I’m a walking tour nerd. I blame my first study abroad program in undergrad, where our two shockingly spry professors kept us walking an average of 7-10 miles a day as we explored European capitals. Around the time my feet healed from those horrendous blisters, I developed a love for the humble walking tour.
Thanks in large part to AirBnB experiences, I’ve discovered a whole new type of walking tour - the niche tour. From literary to true crime to folklore, creative nerds the world around have created a trove of unique walking tours to give you an introduction to a city as well as a deep dive into a subject of your interest.
While living in London in 2020, the last touristy thing I did before hastily evacuating the country due to the COVID-19 pandemic was to take a feminist walking tour. I was a women’s studies major in undergrad and have focused on gender and feminism throughout my academic and professional career, so this particular tour was a no-brainer. Long story short, it was fabulous, I nerded so hard, and when I stumbled on a similar tour during my recent trip to Reykjavik I jumped at the opportunity.
The Reykjavik Women’s History Walk is hosted by Tinna Eik, a graduate student at the University of Reykjavik. My tour started out with a a bit of terror as my horribly introverted self realized that I was the only person in this particular tour. Luckily, Tinna didn’t find this as awkward as I did and was incredibly friendly and engaging. In fact, I didn’t end up taking a ton of notes or photos because it felt more like a conversation than a tour.
Motherly Love by Nina Sæmundsson
We started in Mæðragarður, or Mother’s Park, a serene patch of greenery established as a gathering place for mothers with children in 1925. The highlight of this park is Nina Saemundsson’s sculpture, “Motherly Love.”
According to the Historical Markers Database, “Motherly Love, a sculpture by Nina Sæmundsson, was installed on the site of the Skáholt Spring in 1930. It was the first sculpture by a woman to be erected in Reykjavik and the first public sculpture that was not a memorial or portrait, but an autonomous work of art. It is at once simple and poetic, embedded with an intimacy that fits the subject. Sæmundsson made Motherly Love in Paris in 1924 and submitted it for the fall exhibition at the Salon d'Automne at the Grand Palais, for which she received rave reviews and honourable mention under the French flag.
I’ll admit that I’m not a huge sculpture fan - but over the course of the tour Tinna laid out the importance of public sculpture and other forms of recognition and why representation, both of subject matter and creator, matters so much. Other stops on the tour included the Parliament House, Reykjavík Women's Gymnasium, and String of Pearls (plus a spontaneous excursion to Hólavallagarður Cemetery. I’m going to go sparse on the details here because I want you to do the discovering yourself :) (also, as mentioned above, I didn’t take many photos haha).
A lot of people ask what the point of a feminist walking tour is (some people ask more politely than others…). To me, the question in itself is the point. Traditional walking tours will highlight contributions of members of the dominant class in a society, because those dominant class members traditionally determine the narrative of a city’s history. The point of a feminist walking tour is to focus on contributions from people that have been historically overlooked. While traditional Icelandic narrative perhaps calls to mind a rugged, Viking-esque dude settling a wild terrain, Tinna’s tour took the time to ask about the history of women, minorities, and disabled citizens (because remember, if your feminism isn’t intersectional, it’s bullshit). A good feminist tour will make you a little bit angry, and leave you asking, “What else is missing?” The point is the curiosity for the invisible.
