Reykjavík Grapevine - 16.07.2010, Page 50

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38
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 10 — 2010
Hot-shot Chinese businessman, million-
aire poet and patron-of-the-arts, Huang
Nubo, recently decided to start a fund to
promote the cultural relations between
Iceland and China, inventively named “The China
Iceland Cultural Fund.” Reminiscent of pure Icelan-
dic small-town nepotism, one of the main catalysts
for Huang Nubo’s interest in Icelandic culture was
rooming with Hjörleifur Sveinbjörnsson, translator
from Chinese (and husband of Ingibjörg Sólrún, re-
tired goddess of Icelandic social-democrats), when
they studied together at the University of Beijing in
the seventies.
Besides being one of the richest businessmen
in China (as if that was somehow insufficient),
Huang Nubo is, according to the information web-
site factsanddetails.com, a former Communist Party
Propaganda department section chief as well as be-
ing a poet in his own right. Richer than most poets,
he’s worth around 770 million dollars, says Forbes
Magazine, making him the 114th richest guy in
China—so, according to a 2010 CIA Factbook esti-
mate, there should be around 1,338,612,854 people
in China who are poorer than him. Give or take.
And Huang Nubo has guaranteed The China
Iceland Cultural Fund one million dollars in the
next ten years. Out of the goodness of his heart.
Now, Icelandic artists are no strangers to being
bartered and bought by the infinitely rich. Until a
few years ago, Landsbanki Íslands, or should I say
the owners of that particular financial institution,
played Medici-like patrons to artists—and used
their image to promote their loans, overdrafts, sav-
ings and pension-plans in national ad-campaigns.
Everybody (more or less) played along. Hell, I even
published a poetry book, whose printing was mostly
financed by Landsbanki Íslands. And I defended it
vigorously. The printing was not the same as the
publishing, I argued, and even though I got mon-
ey from them that didn’t mean I was their whore
(‘cause I’d never copulate with them bastards) and
whatever, whatever, it feels like aeons ago and I was
wrong.
How do I feel about that now—post-meltdown? I
feel ashamed. I feel I was opportunistic and naïve. I
feel it gags me more than I expected, and in differ-
ent ways. I don’t remember ever finding a reason to
directly criticise Björgólfur Guðmundsson, the chair
of Landsbanki Íslands and silver-haired chief of our
modern Medici clan—at the time he was one of the
most popular people in Iceland. A cute old man with
class, a filthy-rich philanthropist who’d been victim-
ized and put in white-collar jail and re-risen for a
second helping. And I didn’t feel any reason to at-
tack him personally—international capitalism, yes,
but Björgólfur Guðmundsson, no. Maybe that was
sensible—and maybe sensible is what it feels like to
be somebody’s bitch. I’ll never know. I was robbed of
that option when the banks collapsed.
But more than this, I feel that whatever I say to-
day is tainted with a) the fact that I did partake in
the financial adventure, however peripherally and b)
I feel guilty about it and might therefore be willing
to lash out at other participants who don’t seem the
least bit guilty.
Perhaps I just don’t find it fair, that everyone else is
so calm about it. I’m not asking for self-critique à la
Mao Zedong, but a shrug of the shoulders—a collec-
tive “yes, shit happens and we’re sorry, we’ll try to be
smarter and less egotistical” —that’d be nice. I don’t
think the most important thing in dealing with the
meltdown is that measly poets and artists engage in
any kind of purgatory so that they can be re-allowed
into the heaven of artistic bullshit—I don’t want to
make the crisis about us. But it saddens me to see so
many critical minds—superbly intelligent people—
sitting around and behaving like politicians in deni-
al: “Nothing happened, please, everybody just move
along. There’s nothing to see here.” Yes. Politicians,
bureaucrats, the media, businessmen—the list of
culprits is long and poets are way-back. But let’s not
do like everybody else and act as if we recognise the
scene of the crime.
Maybe this is just one of my useless manias. But
I’d still like—in all humbleness—to advise those
invited to participate in the projects of the newly
founded China Iceland Cultural Fund to be careful
in what they lend their names or faces to, their repu-
tations and their artistry. Because, in my experience,
it does matter—even though artistic autonomy may
be only a far-fetched ideal, it might still be some-
thing worth striving towards.
