Disability Studies Meets Microhistory
The Secret Life of Bíbí in Berlín
By Guðrún Valgerður Stefánsdóttir, Sólveig Ólafsdóttir, Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon
Copyright 2025
Bíbí, whose full name was Bjargey Kristjánsdóttir (1927–1999), was named after her parent’s farm, Berlín, which was located just outside of a small village called Hofsós in the North-western part of Iceland. Bíbí was considered a promising child but became sick in her first year and was later labeled an “idiot” or “feebleminded” by the medical profession, her family and the community at large. Bíbí was long hidden at home and kept away from guests and visitors. She did not attend school but received education at home, learning to read and write. She lived on the farm Berlín with her parents and brother until 1958 when her mother suddenly passed away when Bíbí was 30 years old. After that, attempts were made to have her move to Kópavogshælið – an institute for mentaly disabled people located close to Reykjavík, which began its operations a few years earlier, in 1952. Bíbí refused to go and prevailed in this confrontation. Instead, she was found a home in a neighbouring town, where she did not know anyone, in the nursing home in Blönduós. There, as a young person, she lived among elderly people for 17 years, until 1974.
She was therefore 47 years old when, according to her own account, she achieved “independence” in Blönduós when she moved into this smal town. The first years, she lived alone in a room that her friend Ingibjörg Sigurðardóttir, who worked at the old age home, rented for her. Later, she moved into a small single-family house that she bought with the help of Ingibjörg, and the house is known today as Bíbí’s house. She lived there until 1992, but by then her health had deteriorated and she moved back to old age home in Blönduós, where she passed away in 1999 at the age of 72.
After Bíbí past away, people found out that she had written an autobiography, a book that was 145.000 words (avarage monograph is around 90.000 words). Bíbí’s autobiography, and other source material that she created, attests to her good intelligence, rich imagination, and insight into her own circumstances and those of her peers. Her writing is at times magnificent, her imagery ornate and often poignant. It is safe to say that she did not spare her contemporaries in her judgments. It is clear that Bíbí wanted her manuscript to be published, even though she kept her writings hidden from most of her contemporaries, and in fact, few knew that she was literate – that she could read and write.
Bíbí’s autobiography is a unique source, as well as other source material she created, that has given us an opportunity to understand much better the status of those who were on the margins of society, not least disabled girls and women. In addition, her story provides a unique insight into the life and experience of a woman who was ostracized from human society, kept aside, and denied access to traditional institutions of society such as the education system and, in reality, the healthcare system as well. She was in her own way alone in the world, especially after her mother died, but still managed to deal with her situation in an admirable way. Her gardening, a sizeable libary, and the doll collection are chapters in Bíbí’s story, but this all, along with the manuscript of her autobiography, poetry she created and a diary she kept for years, provide an opportunity to analyze her personality and the society she was after all part of.