lies and misunderstandings of the rightwing Press. See you then..

Women and Revolution - An angry Egyptian writes

Next weekend in Reykjavik a film festival of short films and documentaries about women and women's rights opens including Hidden Faces about Egyptian women.

In her blog An Angry Egyptian, Egyptian revolutionary socialist Gigi Ibrahim responds to feminist Mona El Tahawy who argues that women in the Middle East are oppressed because men hate them.  She also blames religion for misogyny and sexual violence. El Tahawy has been involved in the protests in Egypt but her understanding of oppression and religion cannot explain how women were able to sleep out in Tahrir Sq for weeks safely, nor why secular and Muslim Egyptians protected Christians whilst they prayed and Christians protected Muslims. In short she does not understand class. For her men can only be part of the problem. Nawal Al Sadawi, Egyptian author, doctor, activist and longtime women's rights campaigner, however does understand.

‘In the square, I felt for the first time that women are equal to men, It's like I carried a burden on my back, and now I feel free.' Al Sadawi was arrested and censored for her work under Anwar Sadat's and Hosni Mubarak's regimes. "Suzanne Mubarak silenced women, killed the feminist movement, and did nothing for us," she said, dismissing the former first lady's "National Council of Women" as little more than a PR campaign for the regime.’

Lives unfettered by possessions or a home

Apologies to Comrade Markin for the slow response to your question. Commenting on To Talk about Women's Oppression We have to Talk about Class, you asked,

‘about the position of women you've described in early 20th Century Iceland. I get the impression that although the same material oppression was experienced as elsewhere in early capitalism, there is a countervailing tendency in that women worked from very early on in the development of capitalism. (In Britain, for instance, it wasn't until the end of the Industrial Revolution that large numbers of women were pulled into the factories). Is this impression correct and, if so, is there any cultural cause behind it?’

It’s true that women in Iceland were at the forefront of Iceland’s transition to capitalism, though women in Britain were also down the mines before they went into the factories.

To understand the way women became industrial workers we need to understand the peculiarities of Iceland’s material conditions and the legal constraints placed upon its peasantry to suit the economic demands of its ruling class.

Iceland was one of the last parts of Europe to be settled from the end of the 9th late C and roughly all the habitable land had been divided up into homesteads by the early 13th C. But the pioneers of one age, the rebellious class that ran away from the Norwegian King Harold Fairhair, were not so keen on rebellion when they had established their farms and needed obedient servants and farmworkers.

Norwegian rule gave way to a more powerful Danish state and monopoly trade with little investment through 17th & 18th C.

By the late 18th C the Icelandic ruling class, made up of landowners, Danish or Icelandic officers of the Danish Crown and its church Lutheranism, had become a conservative force that was actively blocking development. Farm leases were often very short, even two or three years which did not allow people time to improve their land and buildings. Then if tenants did manage to make improvements the rents often went up.[1] There was soil erosion and loss of trees yet the old technologies of drainage and manuring though well known in mainland Europe were barely used, so land was much less productive than it could have been.  

The legal obligations imposed on the peasantry by the Vistarband system saw any peasant family as a source of new paupers so the authorities actively tried to ensure that most people could not marry. By 1850 35- 40% of the population over 15 yrs old were servants. That is unmarried indoor and outdoor workers contracted 1 year at a time, for bed, board + low wages. They were essential to the hay harvest and in the winter women could work on wool processing while the men were sent to fish, for which they received no extra pay with all profit going to their employer. Added to this was a culture of young people being sent out to work and grow up on a farm away from that of their parents as part of their education.[2]

This meant that Iceland had a large highly mobile workforce that owned far fewer material possessions than a person could carry. For instance in the parish records in 1816 Sigríður Einarsdóttir aged 27 was a servant at the farm Hruni in Southern Iceland. In 1818 she moved a few miles west to Þrándarholt in the parish of Hrepphólar until she moved to Miðfell from1824 til 1836. She then moved to another farm in Hrepphólar, Dalbær from 1837-39 and in 1840 moved back to the parish of Hruni and worked at Syði Sandlækur until 1844. The following year Sigríður went back to Miðfell and moved again in 1847 to the parish of Hruni where she was registered as a servant in Hrunakrókur from 1847-50 moving within the same parish in the early 1850’s to Bryðjuholt where she was still registered as a servant in the 1855 census.

In 1816 16 year old Gróa Bjarnadóttir was also in Southern Iceland in the parish of Hruni as a servant at the farm Efrasel. From 1819-22 she moved to Berghylur in the same parish. From 1822-28 Gróa moved to Skipholt in the neighbouring parish of Tungfell. From 1829-1840 she doesn’t show up in the records but in 1840 was registered as a housekeeper in Gröf in the parish of Hruni. She remained at Gröf but after 1855 as a servant. In 1860 she was a servant at Þverspyrna still in the parish of Hruni, Southern Iceland and her final years were at Haukholt in Tungufell where she died in 1864.[3]

There were many reasons why people chose to move; to be near friends or family, to follow a good employer as they changed farm, for better wages and conditions or aging servants may not have had their contracts renewed, others could be sacked though not always with impunity.

