Lögberg-Heimskringla - 06.10.1977, Síða 2

LOGBERG-HEIMSKRINGLA, FIMMTUDAGINN 6. OKTOBER 1977
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Iceland’s
struggle for
identity
Gerald Clark
Coát. from last week.
To some people the closeness brings
on claustrophobia. Olafur Grimsson, a
political scientist in his early 30s, knows
everyone in parliament, in joumalism,
in theatre, and many fishermen. “I look
at them,” he confesses, “and say to
myself, ‘Will I spend the next 40 or 50
years with no one eise’?”
But this thought does not prevent
him from also expressing a profound
fear: “We are so yulnerable.” One
hears the expression over and over
again, an apprehension of being over-
whelmed by outside forces or in-
fluences. Every Icelandic school child
studies three other languages —< Eng-
lish, Danish and German — with Eng-
lish the most widely employed. But the
real corisciousness is about Icelandic,
the same Old Norse that was spoken in
the lOth century by Scandinavians as a
whole but was itept virtually intact only
by Icelanders, who consider it rich and
beautiful.
The purity is such that no foreign
words — even scientific — are admitted
into the vocabulary. A committee of
scholars decides how existing Icelandic
fórms can be adapted to new needs.
Computer, for instance, becomes
“tolva,” uniting the word “tola” (to
countf with “volva” (a witch or mys-
tical force). Television is “sjon varp,”
from “something you see’’ and
“throw.” There is no Icelandic joual;
nor is there complete satisfaction for
scierttists, who,- if they want to com-
municate fully, must publish in English.
The striving for purity and
avoidance of foreign influence some-
times becomes ludicrous. The.-NATO
base at Keflavik, manned by Amer,i-
cans, began telévision transniission in
1960, three years ahead of Iceland’s own
service. But immediatelya movement
sprang up to halt the invasion of these
foreign shows by cutting them from the
public airwaves. Now U.S. servicemen
and their families must watch cable
television. Icelanders receive a mix of
home-produced items, Scandinavian, or
British, and, the ironic point, some of
the same American programs in Eng-
lish —-such as Ellery Queen — which
they rejected in broadcasts from the
base.
The purity is such that no
foreign words — even
scientific — are admitted into
the vocabulary.
The base, on the other hand, pro-
vides a positive illustration of Iceland’s
dignified insistence on retaining auton-
omy, even at an economic price. Milita-
rism has never been fashionable here.
Even under the Danes, Icelandic youth
were spared from army service. Ice-
land, in joining NATO, agreed that its
military contribution would be not in the
form of soldiers — who are non-existent
— but in permission for the base to be
used by the U.S. navy and air force, with
severe restrictions.
One hears stories that for a while
there was an understanding that no
black troops would be stationed there,
Icelanders fearing an butcrop of muiatto
children. The stories are hard to verify
because, although black's are certainly
stationed at Kefíavik now, various deals
have been made all along in deference to
Icelandic sensitivity. Even today the
number of Americans allowed off the
base is limited, usually to 100 at a time,
and they have a curfew: 10 p.m. One
seldom sees enlisted men, who must
wear civilian clothes anyway, in Rey-
kjavik. For one thing it is 40 kilometres
from Keflavik and high prices keep
them away., '
Icelandic customs officers are sta-
tioned at the base’s gates. Americans
may take with them no more than one
opened and another unopened pack of
cigarettes, and only enough food to eat
on a picnic. Icelanders generally resent
that while they are heavily taxed, every-
thing on the base is duty-free. There is
no other arrangement in the world quite
like it, with isolation practised by both
sides, a tolerated understdnding of
mutual needs. From an American or
NATO point of view, the baseris essen-
tial for the monitoring of Soviet sub-
marine and ship activity. THe Ice-
Ianders, concerned abouttheir integrity.
rationalize by saying they never would
have permitted a base in peacetime, but
its opening, in 1951, coincided with the
Korean war. But most important of all,
they reject payment of any rent, a
potential source of major revenue that
could make a vast difference to their
heavy national debt. "We are not Malta
or Spain,” said the proud editor Styrmir
Gunnarsson..
While some Icelanders argue that
Americans should be made to pay, the
majority prefer the deal as it is, without
favors. Prime Minister Hallgrimsson,
however, acknowlédges that the Ameri-
can presence has already been vin-
dicated.
Last year, when Iceland claimed a
fishing zone of 200 miles beyond its
coastline, and ran afoul of British
trawlers and frigates.'Henry Kissinger
quietly got the U.K. to pull back. Actual-
ly the future of the base itsélf was at
stake. Icelanders were quite prepared to
demand its closure. “In order to live, we,
must have fish, and security matters
only if yðu Iive,” is the way Hall-
grimsson put it-to me.
The survival instinct takes on the
smallest forms. The nearest thing to
mass American influence is Coca-Cola,
which is bottled here (but with Icelandic
water, which even American ser-
vicemen swear makes the drink fresher
and tastier than at home). Typically,
Coca-Cola is treated with even-hand-
edness; matching it in popularity is a
Polish chocolate wafer bar named
Prince Polo. I thought I had detected an
aberration when I spotted a Dairy Queen
in Reykjavik; but it turned out to be a
local copy of the rtame only. A
McDonald’s? A Chinese restaurant? A
pizzeria? You’H have to go to Denmark
to find the nearest one.
