Margrét Þóra Hallgrímsson

Margrét Þóra (Thora) Hallgrímsson (born 28 January 1930) is the wife of the businessman Björgólfur Guðmundsson and like him was a prominent figure in the cultural and business life of Iceland from around 2002–2008.

Family and surname

Þóra was born in Reykjavík, the eldest daughter of Hallgrímur Fr. Hallgrímsson, chairman of Shell in Iceland and consul in Canada, and his wife Margrét Þorbjörg Thors Hallgrímsson, daughter of the businessman Thor Philip Axel Jensen.[1]

Although ethnically Icelandic, Þóra's father Hallgrímur was born Canadian. His surname Hallgrímsson was not a patronym, but in fact his father's patronym, which his father had taken as a surname when moving to Canada. In turn, Þóra also inherited the surname, giving rise to the unusual situation of a female Icelander with a last name ending in -son.

Marriages

Þóra married Haukur Clausen, an Olympic athlete and later dentist, on 6 January 1951, by whom she had Örn Friðrik (born 13 July 1951),[2] but they separated just a year later.

On 3 October 1953 Þóra married George Lincoln Rockwell, an officer in the American Navy and later founder of the American Nazi Party, moving with him to America. With him she had three further children: Hallgrímur, Margrét, and Bentína.[3] In Roger Boyes's account,

Olafur Thors’s niece Thora Hallgrimsdottir was in trouble. Thora was a free spirit. At a ball in Reykjavik she had fallen for a handsome American naval Officer, George Lincoln Rockwell—a war hero to boot—and abandoned her marriage to a well-connected Icelandic dentist to wed him. All harmless enough, except that Rockwell became a founder of the American Nazi Party and one of the most active racists in the United States. One of his missions was to take the Ku Klux Klan into the modern age; he coined the phrase White Power, organized rallies, operated a Hate Bus to stir up sentiment against African-Americans.[4]

Accounts of Þóra's divorce from Rockwell, which include Rockwell's own autobiography, and her return to Iceland vary. Her father Hallgrímur travelled to the USA in 1958 to bring his daughter home;[5] according to Boyes, the family asked Björgólfur Guðmundsson to help convince Þóra to return to Iceland.[6] Þóra moved back with her four children,[7] divorced Rockwell, and in 1963 married Björgólfur.[8] She had one son by Björgólfur, Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson, but Björgólfur Guðmundsson also adopted Þóra's children by Rockwell.

Þóra's grandson, by her daughter Evelyn Bentína Björgólfsdóttir, is the footballer Björgólfur Hideaki Takefusa.

Controversy over biography

In 2005, Guðmundur Magnússon published the book Thorsararnir, on the history of the descendants of Thor Jensen. In the first version of the book was a chapter on Þóra's marriage with Rockwell. The book was published by the press Edda, but Björgólfur, who owned the publisher, had the author change the text. Moreover, he tried to buy the newspaper Dagblaðið-Vísir, which had discussed the matter, in order to close it down.[9]

Appearances in popular culture

Þóra was the model for one of the characters in the novel Sakleysingjarnir by Ólaf Jóhann Ólafsson.[10]

References

  1. ↑ http://www.mbl.is/greinasafn/grein/37260/; http://www.mbl.is/greinasafn/grein/286017/.
  2. ↑ Cf. 'Haukur Clausen', Morgunblaðið, 13 May 2003, http://www.mbl.is/greinasafn/grein/730658/.
  3. ↑ http://atlas.verslo.is/1962?s=nemendur_meira&sid=6168; http://www.mbl.is/greinasafn/grein/286017/.
  4. ↑ Roger Boyes, Meltdown Iceland: Lessons on the World Financial Crisis from a Small Bankrupt Island (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009), pp. 63-64.
  5. ↑ George Lincoln Rockwell, This Time the World (Parliament House 1961; Reprinted by White Power Publications, 1979; and later Liberty Bell Publications, 2004, ISBN 1-59364-014-5), https://archive.org/details/ThisTimeTheWorld_37; Roger Boyes, Meltdown Iceland: Lessons on the World Financial Crisis from a Small Bankrupt Island (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009), pp. 63-64; Ingi Freyr Vilhjálmsson, Hamskiptin: Þegar allt varð falt á Íslandi (Reykjavík: Veröld, 2014), p. 55.
  6. ↑ Roger Boyes, Meltdown Iceland: Lessons on the World Financial Crisis from a Small Bankrupt Island (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009), pp. 63-64.
  7. ↑ http://www.mbl.is/greinasafn/grein/286017/
  8. ↑ This Time The World, the autobiography of George Lincoln Rockwell; Roger Boyes, Meltdown Iceland: Lessons on the World Financial Crisis from a Small Bankrupt Island (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009), pp. 63-64.
  9. ↑ Ritskoðari einokar dagblaðamarkað. DV, 1. nóvember 2008.
  10. ↑ Aldarspegill sakleysingjanna. Morgunblaðið, 31. October 2004.

External links

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