Fifty years ago, Icelandic women went on strike, kickstarting a gender revolution. Today, the concept of ‘konur eru konum bestar’ is everywhere – including the female-led coalition government

Walking in steady procession, mittened hand in mittened hand, we descend in our swimsuits into the icy cold North Atlantic Ocean, singing. Usually the women sing an Icelandic song as they enter the waves, but this Saturday, for my benefit, they have chosen to sing You Are My Sunshine first. It’s 11am but the sun is only just rising, the ocean waves lapping and the sky shades of pink and purple. The big black rock in the middle of Reykjavík’s Skarfaklettur beach is dusted in snow. The water is apparently around zero degrees. When we are about waist high, my thighs go numb and the chain of hands breaks up. For a second I feel alone as I start to lose my breath and the others disappear into the water. But then Guðrún Tinna Thorlacius, known as Tinna, arrives to ask if I am OK. She looks at me with such sincerity and care that I cannot help but feel held. We breathe in for a count of three and out for another six, until I am ready to descend to my chest.

Members of the multigenerational ocean dipping group, Glaðari Þú (Happier You), meet several times a week at different spots around the Icelandic capital. I am here because it encapsulates a uniquely Icelandic idea – konur eru konum bestar (women are the best to women) – that has gained popularity in recent years as a guiding principle for how women should treat one another.

The phrase, created by women, is a contemporary inversion of an old saying – konur eru konum verstar (women are the worst to women). The idea is that rather than imitating the patriarchy by behaving in ways that make life worse for other women, they instead choose to uplift and support one another. It feels especially resonant in an age of polarisation and social media-fuelled comparison, where feminism, toxicity and exclusion have a tendency to get mixed up – to the extent that some interpretations of feminism can feel regressive. Could konur eru konum bestar be the Icelandic antidote to toxic “girlboss” culture?

Including Tinna, who co-runs the ocean-dipping sessions, there are 19 of us in today’s group. I attend with Þorgerður Jóhannsdóttir and Helga Gunnarsdóttir, who are ocean-dipping addicts. For four years they have been doing this three or four times a week. This year, they both turn 70. While the group is theoretically unisex, they mostly attract women, with their fun, playful sessions aimed at seeking the natural high that comes with plunging into the cold ocean. The meeting starts with a warmup and group meditation, huddled together in a circle on the beach, and ends with dancing and singing. The middle bit, when we go into the ocean, is short but unforgettable. Some women put their heads underwater, others do a few press-ups afterwards. When we emerge back on to the beach, our movements seem freer, inhibitions lighter and the mood brighter. “We have two boyfriends,” says Tinna, as she starts up the post-dip music: first playing Harry Belafonte’s Jump in the Line, then Via Con Me by Paolo Conte, both of which the group dances to in sync. As I try to copy their moves, the words “It’s wonderful, it’s wonderful, it’s wonderful / Good luck my baby!” being belted out with gleeful abandon around me, it is impossible not to feel communal joy.