And in case you’ve forgotten, Chinese state capi-
talism/market communism isn’t anything worth
cheering on. Stuff may be relative, but fuck me, it’s
not this relative.
Poetry | Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl
Gung Ho
Literature | Marc Vincenz
“Grönlænderstiv” is a Danish phrase
which means essentially “drunk as
a Greenlander.” However, recent
research suggests that the Danes
drink at least as much as the Greenlanders, and
teenagers in Denmark drink even more than their
counterparts in Greenland do. When it comes to
drunken 15 year olds, Danes hold the world record,
while Greenland is somewhere way down the list.
One of the reasons for this may be that after
attaining nationhood, the local government in
Greenland has introduced severe alcohol taxes.
This has actually worked in Iceland too. Post-
collapse, the price of beer at the state liquor outlet
has risen by almost 50 percent. The cash-strapped
government introduced yet higher booze taxes to
help cover the budget short fall. But rather than do
their patriotic bit for their country and drink their
way out of depression, Icelanders have largely
elected to stay sober. You wouldn’t think it from
walking down Laugavegur on a Saturday night, but
Icelanders are actually drinking less now than they
used to.
What about homegrown drinking products,
always a favourite in times of crisis? While we may
safely assume that this industry is doing quite well,
and with less employment people need a hobby, it
nevertheless seems to be the case that Icelanders
are actually more health conscious now than they
used to be. The boom was one perennial bender,
but while sales of alcohol and junk food went up in
those days, so did sales of health foods. One might
have been excused for thinking that once that was
all over, and since health foods tend to be more
expensive than the other kind, people would be
even more interested in a quick fix.
Quite the contrary, after the focus on wealth
came focus on health. An example of this is that
Svarti Svanurinn by Hlemmur, once a local favourite
for nutritionless and tastefree late night burgers,
is now a health store. Perhaps it’s a knee jerk
reaction. At least we’ve still got our health. So let’s
take care of it.
So what’s all this got to do with elves, I hear
you say? Well, not only Danes but Icelanders too
have often used the Greenlanders as an excuse for
their drinking. “If you think we’re bad, just see what
they do.” Drinking too much is something someone
over there does, not us. The same seems to apply to
elves.
If you go through the sagas, you find all sorts
of fantastical creatures. There are trolls, giants,
wolfsheads, unipeds, elves, dwarfs, ghosts, flying
dragons and even the occasional blámaður (a
person bearing dark skin). However, these beings
are rarely seen in Iceland. And if they are, they’re
something very much out of the ordinary and only
seen rarely in special places.
However, if you go to more exotic locales (from
the Icelandic point of view), such as Northern
Norway and Sweden, beings such as elves and
even flying dragons are a much more common
occurrence and if you go as far as Finland, you will
be hard pressed to find a person who is not at least
a half-troll.
From the Icelandic point of view, then, elves
and other such beings are something that exist
somewhere else. From the point of view of most of
the world, however, Iceland is precisely somewhere
else. That’s what you get from living on the
periphery of pretty much everything. This is why we
got stuck with them. But if you really want to see an
elf, you probably have to go to Greenland. Just be
careful of all the drunken teenagers.
Do Icelanders
Believe In Elves?
Really?
Opinion | Valur Gunnarsson
“Serious crimes [in Iceland] are few and far between.
This is, of course, great for the general public, but ex-
tremely depressing for a crime writer. Writing about
crime in Iceland is a bit like fishing in uncharted wa-
ters.” — Yrsa Sigurðardóttir

A recent article in the New York Times by Julie Bos-
man made it abundantly clear that publishers and
booksellers in the US are desperately seeking more
Nordic crime fiction to follow in Stieg Larsson’s Mil-
lennium footsteps. Stieg’s books have now sold over
35 million copies worldwide; the third and final of the
series ‘The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest,’ re-
leased in the States last month, became an overnight
bestseller. “The intense interest in the Larsson books
prompted the staff at Powell’s Books in Portland, Or-
egon, to create a special section in the store for two
dozen Scandinavian mysteries, by Karin Fossum, Jo
Nesbo, Kjell Eriksson and Yrsa Sigurðardóttir.”
