Paper Short Abstract:

Iceland’s municipal pools are its largest playgrounds and most interesting public spaces. It is here that neighbors and strangers encounter one another, here that society manifests itself – first nude in the showers, then in swimsuits in the water. With the first ones built in the early 20th century, the cultural history of the public pools reveals how play, pleasure, and community gradually took primacy over their original design for hygiene, sport, and survival. The lecture builds on long-term ethnography and a qualitative questionnaire combined with archival research and a quantitative survey of people’s pool habits and attitudes.

Paper Abstract:

Iceland’s municipal pools are its largest playgrounds. These outdoor, geothermal pools have no customers, only poolgoers: people of all ages, backgrounds and body types, with different postures and perspectives on life. 79% of the adult population goes to the pool; 40% of adults go to the pool regularly year-round. Only a third of them actually go there to swim; one goes to the pool for pleasure, for play, for wellness, and to be amongst others and take part in the community. The pools are the most interesting public spaces in the country, made possible by the most important public good: hot water bubbling out of the ground. It is here that neighbors and strangers encounter one another, here that society manifests itself – first nude in the showers, then in swimsuits in the water. Leaving status symbols and prescribed roles in the changing room, the pools encourage ways of relating that differ from social relations in dry public spaces. Bodies of various shapes and sizes float together in the pools and hot tubs, and everyday life stands stark naked in the communal showers. With the first ones built in the early 20th century, the cultural history of the public pools reveals how play, pleasure, and community gradually took primacy over their original design for hygiene, sport, and survival. The lecture builds on long-term ethnography and a qualitative questionnaire combined with archival research and a quantitative survey of people’s pool habits and attitudes.