Reykjavík Grapevine - 08.01.2010, Page 20

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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 01 — 2010
Article | Marc Vincenz
‘Iceland is no longer a coun-
try. It is a hedge fund.’
—Man from the IMF suppos-
edly speaking to Michael Lew-
is, Vanity Fair, March 2009
During this past year it seemed every interna-
tional journalist in the world had a gripe with
Iceland. Many, such as Vanity Fair’s Michael
Lewis or the New Yorker’s Ian Parker, claimed
insider knowledge; others relied on hearsay of
an even more dubious nature; but then, the
possible demise of a first-world nation (No.
1 on the UN Development Index just a year
earlier) was certainly worthy of international
headlines. In 2009, elves and huldufólk were
not getting much attention.
Virtually all the major media had a stab:
The Times, The New York Times, The Finan-
cial Times, BBC, CNN. Every week something
new unfolded: the first openly gay Prime Min-
ister, the departure of McDonalds, open season
for whales, WikiLeaks’ secret banking docu-
ments, Davíð Oddsson as editor of Morgun-
blaðið; the list goes on. For many of us 2009 has
been like knowing you have terminal cancer
and every doctor you consult has an alternative
theory: IMF or no IMF? Icesave or Iceslave? EU
or no EU? Euro, Dollar or Krona? There are
enough theories, counter-theories, conspiracy
theories to fill the entire university library, and
there’s not a single expert who hasn’t had a
twirl.
And the numbers the international media
has bandied around like boomerangs: a popu-
lar one is 504% debt over GDP—although Mi-
chael Lewis maintained that ‘Iceland’s ‘debt is
850 percent of G.D.P.,’ and that ‘its people are
hoarding food and cash and blowing up Range
Rovers for the insurance.’ Which is it? 504 or
850? As recently as December 26, the Daily
Mail stated, ‘Glitnir owes Royal Bank of Scot-
land £ 500 million,’ and that Glitnir’s creditors
are claiming in excess of £ 20 billion—bear
in mind folks, she’s only one of the three
lumbering reptiles—3.8 billion Euros for Ic-
esave seems a pittance in comparison. So how
much—in total, does Iceland really owe?—and
to whom?—and why? When some of us are
scratching together ISK 1000 to buy the special
at Hamborgarabúllan, it truly makes your head
spin. Give a journalist a number and they’ll
turn it into a golden cow.
In an article from December 3, also in the
Daily Mail, Mary Ellen Synon writes: ‘The Ice-
landers may have been scared out of their wits
last year, but they…have decided that the most
valuable thing they have left is their indepen-
dence. They are not willing to trade it, not even
for the possibility of a bail-out by the European
Central Bank.’
In a podcast for the BBC World Service,
Sigrún Davíðsdóttir, a London-Icelander,
maintained that: ‘Icelanders are knitting their
way out of the downturn.’ Around Christmas
2006, she overheard men in black discuss-
ing taking over an airline, but two years later,
she was drinking tea made from wild berries
while admiring her friend’s recycled-curtain
handbags. She quotes an old Icelandic proverb:
‘Necessity teaches a naked woman to spin,’ and
suggests that the kreppa has become a ‘timely
reminder of thrift’ and good old fashioned
values. It has been said before, but perhaps if
the Alþingi learned how to knit, they might
approach their decisions with a little more…
thrift?
Roger Boyes’ ‘Meltdown Iceland’ is one
of numerous ‘Iceland in Kreppa’ books that
came out in 2009. In contrast to Michael Lewis’
hypothesis that Iceland fell due to arrogance,
Boyes, a correspondent for The Times, con-
cludes that Iceland jumped head-first into a
global economic culture which it had no way of
comprehending. He maintains that the Icelan-
dic business community is somewhat akin to a
society run on African tribal lines: ‘There is a
feeling that there are more chiefs than Indians
…the will of the state can easily be replaced by
the will of the political clan.’ He proposes, in
fact, that Davíð Oddsson did not understand
that you need to modernise the political system
before you modernise the economy.
For months after Jóhanna Sigurðardót-
tir’s PM appointment, media all over the world
were extolling her as an icon in world politics;
not only that she is a woman, but particularly
in the fact that she is non-hetero. Iceland Re-
view’s own Jonas Moody wrote a piece in Time
Magazine: ‘Iceland Picks the World's First
Openly Gay PM’. It was suddenly as if the Age
of Obama was synonymous with the Age of
Aquarius, and the corrupt, ego-centric white-
male-Milton-Freidman-world was coming to
an end. As if that weren’t enough, the World
Economic Forum hailed Iceland as the most
gender-egalitarian society in the world—it had
much the same pungent whiff as President
Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
And how does the international media feel
about Iceland now? Well, they know about its
potential as a green, geothermal, non-carbon
emitting once-upon-a-time first-world country.
