Reykjavík Grapevine - 02.07.2008, Blaðsíða 50

an icelandic senator has called me childish because i want to protect
nature , which i find peculiar because i actually find it so incredibly
childish , when the whole world is holding its breath because global
warming might kill all the humans within 50-100 years, to increase
our co2 emission by 19 tons per capita, which places us in third place
worldwide, just after australia and the u.s.a. 10 of those 19 tons are
caused by the three already existing aluminium plants. do we aim at
even more, if we build more aluminium plants, at húsavík and helgu-
vík ? will we be at the top ? will we be the worlds top polluters ? child-
ish or grown-up ? questionable ... ? the already existing plants will stay,
that cannot be changed. nonetheless i find it strange that we sell this
energy at a third of what alcoa pays in europe and america. we could
afford to have three times less power plants if we got the right share of
the profit. at the same time, we export everything raw and unprocessed
instead of designing and producing useful things we could brand as
“made in iceland”. why dont we produce these things before
we go on smelting ?

why are we, just like when fishing cod , only interested in the first step,
i.e. providing the raw material, instead of processing it all the way ?
why are we still playing the part of the colony ? whether it is for the
danes, the u.s. army or alcoa, we dont get much in exchange. Isnt it
childish to sell oneself that cheap ? the senator mentions “ the brutal
withdrawal of the army “ why should alcoa not become as brutal
some time in the future ? most of the icelanders who were employed by
the army have now found a new job, and we should be glad they did. jó-
nas frá hrifla once said that halldór laxness was childish, because of his
views on nature conservation. laxness fought for the protection of gull-
foss, the golden waterfall. was prime minister ólafur thors also child-
ish, because he granted the u.s. army permission for only one military
base, when they were asking for four ? sure, they would have rewarded
us and paved road nr 1 all around iceland, and we would have then
“gained” quite a lot that way. but then iceland would have followed the
cold war in its fall, and been hurt by brutal unemployment. we would
have been unable of attempting anything without asking first the u.s.
for permission. not unlike the dependency of greenlanders
on denmark today.

why should we stay so dependable on others ? i think it is childish.
maybe the senator thinks the icelanders struggle for independence was
childish. was jón sigurðsson, our national hero, just a romantic dream-
er when he said that icelanders should take everything in their own
hands, which is of course the much harder way : to care for the grass
root , to start from scratch and build up a whole country takes a long
time, why should we bother when it is so easy to let the danes/usa/al-
coa take care of us ? i wish to point out to the senator that i know a few
things about grass root , contrary to his statement . mine is a nearly 30
year experience . from the very start, when we were offered contracts
by skífan and steinar, we decided to do everything ourselves and to this
day i never sold myself. the sugarcubes could have accepted big offers
from big companies, but we never wanted to belong to others or owe
them anything.
i have always refused to do commercials . i have met many foreign
musicians who had a similar job to mine in terms of fame and record
sales, and at one point got tempted and signed the “big contract” : in
doing so they sold their independence, and when things weren´t going
too well , they could not get anything published or they had to write
music under orders from the record companies . we have all heard
many stories like that . it is not good to put oneself into such a weak
position, to have to obey others.
senator , you are right when you say that i dont know what it is to be
unemployed in a small village out in the country, but i do know what it
is to start a small company, to take care of it and believe in it when no-
body else does, and resist to the temptation of selling oneself to larger
companies when things just start taking off, one has to go on watering
and persevere through the difficult times in order to deserve the fruit
when they finally come. one has to protect one´s plant during all those
years, until it reaches full growth. your plant will not be healthy and
unique if you havent had the patience to take care of it meticulously . it
is then necessary to defend purity , refuse corruption and temptations,
such as “short cuts” into “big time”, and i can assure you that building
one of the biggest aluminium plants in the world with alcoa is one of
those “short cuts”. i can smell it .
i wish to point out to the senator that i come back to iceland more than
once a year. since 1993, i have spent half of my time here ; the members
of sigur rós still live here, and it is worth a mention that they built a re-
cording studio in mosfell, and have created and recorded most of their
music there.