'In 1916 Guðrún Þorleifsdóttir was sacked her for refusing to act as an unpaid servant to the local merchant in her free time. Guðrún had been hired to work in the hay and had brought her very young baby with her as was usual, and so argued that at the end of her working day she could expect to be free look after her child and herself. The farmer argued that she had to serve the merchant because the farm women had always done so. The farmer threatened to take her to court but let her off with just being sacked and turned out of the house. In January 1917 the Court found in Guðrún’s favour and the farmer had to pay her severance compensation.' 

Women in Iceland have never been a 'reserve army of labour'. However little they have been paid in money or board and lodgings, and however bad their conditions, they have lived by their work and when new opportunities came with fish and urbanisation they seized them with both hands.

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[1] Gísli Águst Gunnlaugsson, Studia Historica Upsaliensia 154 Family and Household in Iceland 1801-1930 pg 79

  [2] Loftur Guttormsson cited Gísli Águst Gunnlaugsson, Studia Historica Upsaliensia 154 Family and Household in Iceland 1801-1930pg 60

[3] Gísli Águst Gunnlaugsson, Studia Historica Upsaliensia 154 Family and Household in Iceland1801-1930pg 82

New Life Breathed into The old Co-op

The oldest building in the East coast village of Breiðdalsvík is the old Co-op built in 1906. It was the merchant's outpost serving the multiple, relatively small farms that in the 19^th Cent filled the parish of Eydalir in the enormous broad valley, Breiðdalur. This is the building that in its run down state had become the foreigners’ house that we migrant workers lived in 1986.

The old Co-op 1986 with its rusty red roof

Now the old Co-op, which shortly after it was built looked like this,




Gamla Kaupfélagið

has been refurbished as a centre for trekking, historical and geological research and now looks like this.



Gamla Kaupfélagið


See Breiðdalsvík’s website for photos of the restoration of the house





Saltfish and Strikes Part 1

For over a thousand years Icelanders have known that to split a fish, clean and then hang it up in the cold wind will preserve it for months. This dried or harðfisk allowed survival through brutal winters and long sea journeys. It even cleans your teeth as you strip the hard flesh from its skin. However fish that is salted before it’s dried lasts even longer, and when soaked in water to revive it becomes delicate and delicious. So by the 18^th century salting had become Iceland's most important method of fish preservation and until WW2 salted fish was over 60% of the export value of all its fish products.[1]



Salt cod drying Aberdeen c1910

When I last worked salt cod it was to remove the worms infesting the flesh of the ‘wings’ of the fish. Seals were usually blamed for the worms though the cod were more likely to have infected the seals.

I stood in a heated factory removing the worms with large tweezers from the almost ready fish. In the winter of 1915-6, the women first had to clean the cod in open troughs of water on the beach.

The temperature was down to minus 15 degrees centigrade and there was a thick layer of ice on the cod washing tubs in the morning. Hreiðarsína Hreiðarsðóttir got up at four to boil fish for lunch before going to work because she wasn’t happy leaving her daughter to manage the coke oven. A farmer she knew complained that he couldn’t get young women to work as they were paid so much in the fish. Hreiðarsína scoffed at the idea that she was well paid,

‘I’ve worked many fish that are so large that.. [when ready to work - the head removed, gutted and split the length of the body to open it out in one piece] the neck rests on the ground and the tail reaches to my armpit. Each fish has to be cleaned, the back scrubbed, then [scrubbed] under each wing, turn it over and remove any salt without tearing it, pull away the membrane from the chest, take out the bony parts round the neck, remove any blood from the fillets, get into the neck and take out any blood and if its not well done we’d get it back from the inspectors’.

For this heavy, filthy work the women got two aura [0.2 kr] for each fish.[2]

They drank coffee every hour so as not to freeze which they heated on the coke ovens in the saltfish drying shed and of course had to provide for themselves.

Stacking the cod

In 1912 Women fish workers in Hafnarfjörður struck for higher wages. Briét Bjarnhéðinsdóttir, editor of Kvennablaðið, covered the story by phone from Reykjavik. There were about 100 women working in the fish and all of them had stopped work and they had joined the same newly founded union with the men, Verkmannafélagið Hafnarfjarðar. The women reported that they were striking because all kinds of  fish work - spreading, stacking etc was paid at 15 aura per hour (0.15 kr), except ‘wetfish work’ at 18 aura ph. They were unhappiest with overtime and Sunday work - for each they got just 15 aura whilst men were being paid 40-50 aura for Sunday work and even more in Reykjavik. The women wanted; 18 aura for day work 23 aura for overtime from 7 - 11pm 28 aura per hour after 11 pm. 30 aura ph for Sunday work and 40 aura ph for Sunday work after 7 pm. Briét reported that the employers didn’t want to budge, ‘although most of them had thought the demands were fair’.

Briét likens this strike to the British miners’ who went out on strike in February 1912 demanding a minimum wage against a complicated sliding scales of wages that meant that they never quiet knew what they'd get paid. The women in Hafnarfjörður won most of what they wanted, though the article doesn’t go into detail it was a great victory.

Coming soon, Part 2 - Making salt fish while the sun shines

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[1] http://bit.ly/yqjuww  A Comprehensive Overview of the Icelandic Fish Industry, 5.1.3 University of Akureyri

[2] Verkakvennafélagið Framsókn 50 Ára 1914-1964 cited in Íslandsdætur pg 133