Reykjavík Grapevine - 15.07.2011, Blaðsíða 44

44
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 10 — 2011
-‐ -‐ Skólavörðustígur 21A
Reykjavík | Tours
Most cities and towns around the
world have a fascinating history that
the common visitor can explore and
enjoy. Reykjavík is no exception…
On a windy day in Reykjavík, we meet
up with Andrea Björk Andrésdóttir and
Ólöf Vignisdóttir, a couple of friendly his-
tory students from the University of Ice-
land. This summer, they are branching
out and employing their studies to carry
out a ‘historical tour of Reykjavík’ that
they devised with the support of youth
centre Hitt Húsi!. “We started planning
this project in January, mainly because
we were frustrated with how the local
academic community had little interest
in the public representation of Icelandic
history, especially with regard to tour-
ists,” they tell me.
READY, STEADY, GO!
We begin our tour at the Ingólfstorg
square, as Andrea explains that this
current site of buildings and stores was
farmland in the early years of Reykjavík.
While our guides explain some curi-
osities about the city, we come to A!al-
stræti, where some of Reykjavík’s oldest
buildings stand. Andrea then tells us the
story of Skúli Magnússon, who would be
celebrating his 300th birthday this year
were he still alive.
Skúli founded the first industrial en-
terprise in Iceland in 1751, the Innréttin-
gar woollen workshops. His goal was to
set up a modern (for the time) industry
that would regenerate Iceland’s agricul-
ture, fishing and wool processing. Acting
as an entrepreneur, as well as town mag-
istrate of Reykjavík, Skúli brought indus-
try to the city and encouraged the con-
struction of wool-factories and stores
on both sides of the A!alstræti. These
buildings eventually formed the centre
of the town and led to the beginning of
urban development in Reykjavík in 1786.
Because of that, Skúli Magnússon is
considered by many people as having
transformed Reykjavík into a town.
THE ROCK VILLAGE
After observing and learning about some
of the oldest houses in Reykjavík, our
route takes us to the city’s first suburb,
Grjóta"orpi!, which we could translate
as “The Rock Village.” We learn how the
area got its name, and about a crazy plan
that the bubble-Icelanders of 2007 had
in store for the area. Both of those sto-
ries alone make the tour worth attend-
ing, and both are best told by Andrea
and Ólöf, so we’ll use this opportunity to
urge you to attend.
From Grjóta"orpi! we observe a
house known as ‘Vaktarabærinn’ in
Gar!astræti, where the town’s first
watchmen held post. The house was
built around 1848 and derives its moni-
ker from the fact that it is where Reykja-
vík’s first ‘watchmen’ held post, making
sure its citizens wouldn’t commit crimes
and misdemeanours. Walking along
Gar!astræti we also learn about Unuhús,
which was known as a centre of culture
in the early 20th century. It was a regular
meeting place for young poets and art-
ists, such as Stefán frá Hvítadal, Steinn
Steinarr and Iceland’s Nobel laureate,
Halldór Laxness.
THE AMAZING DISAPPEARING
SWASTIKA
Walking on to Tryggvagata, Andrea tells
us about Jón Sigur!sson, the leader of
the 19th century Icelandic independence
movement, whose efforts are now cred-
ited with the constitution Icelanders re-
ceived in 1874 and are currently trying to
rewrite.
We find ourselves front of the Radis-
son SAS Hotel, next to the Bæjarins
bestu hot dog stand. Ólöf explains the
history of the building, which opened
in 1919 as the headquarters of Iceland’s
first shipping company, Eimskipafélag
Íslands. In 2005, the building reopened
as a hotel and has kept some of the
classic elements, but they decided not
to retain one of them. The building was,
until 2005, adorned by the shipping com-
pany’s old logo... a swastika. When the
building was transformed into a hotel in
the mid ‘00s, its new proprietors decided
to cover up the much-maligned symbol.
Instead of a swastika, the numbers 1919
now adorn the building, marking the year
it was built.
The tour without a doubt provides
an excellent opportunity to learn about
Reykjavík’s rich and relatively short his-
tory. I left it with a lot of insight and a new
way of thinking about the city I’m calling
home for the summer. Furthermore, I’ve
acquired some great anecdotes to tell
visiting friends, stories of drunken revo-
lutionaries, rivers of champagnes and
street fires. Reykjavík will never look the
same to me, in a good way.
RELIVE THE HISTORY OF REYKJAVÍK
—FOR FREE!
in a poem from that time. Iceland had been under
Norwegian and later Danish kings since 1262 but this
was the first time one of them visited the country.
King Christian IX has been known as "the
father-in-law of Europe" for his children married
into other royal houses. Among his direct male de-
scendants are the heirs to the British throne, Prince
Charles and his son Prince William.
A GOLDEN AGE OF TRADE
Across Lækjargata we have the square called Lækjar-
torg. This used to be a main thoroughfare until the
early 1970s, with buses stopping there and all sorts of
shops surrounding the square. Later it fell into disre-
pair, but now it is maybe seeing better days with a ren-
ovation project that includes the rebuilding of some
old houses that burned down in a great fire in 2007.
