Reykjavík Grapevine - 02.11.2007, Qupperneq 12

12 | Reykjavík Grapevine | Issue 17 2007 | Feature
Last month, the board of Reykjavík Energy, a pub-
licly owned company that supplies Reykjavík citi-
zens with energy, accepted a merger between the
privately owned Geysir Green Energy and Reyk-
javík Energy Invest, a company owned by Reyk-
javík Energy; and the subsequent sale of Reykjavík
Energy Invest to private investors. As a part of the
agreement to sell Reykjavík Energy Invest, the
board of Reykjavík Energy signed off on an agree-
ment that guarantees Reykjavík Energy Invest
exclusive rights to technical expertise in the field
of geothermal research, as well as planning and
marketing on behalf of Reykjavík Energy, for the
next 20 years. The contract was submitted to the
board at the meeting, but only in English. Accord-
ing to reports, it seems that some board members
didn’t fully understand the implications of the
contract.
Now the question emerges: why does a
group of Icelanders meet to carve up and merge
companies whilst speaking Icelandic; yet simul-
taneously discussing a contract written in a lan-
guage in which they possess intermediate skills
at best? This question brings to light the tension
between big business and the Icelandic language
itself.
The Beginning of the End
Last September, Ágúst Ólafur Ágústsson, VC of the
Social Democratic Party, wrote a controversial ar-
ticle in the daily newspaper Morgunblaðið where
he proposed a bilingual administration. He soon
revised his idea in a blog post and called for a gov-
ernmental administration in two languages. His
articles provoked a serious row over the predica-
ment faced by Iceland and its language: Should
Icelandic give way to its bigger cousin English?
According to Ágústsson, the global village’s
ignorance of Iceland, presumably due to the “lan-
guage barrier”, is preventing foreign companies
from coming over here to invest. However, this
statement lacks a certain substance when held
up to scrutiny. Hitherto, “an obscure language”
has not stopped companies from investing here:
Alcan (soon to be Rio Tinto), Alcoa and so forth.
The list might not be flattering but the companies
are still international. The buck, quite simply, does
not stop with a stuffy Viking language.
Likewise, the global expansion of Icelan-
dic companies abroad, in Britain, Denmark and
now Indonesia, has hardly gone unnoticed. Why,
then, should the Icelandic government take up a
second administrative language, when there are
companies here in Iceland that already dole out
advice and deal with foreign parties regarding in-
vestment opportunities?
A conversation with the Minister of Com-
merce, Björgvin G Sigurðsson of the Social Demo-
cratic Party, helped clear up some of the obfus-
cated discussion surrounding the matter. It is
difficult to disagree with the Minster’s statement
about an administration that would “ensure that
information is accessible to foreigners as most
government institutions already have information
in English.” It is in the government’s own interest.
Legislation in a foreign language, however, is an-
other affair altogether.
Even though there are fundamental prob-
lems to be considered when discussing the use
of English versus Icelandic in the business world,
both Sigurðsson and Ágústsson elucidate serious
pros of a “bilingual” public administration: a more
transparent market and, perhaps, a fairer business
environment bringing competition from abroad.
On the other hand, there are still obviously a
few hurdles to overcome. The cost, for example,
would be enormous, as Katrín Jakobsdóttir, VC of
the Left Green Party, implies.
Another problem she explained is the man-
ner in which these changes will be implemented,
a factor that should be addressed. Will the private
market actually hire English and Icelandic ex-
perts? Does an MBA automatically eclipse, say, an
MA or BA in linguistics, Icelandic or English? And
will the task of translating the aforementioned le-
gal and administrative documents be handed over
to novices? In fact, that would be a mute point and
will be touched upon below in relation to Iceland-
ers’ proficiency in English.
Furthermore, if the Financial Supervisory
Authority and the Competition Authority were “to
ensure the trust of foreign investors in Icelandic
business” and “be able to answer all queries in
English, both quickly and well, and publish its
results accordingly” as Ágústsson writes online in
his explanation, it would call for a total overhaul
of what is often referred to as “the business envi-
ronment” in Iceland.
To be fair, Ágústsson stresses that Icelan-
dic should still be our official administrative lan-
guage, but he states that “it does not matter if we
translate a few documents into English” as this
will have little bearing on Icelandic. But many,
including myself, are very unclear about what he
really means. What are a few documents?
An argument for taking up English to a
greater extent is that it may demolish monopolist
companies and practices. As the Minister of Com-
merce, Sigurðsson, points out, “it could possibly
entice foreign investors to come here, either in the
financial sector or in commerce in general, due to
the fact that we live in a monopolist society and we
have overpriced commodities and service. We are
most certainly not implying that Icelandic should
step down and lose its place, which is a preposter-
ous distortion of our ideas.” Nonetheless, isn’t it
more reasonable for us to speak a myriad of lan-
guages, or at least not to focus solely on English,
as not all foreign investors are English speakers?
Isn’t it more plausible that the business “ethics”
that are practiced in the global and domestic mar-
ket have nothing to do with the language itself?
Greed is a more internationally recognized lan-
guage than English.
So is Big Business Really Looking Out for Ice-
landic?
In fact, it seems rather odd that English, above all
other languages, should be considered the lingua
franca and automatically receive a guaranteed
place here as a second language. Glancing at the
homepage of the National Statistical Institute of
Iceland it becomes apparent that this argument
might be seriously flawed given that almost five
thousand immigrants, as of 2005, do not have
English as a native language, not including resi-
dents of Nordic countries. This includes people
from, e.g., Poland, the Philippines and Germany.
However, Eastern Asian speakers are clearly at a
disadvantage when it comes to English. There are
linguistic reasons for this, something which par-
amours of English ignore.
Also related to this discussion is whether
or not Iceland ought to join the European Union.
The Minister of Commerce, Sigurðsson, like many
members of the Social Democrat Party, considers
the EU a step forward. Despite that, he does not
believe we should consider focusing on languag-
es such as French, German or Polish as viable pos-
sibilities instead of English. He referred to the ple-
thoric influence of English: everything from films,
news, the Internet and all forms of entertainment.
While nobody will dispute that fact, the European
Commission states that there are over 450 million
citizen within the EU and it specifies among its
main goals for all common members “The long
term objective for all EU citizens to speak two lan-
guages in addition to their own mother tongue.”
Admittedly, English is the most commonly
spoken second language, but German and French
are not unworthy alternatives, each boasting
around 63 million people who speak them as sec-
Big Business vs. Icelandic
Admittedly, English is the
most commonly spoken
second language, but Ger-
man and French are not
unworthy alternatives,
each boasting around 63
million people who speak
them as second languages.
The financial sector has lobbied for better English
teaching to ease the transition to the global
economy. Is the Icelandic language weighing us
down? Photo by GAS