Reykjavík Grapevine - 06.06.2008, Side 10

10 | Reykjavík Grapevine | Issue 07 2008 | Opinion
Many years ago upon having just finished Art
School in my home town of Melbourne I spent 2
months travelling around Vietnam. At one very
memorable point on that trip I made a trek to the
far north-western corner of the country to the
highlands very close to the Chinese border – a
place called Sapa, an amazing community in the
clouds where the people identify themselves with
one of maybe 5 or so tribes, wearing tribal colours,
and speak distinct dialects that in some instances
bear little or often no resemblance to Vietnamese
in spite of being part of that country. To get to Sapa
one takes an overnight 13 hour train journey from
Hanoi to the base of the highest mountains from
which point the final 4 hour bus journey to Sapa
winds up and over some of the most breathtaking
and awe inspiring mountain scenery I have ever
encountered in my life.
In spite of its beauty, that bus journey was
also until last week the only time I have truly ever
feared for my life in a vehicle. See, the road to
Sapa winds a around the mountains not unlike
the way they do in Looney Tunes cartoons, mostly
only one lane wide, carved crudely into the earth
the way a child’s finger scrapes through the icing
of a birthday cake, unsealed, with no guard rails
and the constant, extreme and very real possibil-
ity of death at every turn. We slid, we swayed and
on several occasions, peering out of my seat over
the edge of 500m cliffs, I truly believed I was going
to die.
To my initial bemusement, which later de-
veloped in to disbelief and finally into anger, the
emotional rollercoaster that was my trip to Sapa
all those years ago revisited me in this last week
whilst travelling around Iceland on unsealed, un-
railed one-lane mud tracks bordered by cliffs that
dropped straight into the highly uncompromising
North Atlantic. The difference is that the road I
travelled to Sapa is barely detectable on any over
the counter map of Vietnam as it leads to a village
of 200 people in the middle of a highly remote
mountain area in a developing country in South
East Asia. However, the road I travelled last week
that bought all those memories flooding back in
Iceland was none other than Highway 1.
Yes. That is right. Just so everyone is clear
on this point, The national highway of Iceland
that connects north to south and everywhere in
between consists of several very lengthy stretches
of unsealed, un-railed single lane dirt tracks.
At the time of writing I have just paid my
monthly tax bill and frankly in light of that expe-
rience I am quietly fucking pissed about it. Be-
cause, like most of you, nearly 40% of my income
is paid to a government that evidently doesn’t see
a priority in sealing the main arterial road of the
nation. I am pissed about this and I live in Reykja-
vik, hundreds of kilometres away, so my real ques-
tion is how is it that the people who live and work
in these areas, who drive their children to school
on these roads, in winter no less, whose lifeline
to the rest of the world are these roads... How is
it that they are not utterly furious? How is it that
they are not in front of Alþingi hurling tomatoes at
every politician that walks out the door?
Where is the rage?
Australia, where I was born, is a terribly
flawed democracy where the socially oriented
medical system, education and financial sectors
have been reduced to all but nothing long ago and
its a very much a dog eat dog world following in
the footsteps of a Bush-esque USA. The Aborigi-
nal people who had their land stolen from them
have all but been eradicated, the stench of faux-
nationalism reeks throughout the land and for the
most part I am blatantly ashamed to call myself an
Australian. Yet here nestled in the bosom of the
famed “Scandinavian welfare model” I’ve been
under the impression that the people of this coun-
try whose ancestors fought long and hard to estab-
lish a social fabric that supported and prioritized
the needs of its people first was still the underly-
ing and guiding principal of its current citizens.
However, it seems to me more and more that this
is simply not the case and that people are so mal-
leable in the hands of their governing officials and
corporate powers that they no longer question
and subsequently no longer act upon the actions
and inactions of their government.
So let’s discuss inaction. Let’s for example
also discuss my experience of the quota system
whose bland and ludicrous reality hit me smack in
the face on my recent trip. Some readers of this pa-
per will know a little about the fishing quota, the
tourists reading this will not know a single thing
about it, but then the majority of you, the citizens,
should know a whole lot and yet apparently really
don’t give a shit about any of it in spite of the fact
that it affects your personal liberties on a daily ba-
sis, as I will now demonstrate:
The first stop on my trip around the country
last week landed me in the tiny fishing town of
Höfn, about half way up the east coast of Iceland.
Now, let’s say I want to eat some fish for dinner in
Höfn – after all it’s a fishing town. I would in fact
have to go into the Netto Supermarket, go to the
frozen foods section and buy a bag of diced cuts
of Cod or Haddock, which were in all likelihood
caught from the sea in the west fjords 3 months
ago some 500km away. Meanwhile, 150m from my
door fishing boats unload untold tonnes of fresh
fish on a daily basis that under the Icelandic quota
system I am simply not allowed to buy.
I’m sorry but that is just fucked. You all know
it’s fucked and it apparently makes you all very
mad and yet none of you do a single thing about
it, not the consumers or the producers... nothing.
You allow your fishing industry to be controlled by
an obscenely wealthy Mafia of corporate interests
– with the full support of your government and de-
mand nothing more than the leftovers. They make
you eat frozen offcuts from the other side of the
country while they sell your fish to other people
for ludicrous profit. If it was up to me they would
all be tarred and feathered in the city square but
I can’t even vote... Yet nobody with that singularly
sacred democratic right seems to question this
situation let alone act out against it. I can’t vote be-
cause I am not a citizen, in fact I have to pay your
government for the privilege of staying here and
yet I seem to care about this more than you do. It’s
not like the Icelandic government is somehow op-
pressing you. There is no Burmese-style army and
its not like President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson is
going to have you water-boarded and beheaded in
Austurvöllur for acting out collectively on a mass
scale, so I would like someone, anyone in fact to
explain to me for what reason other than sheer
ignorance, obliviousness and nonchalance on
behalf of the Icelandic people this is allowed to
occur?
The best kind of government is the one that
fears its citizens, and by that measure I place
both the state of the highway and the continuing
betrayal of the Icelandic fishing industry and its
consumers solely and squarely on the shoulders
of Icelandic people because quite simply, there is
NOTHING to fear from any of you.
With all this in mind I can’t help but occa-
sionally think its very fitting that the shape of Ice-
land resembles a sheep.
You allow all of this to happen to you. Your
government tells you it’s no longer allowed to buy
fresh fish from the boat outside your door but to
instead buy it frozen, from Bonus and you just do
it. Your government tells you to drive your children
to school in a blizzard on an unsealed road on
the side of a mountain with no side guardrails and
you just do it. Your government tells you that you
can’t buy a bottle of wine on a Sunday because it
makes baby Jesus cry and you just say OK.
BAH...
Is this what is wrong with Iceland? Is this
where it all goes wrong? Is the imagination of
people so limited and you demand so little of your
government that these atrocities are not only ac-
cepted but embraced then you are just working
for your government when it is supposed to be
working for you?
Text by Ben Frost
The Road To Oblivion
“The best kind of govern-
ment is the one that fears
its citizens, and by that
measure I place both the
state of the highway and
the continuing betrayal
of the Icelandic fishing
industry and its consum-
ers solely and squarely
on the shoulders of Ice-
landic people because
quite simply, there is
NOTHING to fear from
any of you.”