For centuries, Iceland was a rural country. There were harbours allowing communication with Europe, but no villages or towns. After the Danish Monopoly of Commerce was abolished at the end of the 18th century, and following further freeing-up of commerce around the middle of the 19th century, fishing villages developed along the coastlines, which thrived as a result of modern fishing methods and boats.

The isolated Icelandic farmsteads had over centuries developed patterns of oral evening entertainment held in the central living room (the baðstofa): readings from Icelandic sagas or from the Bible; storytelling or chanting rímur ballads. This performative tradition might be seen as one of the sources of the intensive theatre activity that developed in the new fishing villages and commercial centres in the second half of the 19th century. Another incentive was the growing interest, at the time, in Iceland’s national identity and literary culture, as evidenced by the periodicals Fjölnir and Skírnir. Theatre societies responded to a sense that the country should have its own theatre and its own plays dealing with Icelandic society and culture.

This rapid blossoming of amateur theatre in Iceland did not revolve around an obvious centre but involved practically every hamlet of 100 inhabitants or more. The initiators were school students, Danish merchants, Icelandic farmers, and scholars in the capital of Reykjavík, all of whom in due course were organized as part of different groups: the Good Templars, who frequently financed the construction of buildings with scenic facilities; various youth organizations; women’s societies; trade unions; eventually these coalesced into amateur theatre companies. Plays, locally written or translated, were produced in practically every school building in the country during the period 1860-1918. In about 50 towns and villages two or more productions were put on annually. Even in the remote countryside, one finds theatre activity occurring in farm houses or any other building that was deemed adequate.

One of the most influential instigators of this boom was the painter Sigurður Guðmundsson (1833–1874), whose motivation was outspokenly nationalistic. The upsurge of interest resulted in a repertoire of new Icelandic plays, many of which, like those appearing in neighbouring countries at this time, were National-Romantic in tone, involving folklore or historical subjects. Many, by authors such as Matthías Jochumsson and Jóhann Sigurjónsson, are still performed nowadays as “national” classics. Prior to this time, the earliest examples of Icelandic drama had been a few comedies from the end of the 18th century in the spirit of Molière and Holberg.

Another result of this intense theatrical activity was the growing demand for a national professional theatre. The largest of the amateur companies, Leikfélag Reykjavíkur (“Reykjavík Theatre Company”), founded in 1897, developed this ambition early on, and within the space of ten years had, in many ways, achieved it: in 1908, the Reykjavík Theatre Company produced the first work of Jóhann Sigurjónsson, who would later reach an international audience (and the attention of Georg Brandes) with his Fjalla-Eyvindur (“Eyvind of the mountains”, 1911) and Galdra Loftur (“Loftur the magician / The wish”, 1914). Those involved in the development of the theatre in Iceland were aware of the work of Ole Bull and the Norwegian theatre in Bergen, and influenced, obviously, by impulses from Copenhagen (where Sigurður Guðmundsson had often visited the theatre). Since there was no theatre school in Iceland, those who wished for more formal training also had to go abroad. Two of Iceland’s most talented early actresses, Stefania Guðmundsdóttir and Guðrún Indriðadóttir, spent winters in Copenhagen in 1904-05, and in 1906, studying with actors and ballet teachers linked to the Royal Theatre.