when i said that icelands image was important for icelanders who are
working abroad, i was not thinking about myself or sigur rós. i´m not
worried about us. i have in mind all the other export goods such as skyr,
water, fish, bio lamb meat, tourism, geothermal experience ; even our
president, the honourable ólafur ragnar grímsson, has started giving lec-
tures abroad about icelands green energy. and not to mention what could
happen if we do manage to stay green. in my opinion, there are so much
more possibilities for us to survive if we do so . we could for instance sell
bio vegetables grown with geothermal energy, health products, cosmet-
ics, dairy products and so on and so on.

but what i essentially believe in is the imagination of this nation . If you
give it a chance it will think of more fertile things than smelters . in that
field also , senator , i do have some experience. icelandic music which
was just an imitation of foreign music was never successful abroad . art
and business have that in common : original thinking helps.

prime minister geir haarde was recently rewarded by newsweek as the
greenest prime minister in the world. if we build more aluminium plants
we will not be greenest any more. we will become one of the biggest
smelting pots in the world and, per capita, the most polluting nation on
earth. many business opportunities will be ruled out. many companies
have already announced that they will in the future deal exclusively with
green businesses and countries. our chances to cooperate with google, for
instance, will fade away if we dont take the green stance .
because unfortunately we cannot be green and non-green at the same
time. látrabjarg, the largest bird colony in europe, could become a suc-
cessful natural park. the inhabitants of that region have shown a keen
interest. but they intend to allow a oil refinery as well. those simply do
not work together. if we harness all the rivers, all the reproduction areas
of the cod would be disturbed, perhaps irremediably. the choice for us is :
cod or dams ?

there is another thing , senator , i have always considered as very child-
ish : to have such a uniform economic system in such a small country.
how often did we get burned , for instance when everybody was fishing
herring, and when the herring disappeared the economy collapsed ; do
you remember when everybody wanted to open video rental shops and
half of them went bankrupt (the tanning booth craze is memorable ... )
we can possibly cope with the three already existing aluminium plants,
anyway we have to ; but why not go for diversity and create the lacking
jobs from so many other fields ? without selling ones soul to a company
which ignores human rights, produces weapons and is on black lists in
many parts of the world.

there was no 1 miracle solution when icelanders began their struggle for
independence. nor is there any now . fertile , creative societies are not the
product of uniform solutions.

you might be right, senator , when you as a proud countryman do not to
listen to the advice of a 101 reykjavík arty kernel (anyway she is never in
iceland, she is always just drinking champagne with foreigners abroad)
but why do you then have to kneel down to alcoa, if you are so indepen-
dent and self-sufficient ? moreover, i think its no longer right to connect
this pro-con aluminium quarrel to some alleged countryside-city an-
tagonism. the situation is not black and white, because in recent years
all kinds of companies have started outside reykjavík. small grassroots
beginnings, but will continue to grow , who can foresee the results after
5 years ? 10 years ? think about the húsavík whale centre, musicians
all over the country, the scholars at hólar, villimey in the west fjords,
geoplank in grindavík, vogafjós in the mývatn district, the bird collection
at mývatn, hvíldarklettur sea angling in the west, the settlement centre at
borgarnes, the sorcery and witchcraft museum strandagaldur in stran-
dasýsla, the rapidly expanding akureyri university, the pirate museum at
patreksfjörður, the aldrei fór ég suður festival at ísafjörður, skálanes and
lunga at seyðisfjörður . i would love to hear more from those people .

a lot of scientists think solar energy is the future. why not do some re-
search in that field and join the pioneers ?

many things have already been accomplished : for instance the blue la-
goon (obtaining the licence for running the business took 10 years, it was
considered too utopian), icelandair, össur, marel, marorka, whale watch-
ing and museum at húsavík and 3x steel at ísafjörður. CCP employs
today 350 people thanks to a video game idea one individual got 10 years
ago. let us not forget the carbon fibre plant at sauðárkrókur, which will
create 60 new jobs. minimal pollution and visionairy ! (planes will be
made of carbon fibre instead of aluminium). these, and others are in the
grassroots, and will grow and thrive for a whole century ; and we havent
of course listed everything yet, because as jón sigurðsson knew, as ólafur
thors knew also, and halldór laxness and all of us icelanders know, just
by placing our hand on our hearts , whether we are for aluminium plants
or for the protection of nature, what is most beneficial for the icelandic
nation is what we build things ourselves from scratch, although it is
much more difficult and takes much more time than if we do it in the
service of foreigners.
our harvest lies there .
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