Moving days

From the time of the settlement of Iceland until the 20th century, spring time was moving days. This was the time of the year when the servant or working class would decide whether or not they wanted to stay in a particular household, and also when the head of the household would decide how many workers they would need and of what type for the upcoming year. A kind of annual review, but one at which the entire running of the farmstead would be decided, and thus all the staffing needs worked out at once, combined of course with salary negotiations for those who were going to stay on. 

One spring when my grandmother was a teenager, she heard about a farm on the shores of Lake Thingvellir needing help, and so she went there and was taken on. My grandfather lived at that farm, a bit sickly from youth, and well, from that spring on they were inseparable. 

My aunt lives on a farm in Sandgerdi. In the 1930s, the man who ran the farm became a widower, and when the next spring came around, he needed help keeping the farm operating. A lady, also recently widowed, heard about the opening and came to take the job. She brought her daughter along. They all worked well together, and after a few years, the farmer married the daughter. My aunt married their son. 

That was the way it was during moving days. A servant girl showed up at a farm, figuring that would be where she would work for the year, and sometimes it turned out to be longer than that, sometimes not.