Icelandic children through the ages

Here are some toys played with by Icelandic children in earlier times. The first is a collection of bones. The second is a play village. The bones scattered about the village were used to represent animals in the community.


Here is the report card of a little boy from 1910.








He studied in a schoolhouse like this one.






Children often slept together with the entire family on one floor of the house. Or at a minimum, in a room with several beds, like this one.



Our tour guide told us how his grandfather had 14 children, all from the same wife. They all slept together in the loft of the house. When the guide asked his grandfather how he got the privacy needed to sire more children, he said he scattered raisins across the floor of the house on the lower level. If he needed extra time, he had the children wear mittens.