“We are a chauvinistic people,”
says Thorbjom Broddason, 34-year-old
lecturer in sociology at the University of
Iceland. “Are we racist? We haven’t
had-the_omK)rtunitv.” Immieration is
not a big issue, but sorrie foreigners
decide they want to live here. They
become citizens after five years’ resi-
dence and acceptance by the Althing
(parliament). Each year some 50 to 60
apply, and no one has been known to be
tumed down. But a stipulation is that all
must change their names to Icelandic.
Fourteen years ago a young
Scotsman. Micháei Bmce Mackinnon-
Mitchell, on a visit en route to Canada,
became enchanted with Iceland, re-
mained as a fisherman, learned the
language, and went into journalism.
covering the cod war for the BBC. Now
Michael Mackinnon is Mik Magnusson.
The small colony of ex-foreigners is
made up mostly of Scandinavians but
includes a splattering of Americans and
Englishmen. and two Pakistanis. The
lone exception to the rule about adopting
an Icelandic name is Vladimir
Ashkenazy, the Russian concert pianist.
Ashkenazy, married to an Icelandic girl
whom he met in Moscow in 1958 when
she was competing in the Tchaikovsky
competition, chose Reykjavik as his new
home. But, then. always realistic, the
Althing figured it would be bad business
for a world famous figure to become
someone else. (Equally realistic,
Ashkenazy also maintains a villa in
Greece where he spends the summer).'
Not every Icelander approves of the
name requirement. "It is wrong," says
sociologist Broddason, “to deprive a
newcomer of his identity just to satisfy
our own."
On the question of names, many
admit that "Iceland” is a misnomer that
frightens off potential visitors. But they
have a stately defence mechanism; they
say it attracts the kind of people they
prefer — those who are interested in
seeing what it is really like. The
chaltenge remains: How do Icelanders
become citizens of the planet Earth
without losing the purity they prize?
houses produce these fruit, in addition
to grapes, coffee beans and other exotic
items such as orchids. Their growth
commercially may never be worth
while. The heating, thanks to the
thermal source, presents no problem,
but the long winter hours of darkness
will not be offset until someone comes
up with a cheap way of manufacturing
artificial lighting equipment. Nonethe-
less, greenhouse farming has already
proved feasible. Horticulturists produce
all the cut flowers the market demands.
Farmers, who before could grow oniy
cabbage, cauliflower, carrots and
potatoes, now market as well tomatoes
and cucumbers.
A McDonalds? A Chinese
restaurant? A pizzeria? You’ll
have to go to Denmark to find
the nearest one.
But the big drama relates to even
more imaginative application of energy
to reduce the reliance on fish. Yet how is
industry to be attracted without vio-,
lating Iceland’s defences against foreign
contamination? The first, and so far only
operative. heavy industry is an
aluminum smelting plant on the out-
skirts of Reykjavik, taking advantage of
abundant hydro electric power to proc-
ess imported bauxite. But.while it is of
Swiss origin and direction, 51 per cent
ownership places, it under the control of-
Œhe montreol Stur
Oddly, nature, which has made life so"
hard and uncertain, may come to their
assistance. Reykjavik, which used to be
heated by coal, lived under a perpetual
pall of black smoke. Now the air is the
cleanest in existence, with not a
chimriey stack in operation. Icelanders
have learned to harness the tremendous
amounts of water, heat and steam
created by the volcanic forces all around
them.
The residents of Reykjavik, along
with those in other towns and villages,
receive all their heating and hot water,
piped from the earth below and dis-
tributed by central plants. at an average
cost bo a householder of $275 a year; oil
heatirig would run to something like
$1,000.
Public Olympic-sized outdoor swim-
ming pools are kept open the year-
round, the water maintained at a tem-
perature of 29 degrees C (85 F). Ice-
landers recognize both the therapeutic
and psychological benefits of staying
active in the long winter, a way of
overcoming the depressed feeling in
such months as December when it is
light only from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The thermal energy is being put to
other practical use. 1 plucked and ate a
banana and fig at a place called
Hveragerei, ,50 kilometres from Rey-
kjavik, where state-operated green-
Icelanders. And íhat’s the way it will be
if anyone else wants to come in. Apart
from determination to retain political
and cultural innocence, theré is concern,
too, over contamination of the environ-
ment.
But what if thermal energy, instead
of being employed to draw in new
industry, were exported? That would, of
course, simplify life — at one and the
same time preserving Iceland the way
its inhabitants want it to be and ensuring.
an abundant future even if the cod run
dry. It is not science fiction to talk of
converting thermal energy into elec-
tricity and transmitting it abroad by
satellite. The principle, which violátes
no law of physics, is known. But eco-
nomics might make it a long way off.,
More realistic, in the opinion of one of
Iceland’s most distinguished physicists,
Professor Thorbjorn Sigurgeirsson,
would be to use the thermai energy to
convert water into hydrogen,- which
could then be liquefied, fed into tankers
— much the way oil is today — and
transported to other countries where it
could be translated again into energy.
If this happens, in a world desperate
for energy, Icelanders will have sagas tp
write of the 20th or 21st century.
Gerald Clark is Eéitor of The Mont-
real Star.
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