Generally I would say, they’re baffled—stupe-
fied, and, just like the rest of us, rolling into
the dawning of the Age of Aquarius with their
pants down and nowhere to pee. In the legend-
ary words of Frank Zappa:
‘Don't be a naughty Eskimo / Save your
money, don't go to the show / Well I turned
around and I said oh, oh oh / And the northern
lights commenced to glow / And she said, with
a tear in her eye / Watch out where the huskies
go, and don't you eat that yellow snow.’
As my grandmother often said, ‘For
heaven’s sake don’t believe everything you
read,’ and, bless her, she used to read the Daily
Mail.
From Exploding Range
Rovers to Knitted Mittens?
2009: Iceland’s Big Year in
International Meltdown, CNN-
Breaking-News-Style
2009: Politics & Life
2009 | Q&A
One of the Grapevine’s most locally discussed
features of 2009 was our interview with Po-
litical Science professor and Independence
Party ideologue/Davíð Oddsson advocate
Hannes Hólmsteinn Gissurarson. Entitled ‘The
Architect Of The Collapse?’ the 3.700 word
conversation detailed his stance on ideologi-
cal responsibility Iceland’s recent economic
collapse, its apparent causes and what could
be done to rectify the situation (our favourite
quote: “[...] the tycoons, aided by the President
of Iceland, acquired ownership of all the me-
dia in Iceland—except for the Grapevine—and
simply secured total media power over the
country”).
We would be lying if we said we particu-
larly agreed with Hannes’ interpretation of the
world, but we would also be lying if we said it
didn’t interest us. In that spirit, we asked him to
name us the high- and low points of 2009.
What were the
highpoints of 2009?
Davíð Oddsson’s brilliant speech at the bian-
nual general meeting of the Independence
Party in the spring of 2009, where he answered
his critics, cogently and convincingly. It is
the height of injustice that the only man who
warned against the expansion of the banks,
both publicly, and more strongly privately, and
against their reckless behaviour should be-
come a scapegoat in the aftermath of the bank
collapse.
Davíð Oddsson is the only person who
comes with flying colours out of the Icelan-
dic debacle. He is the only one who resisted
the oligarchs that contributed so much to the
downfall of Iceland. Well-known (or notori-
ous) media personalities like Egill Helgason,
for example, did not want to take sides in the
2004 struggle between Davíð Oddsson and the
oligarchs about the control of the media; they
said publicly that the court cases against the
oligarchs were “boring.”
And the low points?
The Icesave-agreement, which the Icelandic
leftist government made in 2009 with the Brit-
ish and the Dutch governments. It was in fact
not an agreement; it was a full-scale surrender
to the British and the Dutch. Why should Ice-
landic taxpayers undertake responsibility for
the transactions of private individuals abroad,
beyond what is clear and written into law and
international treatises? Why could matters
of doubt or interpretation not be referred to
courts, either in Iceland or in England?
The British were not held culpable for their
outrageous behaviour during the banking cri-
sis when they refused to save only one Brit-
ish bank, namely the one owned by Icelandic
Kaupthing; and when they put (on a govern-
ment website) Landsbankinn on a list of ter-
rorist organisations, alongside Al Qaeda and
the Taliban. It is clear that the British caused
much of the damage, or fall in the worth of the
Icelandic banks.
Another low point was the violence that
drove the former government (a spent force as
it was) from power at the end of January. Ice-
land should be ruled by reason, not violence.
A third low point was that the International
Monetary Fund turned, in Iceland, out to be a
hand collector for the British and Dutch gov-
ernments (in the Icesave-controversy), instead
of serving its original and constitutional pur-
pose.
Professor
Hannes
Hólmsteinn
Gissurarson
On 2009
HAUKUR S MAGNÚSSON
2009 | Örvar Þóreyjarson Smárason, Musician / Poet
2009 | Þorvaldur Gylfason, Professor, Economics
2009 | Anarchist Collective / Organisation
A year that began with a strange sense of hope, almost like a twisted
wet dream, gradually but with steady acceleration descended into
a dark wet hole (I won't say abyss)—a suffocating mud-bath. And like an amateur
magician, the horse-traders of the Icelandic clan-system clumsily, but with good suc-
cess, diverted our eyes from the things that mattered: the new constitution and the much needed
drastic re-thinking of, well…. pretty much everything.
Yes, January was a trip-and-a-half, but today it seems as far away as the glow of childhood
Christmas. But out of the mundane things that stand out for me from the year that followed are
first of all the total lack of changes in the Icelandic government's policies on social issues such
as immigration and environmental issues, despite giving of the illusion of a left-wing/greenish
coalition.
