The Day Iceland
Stood Still
I discovered this story 7 years ago in a sidebar of the Lonely Planet guide on a family trip to Iceland and raced to my computer to find the film that must have been made about it.
How could you get 9 out of 10 women anywhere to do the same thing at the same time? And how could the world not know about this unprecedented act of civil disobedience that transformed Icelandic society into an inspiration for us all? Werner Herzog says that certain stories “come at you and demand to be told – like the burglar who broke into your house overnight and rushes at you.” That’s what this was like for me.
Then I spent time with some of these feminist pioneers, and when I discovered how they used humor strategically to open people’s ears to their message, I thought – this film could actually be fun!
And once I met my collaborator, acclaimed Icelandic filmmaker Hrafnhildur “Hrabba” Gunnarsdóttir, I knew that together we could tell this story so that it would become an unforgettable part of our shared history.
​
Both Hrabba and I have a personal connection to this narrative. Hrabba, as a young girl, stood with her mother and tens of thousands of women on October 24, 1975 on Reykjavik’s Laekjartorg Square as part of the now-historic Women’s Day Off demonstration - and was sure that when she woke up the next day, “everything would be perfect.” ​​
I was raised by a single mother in Boston, a copywriter for an advertising agency who became a feminist activist the instant she discovered she was making half as much as the boys on the job. In the early 1970s, as a high school student, I accompanied her to the Massachusetts State House to lobby for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment – and although we didn’t know it, at that same moment half an ocean away Iceland’s women were changing the world.​​
In my years as an executive producer in public television in the United States, I’ve seen how often women’s narratives are overlooked – yet when they are told, they make such a difference. In the words of Irish civil rights leader Bernadette Devlin, “While we often think women are written out of history, in many cases they are never written in.” Both Hrabba and I have reveled in unearthing these untold stories throughout our careers, and on New Year’s Day this year the President of Iceland honored Hrabba with the Order of the Falcon – the Knight’s Cross for her body of documentary filmmaking raising awareness in the field of equality.​
​
The U.S. never did pass the Equal Rights Amendment, and today ranks a dismal 43rd globally on the gender parity index, while Iceland has ranked #1 for the past 14 years. And while Iceland still isn’t perfect, it’s the only country to have closed over 90% of its gender gap and committed to reaching full equality by 2030. The rest of the world will take 131 years to get there, based on current trends.
There’s a famous saying: “There’s nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.” We hope this untold story will inspire viewers for generations to come to reimagine the possible!
-Pamela Hogan
