A Month of Auður

One of the prime inspirations for the FITK blog was a young Icelandic woman, Auður Ösp Ólafsdóttir.

In early 2004, while researching a trip to Iceland, I discovered her English-language blog A Woman Without A Man. It was written journal-style and full of the various minutiæ of her daily life in Reykjavík. What set it apart from the thousands of other newly-minted blogs of the day was her engaging and revelatory writing, the frankness of which got her into a bit of trouble with some of her Icelandic readers, so she killed her blog in September 2004. By that time we had already been in contact so I offered to let her use FITK as an outlet. She used that access to write a baker’s dozen of posts under the nom de plume of Little Miss Loopy. These will be featured here throughout December as part of my “20 Years Ago on FITK” series.

Auður’s internet adventures didn’t end there.

She went on to write several more blogs and in 2011 she started I Heart Reykjavík, a tourist site which was also a portal to her walking tours. Heart was a rousing success but it all ended in a single day when Covid restrictions were put into place in March of 2020.

Auður is currently self-employed and has a web site, posting primarily in Icelandic.

This month also marks my phasing out of Icelandic posts, there may be one here and there in following months/years, but that well is just about dry.

As always, you can access over 200 ‘best of’ Icelandic posts in the sidebar under ‘Iceland.’