Invidious

I always do an annual summer solstice sale on the 21st of June, to celebrate the light. This year I thought I’d start the sale a bit early, because I realised that our Independence Day is just a few days before the summer solstice, today on June 17th. And today we celebrate 80 years of independence! So to all the Icelanders, gleðilegan þjóðhátíðar dag! ✨🥳 and for all the rest, you can celebrate with us by getting 44% discount on all my patterns … since we gained our independence in 1944! The SALE is valid until end of this month and no coupon needed ❤️

Earlier this year I did a little post on my neighbourhood in downtown Reykjavík and a short history recap. I was very happy to see how interested you guys were, so I thought I’d include a little history nugget here today too ❤️

One of the things I am very proud of as an Icelander (it is after all our Independence Day today so I feel I’m allowed 😉) is the fact that we were the First Nation worldwide to democratically elect a WOMAN as head of state! We elected Mrs. Vigdís Finnbogadóttir (second pic) as our president in 1980 and she served until 1996. I’m born in 1981, so all my childhood I was raised thinking that it was totally normal to have a woman as head of state. On top of being a woman, she was also a single mom when elected!! Now put that in your pipe and smoke it! 😅❤️

I’m getting a bit sappy here haha, but I feel this truly made a difference for me as a little girl growing up. It’s so very important for girls to see women play important roles in society ❤️ this way we KNOW we can do anything and are truly equal to men ❤️ I don’t know if it’s a direct result of this, but Iceland is leading to this day in gender equality worldwide. This is a true blessing for us as a nation. And I’m happy to tell you that we just had a presidential election last month and we have now again elected a woman as our next president ❤️ in fact, the runner up was ALSO a woman! It makes me happy to think that little girls growing up now in Iceland will have the same great role model I had as a kid.

Let me finish by mentioning our outgoing president, Mr. Guðni Th. Jóhannesson, who was an absolutely wonderful president too. I once had the honour of speaking to him on the phone and I told him that although I had not voted for him, I was indeed very happy with him as our president. His response: “well I’m happy to hear that. I’d rather you not vote for me and be pleased with my work, than the other way around!!” Ahaha, an absolutely brilliant and a very humble man. In the third pic here you can see Mr. Guðni (yes, we all refer to him by first name like we do with everyone here! 😅❤️), ordering KFC for his family and just waiting in line like everyone else! ❤️ this is what I absolutely love about my country, being a small nation comes with certain advantages too!

So happy Independence Day Iceland, here’s to at least 80 more years of good luck and prosperity for our nation ❤️🥂

Ps. Yes I know today is the 18th 🙈 forgot to post this here yesterday 🫶🏽