Hörðuvellir celebrates 90 years with a photography exhibition

Hörðuvellir has its anniversary on Friday.

Hörðuvallaleikskóli is 90 years old. To mark the occasion, the Hafnarfjörður Museum of Local History is opening a photography exhibition featuring images from the school's vast and remarkable archive. These are photographs taken throughout the school's history and of its activities in its early days. The aim is for the exhibition to be up by Friday.

Unveiling the first sign

The pictures will be hung on the fence at Hörðuvallatún and the exhibition will run throughout the summer. We're getting a head start here and seeing one of them. It reads:

The board of the Women's Trade Union Framtíðin held a meeting on the evening of Monday, 14 March 1932. There, Sigríður Erlendsdóttir raised the issue that it was necessary to establish a day nursery for the children of working women in the town. The aim was to give women in Hafnarfjörður the opportunity to have their children in safe care while they worked outside the home.

The matter was discussed by the society over the following months until a decision was made at a general meeting a year later to establish a day nursery, which began operating on 19 May 1933. For the first two years, it was housed in the town council chamber in the old primary school on Suðurgata and operated for three months over the summer. In August 1934, the association applied for a plot of land. at Hörðuvellir to erect a building for the activities, and work on the building began in March the following year. The activities commenced in the new building with its inauguration on Sunday, 2 July 1935. A contemporary source described the building as follows: „The house is built of timber, single-storey, with a cellar beneath part of it … the house contains a hall, a large and spacious kitchen, a bathhouse and sanitary facilities. To the south of it is a sun shelter. The house is electrically lit, and is in every way most comfortable.“ That summer, 37 children stayed at the home, which was open from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.

A remarkable and important story

The school has a remarkable history. For example, did you know that the Women's Workers' Association Framtíðin started the school's operations in 1935? Or that the school was temporarily closed due to the impending threat of Nazi air raids during the Second World War? The school's history is long, and many residents of Hafnarfjörður have fond memories of it. Operations began in the premises of the old primary school on Suðurgata, but this also housed the Hafnarfjörður Primary School, which later became Lækjarskóli. In the winter of 1948-49, the school moved to new premises at Hörðuvellir, where it remained until 2002, when it moved to its current building.

Happy birthday.