But the golden days of shopping are long gone
in Lækjartorg—the face of the square is rather that
of the gloomy court house. But once up on a time,
around the turn of the 20th century, there stood the
shopping house of Thomsen. There are glittering de-
scriptions of it, it had a special department for wine,
for cigars and shoes—and Thomsen was also the
man who imported the first motorcar to Iceland in
1904. It was not a great success at the time.
Thomsen was one of a group of Danish mer-
chants who traded in Iceland. When the movement
for independence grew they started to become un-
popular and gradually many of them left. Thomsens
magasín, as it was called, closed during World War I
and its large timber building on Lækjartorg was fi-
nally torn down in 1961.
After this trade declined, Icelanders were not
very savvy in matters of commerce. They have also
had a great penchant for all sorts of trade restrictions,
tariffs and barriers, so gradually the country entered
a long period when consumer goods were scarce and
rationing was prevalent. And now, a century after
Thomsen, currency restrictions are back in order in
Iceland as a result of the economic crash.
THE WOMEN’S STRIKE
Lækjartorg has also been a venue for meetings and
demonstrations, the most famous of which being on
October 24, 1974, when the square and its surround-
ing streets filled with women who were striking to
protest against inequality. Most of the female popula-
tion of the country took part in this event—which is
definitely one of the most important in the history of
the women’s movement in Iceland.
Now we have The Harp at the furthest end of
Lækjargata, not far from where the old coal crane
used to stand until 1968. The building of the concert
house really calls for the beautification of Lækjargata.
It is now a big traffic artery, but it would be best if
most of the car traffic was directed elsewhere. Plans
have been drawn up to open the river again and plant-
ing trees alongside its banks. Surely this is the future
of this old, historic street.
Continued from page 18
Continued from page 12
a wordless film with newly graduated actors. But
while they finish the shooting, they never get around
to editing it and the film seems doomed to lay un-
finished in its box forever. However, one of the main
actors, Sigur!ur Skúlason, asks younger filmmakers
for help in finishing the film. They agree to edit the
old material—but the news stirs the old filmmakers
from their slumber. They somehow, for reasons we
never quite learn, never managed to make the film
they dreamt about—and now some young Turks are
stealing their thunder and making a film different to
the one they had in mind. In a way you feel sorry for
the old filmmakers that never got the same opportu-
nities as their young counterparts, but at the same
time you realise they already shot the movie, most of
the work was done, yet they let it lay there all these
years—which feels like a very typical Icelandic kind of
neglect.
THE ETERNAL BATTLE
To answer the original question: did those films cap-
ture Iceland? Well, they captured important parts of
it, sometimes parts we haven't seen much of before.
And the films were for the most part well done and
honest in their intentions. But, rather typically, they
mostly happened at the usual polar opposites of Ice-
landic society: the capital area and the countryside.
“The Will To Live” (‘Lífsviljinn’), a short film about a
young man who beats cancer, was the one exception
I saw, since it took place in Egilssta!ir, but the towns
of Iceland are hardly seen.
And in the end, they didn't show my Iceland, an
Iceland I share with tens (if not hundreds) of thou-
sands. Those of us who grew up outside of Reykjavík
but emigrated there, either for school or work—or
both. We're usually caught in the firing line, because
the debate in Icelandic society tends to be Reykjavík
vs. the countryside. Just like the films, which usually
focus on just one of those places, rarely both. And
nobody bothers to ask us those two simple ques-
tions: "Why did you leave?" and "Why didn't you
come back?" But I do hope there is an able filmmaker
out there asking those questions right now, because
this is an Iceland we haven't been able to capture yet.
I don't know if it would bring in the tourists, but it
would help us locals revisit ourselves. Because while
those two nations, rural and urban, keep telling their
own stories, their common one is yet untold.
ÁSGEIR H. INGÓLFSSON
STILLS FROM GE9GN
FÉLIX JIMÉNEZ
JULIA STAPLES
Continued from page 41
WAS ANY OF THIS REASONABLE?
Well, of course it was completely reasonable to ex-
pect this kind of growth if you seriously believed
the hype of the banks and their cheerleaders. In a
speech given in 2004, Kaup"ing executive chair-
man Sigurjón Árnason announced that the bank
was to become one of the five largest banks of
Scandinavia within five years, a feat that meant
the bank would ‘only’ need to double in size every
year, for five years. And in 2005, then-prime minis-
ter Halldór Ásgrímsson, announced his ‘dream’ of
Iceland as a ‘global financial centre’ in ten years,
by 2015. Certainly, if one believed these goals were
attainable, believing FL Group could continue to
churn out record profits at least a decade and the
banks could double in size every year seems rea-
sonable enough.
Ok. But exactly what would that kind of growth
have meant? For example, what would it have
looked like if the inevitable crash had not come
and the financial system had continued growing
like did prior to 2007? Let’s say, for example, if the
banks had continued their growth uninterrupted
until 2015, the year Iceland was supposed to have
reached its goal of becoming a ‘global financial
centre’? Even if the growth had slowed down to the
pace of the years 1999–2003, or 30% annually, and
even if we assume a robust growth in the Icelandic
GDP, it would still have meant that the banks would
have become 48 times larger than the Icelandic
economy.
At that time the Icelandic banking system would
have been roughly as big as the entire economy of
Switzerland. And if Iceland barely survived the col-
lapse of a banking system that was nine times larger
than its GDP, one can barely imagine the magnitude
of the catastrophe had the bubble managed to in-
flate to the full extent of the dreams of its most en-
thusiastic proponents.
Tours are every weekday at 11:00 and 14:00, with an Icelandic one every Sunday at
15:00. Private outings can be booked. More info at www.facebook.com/ungsag