The Boundaries of Pleasure: The Diary of Ólafur Davíðsson and the Heterotopia of the Nineteenth-Century Reykjavík Latin School

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines a unique source for Icelandic queer history, the diary of Latin School student Ólafur Davíðsson from 1881–1882. In the diary, Ólafur describes his love relationship with a fellow pupil at the school. The article argues that the diary can be seen as a map of queer space in nineteenth-century Reykjavík. Close reading of the diary reveals the boundaries within which queer relationships could be formed and were accepted. This queer space was centred on the Reykjavík Latin School, a secondary boarding school strongly focused on the Classics. The article utilizes Foucault’s concept of heterotopia to analyse the special character of the Latin School in Reykjavík society. At the school, young men from all around the country lived together in close quarters, reading Ancient Greek texts that extolled same-sex love. The school also introduced students to new ideological trends from Scandinavia, above all realism and atheism, which allowed students to free themselves from the restraining influence of traditional societal norms and religion. The existence of a heterotopic queer space such as this in as peripheral a society as nineteenth-century Iceland could have interesting implications for other remote and peripheral areas in Scandinavia and beyond.