Bloodline – description
Guðrún Arndís Tryggvadóttir 2016

Bloodline is the result of a journey I undertook in my mind, to overcome the limits of time, and so meet my ancestors of direct female descend. Most of them lived long before I was born so I have no memories of them but in the book of Icelanders (on islendingabok.is) information can be found on all Icelanders. Birth- and death dates, birth places and the places they lived at different times, child- births, husbands and other facts that have been kept in church books and gathered by official registrations.

Bloodline is the result of a journey I undertook in my mind, to overcome the limits of time, and so meet my ancestors of direct female descend. Most of them lived long before I was born so I have no memories of them but in the book of Icelanders (on islendingabok.is) information can be found on all Icelanders. Birth- and death dates, birth places and the places they lived at different times, child- births, husbands and other facts that have been kept in church books and gathered by official
registrations.

From these sources I have proof that my oldest foremother’s name was Ingibjörg Nikulásdóttir born in 1685, at  Skarðsströnd, here nearby Ólafsdalur. She was housemaid at Kross in Skarðsströnd but moved from there to Bugðustaðir where she ran the house.

Generation after generation continued to live in Dalir county until the 19th century when my great- great grandmother Guðrún Þorleifsdóttir moved from Stróra-Vatnshorn and gave birth to my great grandmother, Ingibjörg Ásmundsdóttir, at Kross in Lundareykjadalur in Borgarfjörður.

Ingibjörg was raised in Akranes but soon moved to Reykjavík. She died at 84, when I was 10 years old and I have only vague memories of her. Six of my foremothers were registered in Dalir county and therefore it is not unlikely that their foremothers lived in the same area centuries before as well.

Measured from the settlement of Iceland in 874 untill the birth of my daughter in 1988, the latest female in my Dalir bloodline, with the average of 33,33 years between generations, make up 33 generations from the settlement to date.

With the bloodsamples in the cupboard I want to point to the vast number of generations of foremothers that have possibly lived here in the area and fought their fights to survive in the harsh Icelandic environment.

I owe my life to them and I wanted to show them respect and gratitude by giving myself fully to their memory and try to imagine their hardship and pain as well as victories and happiness, by painting them, here in the old farmschool house in Ólafsdalur where time stands still.

(Main text, under glass at the exhibition)

Owner: Guðrún Arndís Tryggvadóttir