Figure 1.--This photograph od presumably a grandfather abd this three grandchildren was dated to the1890s bt a deler, we suspect because it is a snpshot, it was probably taken in the early-1900s. We think the younger child is a boy wearing a dress and pinafore. His older sister wars exactly the same outfit, but with what looks like a kind of tam. The middle child is a boy wearing a knickers sailor suit and Astrakhan cap. ll three wear black long stockings and what looks like a kind of slippers. We suspect tht this was indoors fotwear and the childen were take outide just for the snap shot with grandfather.

We have not yet been able to build an Icelandic clothing chronology. Iceland is a small country with a small population and was relatively poor country. This means that the photographic record is much smaller than many other countries. We have not found any 19th century images and not many 20th-century ones. Our archive is still very limited. At best we can tell as this point, Icelandic children simply followed European styles, especially Danish sty;es as Icelnd was a Danish colony. And the few images we have archived do fit into this pattern. We see the same formal dress standards in Iceland that we see in early European countries. At the turn-of-the 20th century, we note girls wearing dresses and pinafores and boys wearing sailor suits (figure 1). It would be difficult to destinguih many Icelandic images from Danish images. Of course Iceland has a harsher winter than Denmark, so warm clothing such as sweaters is even more important than in Denmark. As the 20th century progressed we see the same trend toward casual clothing that we see in Denmark and other countries. We hope to expand this section as HBC develops, but ufortunatelybobtaining Oceladic photographs is not an easy undertaking.

Created: 1:30 AM 11/4/2015
Last updated: 1:30 AM 11/4/2015