The 50th anniversary exhibition of the Women’s History Archives opened at the National Library on October 17, 2025. The exhibition features 18 women from the Women’s History Archives’s collection who worked in a variety of jobs in the 20th century. One of them was Ingibjörg Guðlaugsdóttir (1887–1971).
Ingibjörg was born in Sogn í Kjósarhreppur parish. She was a maid in her home village as a young woman, but in her thirties she went to live with her aunt, Guðbjörg Guðmundsdóttir. Guðbjörg was married to Páll Kolka, who was then the newly appointed district physician in the Vestmannaeyjar Islands, and Ingibjörg accompanied their family for half a century. She lived in their home in the Vestmannaeyjar Islands and later in Blönduós, but visited her childhood home in Kjósarhreppur in the summer. Ingibjörg contributed to raising children and housekeeping, cleaning, washing and sewing, but also assisted Páll with his medical work, not least when patients needed to be anesthetized for operations. For more than two decades she performed most of the anesthesia at the hospital in Blönduós. Páll wrote that she had been an adept anesthetist, skilled at gaining the trust of patients and alleviating their fears.
Link to the exhibition WE ARE MANY
