The laundry in Vitastígur
When we were walking through Reykjavík recently, I noticed a mural on the wall of a house that I had consciously never seen before and that seemed unfamiliar to me.
So my husband took another photo at my request - my cell phone was on fire again, I'm afraid I'll need a new one... but I definitely wanted a picture of the mural!
And a few days later, by pure chance, I noticed an online article in Morgunblaðið - with exactly this mural!?!
In the meantime I have done a bit of research into the story behind this picture on the wall of the laundry:
The house on Vitastígur is home to the Úðafoss dry cleaners, probably the oldest dry cleaners still in operation in Iceland, founded in 1933.
The picture on the house wall is by the Icelandic artist Stefán Óli Baldursson, also known as Stebbi Motta. After he started spraying graffiti on walls with a spray can in the late 1990s as a child (and got in trouble from his mother for it), he later worked as a street artist and, with increasing success, has also painted many indoor and outdoor walls in and around Reykjavík, but also in other places on Iceland and Greenland, painted with his works.
Stefán Óli is, among other things, fascinated by old Icelandic photos that he finds in Reykjavík's Ljósmyndasafn (Museum of Photography) and other archives. That's how he came across a black and white picture by the Icelandic photographer Sigurhans Vignir (1894 - 1975), which is in the possession of the Árbæjarsafn. The photo shows the inside of the stone laundry room in Laugardalur and the washerwomen are at work.
Þvottalaugarnar
The "laundry basins" are basins with hot water that were used by housewives and maids in Reykjavík for washing until the 20th century. They were in Laugardalur, in Laugamýri, on the site of the old Laugarnes farm.
For a long time, women had to walk with their laundry on their backs without a road from downtown Reykjavík to what is now the Laugardalur district, often in the dark in the freezing cold and the scorching steam of the boiling hot water.
The first shelter for the washerwomen at the hot pools was built in 1833 on behalf of the then governor Regner Christoffer Ulstrup (1798 - 1836), who was horrified by the working conditions of the washerwomen. However, the shelter was destroyed again in a storm in 1857.
It was only around 30 years later that the working conditions for women improved sustainably, when construction of the road from Reykjavík to Laugardalur, the Laugavegur, began in 1886, which made the journey with laundry much easier, and also the non-profit Thorvaldsens Society, the oldest Icelandic women's association in Reykjavík (founded in 1875) had a laundry room built here at the pool in 1887, which the association later donated to the community.
The use of hot tubs for washing clothes declined after 1909, when homes in Reykjavík were provided with running water. During the First World War, however, there was such a shortage of fuel that the women returned to Laugardalur to wash. Between the wars, the use of the laundry basins fell sharply again, especially after the city was supplied with hot water from 1930 onwards.
After the occupation of Iceland in May 1940 by the British and then the American armed forces, laundering for the military resumed on a large scale. At the end of 1940, around 200 women are said to have worked for a local laundry or washed clothes for the army or soldiers, and the women's hourly wage was sometimes less than 2 ISK.
The first stone house for the washerwomen was built in 1942. The house initially offered space for 32 workers and led to a massive improvement in the women's working conditions. The work now became significantly safer as you no longer had to stand directly on the slippery floor at the basins with boiling hot water, but could let the water flow through a pipe into washing tubs and then wash in these tubs.
Until the 1960s, this washing facility was actively used by women from the area whose apartments were not yet connected to the hot water supply. The washhouse was not finally closed until 1976. Today the pools are dry, and all that can be seen of the former wash house or pools are the remains of the foundation walls.
Photo as inspiration for the mural
This photo by the Icelandic photographer Sigurhans Vignir shows the washerwomen at work on the laundry tubs in the washhouse built in 1942.
Inspired by this photo, the artist Stefán Óli Baldursson then approached the owners of the laundry or the owners of the house and asked if he could paint the house wall with this motif.
The owners agreed and so this large-format mural was created, in style and colors visibly based on the zeitgeist of the 1940s, i.e. the time in which the photo of the washerwomen in the washhouse in Laugardalur was taken.
I find it exciting how this mural on the house of a laundry is reminiscent of the entire long history of the washerwomen in Laugardalur!
[Translated from
here.]
Thaw and snowmelt
