Ólöf Sölvadóttir

Some yesterdays ago, while studying on the icelandiconline site, I came across a rather peculiar story, that of Ólöf Sölvadóttir. Ólöf has not only inspired this new section to find, through history, women who are interesting, but her story has also opened my eyes to understand Iceland from another perspective. Understand the country from what the country tells me, starting almost from scratch. Iceland on Iceland, as I call it. Ever since I came across her story, over a year ago, I have tried to find the book that details this woman's life. It wasn't easy, but once I had it in my hands I couldn't stop until I knew what became of her.

Ólöf was born in 1857, to a family that, due to the economic misfortunes that the island was experiencing, decided to emigrate to America. At that time, Iceland was under Danish rule, and despite the attempts to become independent, they had not achieved any change. The new promise was therefore to embark on the promised land: America. In New Iceland, hundreds of Icelandic migrants settled, trying to take advantage of policies that opened up migration at various points in the region. The first Icelandic immigrants chose within the Canadian territory a place where they could begin their new life, without neglecting their Icelandic roots. New Iceland was a place that, due to its geography, shared some characteristics that were familiar to the new settlers.

However, Ólöf's life was not only limited by the precarious financial situation. She was also a dwarf woman. For the time, her stature was linked to the low life expectancy, both due to illnesses and accidents, but especially because of the discrimination and ridicule that she suffered. But Ólöf knew that she had to find some way to overcome it, so she did not settle for what expectations could assume of her, neither for her height, nor for her financial problems, nor for her nationality

She started out working as a housekeeper in Winnipeg, since life in New Iceland was not fruitful for her. But, this was not enough. She would soon discover the door to a new life when she met a circus group. At that time, shows focused on "human oddities" were common, people who had some characteristic that set them apart from the rest and, in that sense, Ólöf found a place where her height was not a limitation, it was a whole form of livelihood.

Inside the circus, Ólöf told stories, in great detail, about her life and her fictitious relationship with another member of the circus who was also of short stature. But circus life was not so fulfilling for Ólöf's ingenuity, who began to realize the power that she had in it: the ability to tell stories.

Perhaps one of the first lessons we learn through Ólöf is that sometimes great stories are seasoned with details from fiction. People were confused, assuming that she came from Greenland instead of Iceland. Between the boredom, between the joke and the witty, Ólöf began to say that she was indeed Greenlandic and, not only that, but also an Eskimo (I know she refers to the Inuit, but considering Ólöf's story, it seems to me that this is the appropriate term, in addition this is clarified in the book). Being an Eskimo would become her full-time job. Ólöf drew stories from her fictional hometown, from plausible inventions to those bordering on the ridiculous. According to her, her size was due to the fact that she was not allowed to leave her house and she had to be sitting still. Eskimos were dedicated to hunting, they liked to drink the warm blood of animals, some of their favorite prey were polar bears, walruses, seals and whales, the latter, they hunted them by pulling ropes to remove the animal, using reindeers, the sled of dogs and all the men of the community. The babies were born "white as an American baby" but, since they didn’t shower, the grease and dirt spread all over, so the women "had long hair, dyed dark by smoke and grease."

Soon the rumor of Ólöf the Eskimo spread, becoming a major success among the masses, who flocked to the seminars that the Icelandic gave about her supposed life in Greenland, how she got to Iceland, her catechism and the beginning of her life in America. Ólöf's anecdotes reached the ears of Henry Lake Slayton, who organized seminars around the United States. Ólöf became a sensation, even for academics themselves, at a time when little was known about Greenland. Slayton took her in, not only to promote her seminars, but he also invited her to live with his family. With her lies and her fabulous imagination, Ólöf assured herself of a stable and dignified life for 30 years, until Slayton passed away and was left at the expense of the businessman's family, which was now headed by Slayton’s son, Wendell Slayton. By then the family would move to St. Petersburg, Florida, Ólöf had dropped out of seminars and was helping the Slaytons maintain their new properties, serving as an electrician. Wendell Slayton married a high-society woman who knew about Ólöf's charade (apparently the Slaytons had known long before that Ólöf had invented her Eskimo past) and feared that her reputation would be undermined by the possibility that the public knew of Ólöf's fraud.

The last years of Ólöf's life were spent in a home for the elderly, where she died at the age of 78 in 1935. However, her secret was revealed by Vilhjálmur Stefánsson, an Arctic explorer and ethnologist, who for many years kept silent even when he had knowledge of Ólöf's lies.

At that time, charlatans posing as people from other groups or ethnic groups were quite common, but Ólöf's great feat is that she managed to keep it throughout her life, since she had the wit to do some research on the subject and she was consistent on her story. The devil is in the details.

The book, written by the Icelandic anthropologist Inga Dóra Björnsdóttir, closes with an anecdote about Sigurður Nordal, a professor at the University of Iceland, who told the story of Ólöf a year after the Icelandic independence in his national radio program, to motivate a nation that was still unsure of the path to take, especially in the face of the influence of the American superpower.