Daughters of the North

How Daughters of the North Began

The idea for Daughters of the North did not begin as a series.

I had started working on a single female figure, and in many ways I found myself returning to something I had explored around ten years earlier — women placed within imagined environments, where the figure and the world around her seemed to belong together.

That first work became Daughter of Moss and Earth.

When I showed the image to my husband, he suggested bringing more of the Icelandic landscape into the background. It was a simple comment, but it completely changed the direction of the work.

That was the moment everything clicked.

I began reworking the image, allowing the landscape to become much more present. The woman was no longer simply standing within an environment. I started to see her as part of it — almost as though the moss, earth and landscape had taken human form.

From there, the idea expanded very quickly.

What if there were more of them?

Women shaped by different forces of Icelandic nature. Moss. Water. Lava. Lagoons. Black shores. Wind. Ice. Mountains. Each one carrying the atmosphere, movement and character of a different landscape.

And so Daughters of the North was born.

The naming became part of the concept too. Each work would be a daughter of something — Daughter of Lava, Daughter of the Wind, Daughter of Lagoon, Daughter of the Black Sands — each connected to her own element of the land.

What began with one image has now become one of the most enjoyable projects I have worked on.

The series is still growing. My hope is to create a substantial collection of around 16–20 works, allowing me to explore many more sides of Iceland — from glaciers and volcanic landscapes to waterfalls, geothermal areas, coastlines and the quieter details of the land.

For me, these women are not portraits of Iceland.

They are the landscape.