Miss Iceland

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really, must a woman's only escape out of being pinned down result in standing on a stage for men to decide just how beautiful you are? Telma Jonsdóttir, Iceland's 2012 Miss World contestant, "has the unfortunate job of sifting through applications for the coming Miss Iceland contest and the publicity stirred by feminists has even sparked an abnormally high influx of legitimate hopefuls. I felt like many characters were limited in their lives both by the societal norms/expectations but also by their own fears or inability to risk change. Overall, 60s-Iceland is a very grim place as depicted here, a far cry from today's liberal, progressive Icelandic culture. This novel is set predominantly in Iceland’s capital of Reykjavík, though some portions are in more rural parts of the country where the main character grew up, and there is a brief portion towards the end of the novel set in Denmark.It’s a beautifully written, tightly translated, quickly paced tale about good people in a bad world. The gender wage gap has only shrunk by about 20 percent in the past half century (and that’s going by the most generous estimates).

Beyond this moment, however, we soon learn how Olafsdottir has tricked us, in much the same way that sexist societal norms have tricked Hekla.

The next section, "Birth of an Island," leads off with a quote from an 1835 poem by Jónas Hallgrímsson, one of many literary references that vein Miss Iceland : ". She succeeds Birta Abiba Þórhallsdóttir, Miss Universe Iceland 2019, who placed in the Top 10 at Miss Universe 2019, the highest placement for Iceland since 1962. When they move to Denmark, Olafsdottir’s style becomes even more dynamic and telling: “We step off the train at night.