The unbreakable suction that Iceland seems to have to the IMF's nips is a mystery of nature,
especially since the fund has started to act like an apathetic hamster mother getting ready to
ready to eat it's squiggly pink young, because it's easier than ignoring it.
Another point of hot-pot chitchat has been Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir's fall from grace,
which has been a particularly strange spectacle. Within a few moments she went from being
the great future hope of the ever-blue eyed Social Democrats to something resembling a raving
hermit.
And in the spirit of the traditional hot-pot banter I'm going to pretend that Davíð Oddsson’s
muscle flexing as editor of Morgunblaðið and the collapse of Borgarahreyfingin were not un-
expected (but I won't spend words on Icerave, other than the fact that it is a hugely underrated
compilation of the best Icelandic rave, hardcore and dance music of 1992).
Sadly, these are the things that come to mind when scrolling over the year. Dreaming on a
fluffy cloud of teargas made me complacent; instead of a constitution we got constipation and
even though I would never have believed it at the time, January with its sweet smell of expectancy,
unmitigated energy and the deafening clattering of pots and pans now seems like a fairy tale or
some 60s myth.
2009 ended less well than it began. At the beginning of the year there were realistic
hopes that Iceland could, with a little help from its friends, pull itself rather quickly
and painlessly out of the crisis triggered by the collapse of the banks the year before.
The application for EU membership in mid-year signalled that Parliament was at last
willing to try to clean up its act by proposing to submit to the discipline required of EU members.
Apparently, however, the government mistook the IMF’s willingness to go along with a postpone-
ment until 2010 of tough spending cuts and tax hikes for a sign that the crisis was perhaps not
as deep as was feared at first. The government allowed the reconstruction of the failed banks to
drag on. The pointless and protracted squabbling in Parliament on the Icesave deal with the UK
and the Netherlands derailed necessary reforms. The delays have practical consequences. For
one thing, the relaxation of the stringent capital controls that were promised to be temporary has
been put on ice with no relief in sight.
For the most part of 2009, the reconstruction program supported by the IMF, the Nordic coun-
tries, Poland, and the EU was held hostage by an incompetent and corrupt political class which,
as the National Audit Office disclosed just before the year ended, had received huge chunks of
money from the failed banks and other, in many cases undisclosed, sources. The year ended in
eerie uncertainty about whether the President would sign the IceSave bill or not. If he doesn’t,
expect a bumpy ride ahead.
The economic collapse entailed a rebellion that reached its peak in January and
brought the authorities a fear of losing power. It brought the confused public a fear of
full-scale riots and chaos. It brought the police a fear of losing control of the situation.
It brought the right-wing a needless fear of fundamental changes, but brought the left-
wing a hopeless hope for fundamental changes. To us—who never shouted "Unfit Gov-
ernment!" rather "Lethal Government" (by that meaning all governments)—it brought
a timely smile, a hateful grin and the tiniest fighting chance for decent confrontation.
The elections in the spring managed to kill a part of the rebellion, at least for a
while. But certainly not all of the resistance was pacified and a lot of the collapse's and
rebellion's results come up in our mind when we reflect on the year of 2009. We could
mention the squatting of Vatnsstígur 4, the voting booth shitter and the forceful pro-
tests against the government's refugee policies, the systematic attacks on the property
of business people and politicians, the ever-worsening financial situation of energy
and aluminium companies, and indoor conflicts between the police and the authorities.
And all the analysis and critique that has gone on since the collapse. We could mention
all possible symptoms of the worsening status of the predominant system, ideological
as well as practical.
But what clearly sticks out is the left-wing government's exposure of its own nature. And not
the nature of left-wing governments but the violent nature of all authorities. Its work and behav-
iour so far have proved the theory stating that it does not matter what political party one votes for,
the government always wins. It warms up our heartstrings to hear people who are unfamiliar with
us cursing all possible forms of authority. It is a sign proving what our struggle has accomplished,
and that if those in power continue their business-as-usual, it is not so unlikely that decent and
militant confrontation will occur sooner or later—here on this island of forced pacifism.
Like Chumbawamba said: "Nothing ever burns down by itself / every fire needs a little bit of
help."
2009 – Highs and Lows
Aftaka
For Davíð Oddsson’s warnings, see:
http://www.dv.is/frettir/2008/11/10/david-varadi-vid-skuldsetningu-thjodarbusins/
http://www.mbl.is/mm/vidskipti/frettir/2009/03/23/stefndu_fjarmalalifinu_i_haettu/
2009 in Pictures HÖRÐUR SVEINSSON