Stieg passed away before he could complete his
fourth novel, and although there are discussions about
his as yet unfinished manuscript, MacMillian will be
marketing Arnaldur Indriðason’s books this autumn
directly to Stieg Larsson’s fans. “Independent book-
sellers, giddy over the bump in sales, said that many
customers in their stores are just learning about the
Millennium series for the first time. At Powell’s in
Portland, Mr. Larsson’s books are selling so quickly—
at least 1.500 a week—that the store’s grateful em-
ployees have given them a nickname. “We call them
‘The Girl Who’s Paying Our Salaries for the Next Few
Months,’ ” said Gerry Donaghy, the new-book purchas-
ing supervisor.” This might just be the ‘in’ that Icelan-
dic authors have been waiting for.
Thus far, Yrsa has released three of her Thora Gud-
mundsdottir (thus spelt in the Anglicised version, in
Iceland she is known as Þóra Guðmundsdóttir) novels
in English—published by Hodder and Stoughton in
the UK and HarperCollins in the US. They include,
‘Last Rituals’ (2007), ‘My Soul To Take’ (2009) and the
just-about-to-be released, ‘Ashes To Dust’ (July 2010).
All in all there are five in this Agatha Christie-styled
series, where Thora Gudmundsdottir, protagonist,
lawyer, single mother of two, and amateur detective,
takes on the grizzliest murders Iceland has ever seen.
In reality there are very few murders here. Iceland has
been dubbed the safest country in Europe, but that
hasn’t held back Yrsa.
Interestingly enough, in the HarperCollins ver-
sions, ‘Last Rituals’ is billed as ‘A Novel of Suspense’
and ‘My Soul to Take’ as ‘A Novel of Iceland’, presum-
ably to make it clear to the reader that what we’re dealing
with here is Nordic fiction. Each of the novels draws on
the magic, witchcraft, superstition and mystery of the
Icelandic landscape. ‘Last Rituals’, set predominately
at the University of Iceland, involves the murder of a
German student, Harald, who has been studying me-
dieval history, and is smitten with a 15th-century trea-
tise on witchcraft. Thora is hired by Harald’s family to
assist their own lawyer Matthew Reich in an unofficial
investigation. As might be expected, it’s Thora who
takes the Sherlock Holmes role; but it is the strained,
yet romantic relationship between Matthew and Thora
is where much of the charm of this novel lies.
‘My Soul To Take’ unfolds on the Snæfellsnes Pen-
insula at a recently opened, and possibly haunted, ho-
listic/spiritualist/New Age spa (one of the first scenes
talks of a séance), where a host of hotel guests, employ-
ees and neighbours come under scrutiny as the poten-
tial murderer. The resort-owner Jonas becomes prime
suspect for the murder of the spa’s architect. Matthew
Reich, Thora’s Sherlock-Holmes-come-Watson side-
kick and former romantic interest, suddenly appears
on the scene again for somewhat arbitrary reasons.
This time, the banter between the two of them does not
take on the same quirky level that was so endearing in
‘Last Rituals’. Yet, despite all of this, critics seem taken
with Yrsa. The Spectator called ‘My Soul To Take’, “a
crime novel that's both chilling and witty.” The Times
said “Sigurðardóttir delivers terrific clammy atmo-
sphere and frequent frissons of fear; she is entitled to
join the front rank of Nordic crime writers.” And so she
has.
Yrsa’s novels have more of a moderate pace than a
Dan Brown cliff-hanging style thriller. At times, Yrsa’s
characters come across as slightly predictable, yet this
is not experimental literature, this is genre-fiction at
its best: dark, moody, brooding, sparkling with faint
glimmers of light. There is an underlying edge to Yr-
sa’s novels which somehow seem to convey something
of the impending doom of the economic crisis to come
(bear in mind Icelandic versions were released two
years earlier than the English-language versions), or
perhaps it’s just Yrsa’s fascination with the landscape
of her birth that make her novels brood.
The Guardian’s Jane Jakemen, in a review of ‘My
Soul To Take’, said, “Not everything in Iceland has col-
lapsed. Its crime fiction is thriving, as this chilly thrill-
er demonstrates, though perhaps the whale carcass in
the background of the investigation may symbolise
something rotten in the economy.”
Yrsa, Icelandic Queen of Crime And Suspense Noir