Reykjavík Grapevine - 29.07.2011, Blaðsíða 6

Reykjavík Grapevine - 29.07.2011, Blaðsíða 6
6 The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 11 — 2011 Do you wish he were YOUR mayor? Why/why not? We have a fully functional letters page for you to tell us all about it. Reykjavík | Welcome to! Dear reader, Welcome to Iceland. Whether you’re here for fun and travel or for business, I hope you’ll enjoy a good time here and will get to know some locals. I would also like to make a special request that you spend a lot of money throughout the duration of your stay. Do not save on dining and drinking. Allow yourself some luxury. You deserve it, and it is good for the economy. I ask that you do not visit the retail outlets run by the Sal- vation Army (Garðastræti 6, 101 Reykja- vík) or the Red Cross (Laugavegur 12, 101 Reykjavík). Even though they are fun shops, they are rather inexpensive. You should rather visit more expensive shops. A lot of tourists that visit the country wonder why it is called Iceland, be- cause—despite what the name might indicate—it isn’t at all cold here. The average temperature in Reykjavík is 1°C. Nowhere in the world has bet- ter summers than Iceland. It might snow in the month of June, however. That is called ‘a spring snowfall’. July is the hottest month. When it comes around you better have a t-shirt handy, because the temperature can reach up to 20°C. Weather.com often states a temperature followed with a “feels like” temperature. When the heat in Reykja- vík reaches 20°C, they will often say it “feels like” 15°C. That is probably due to something known as ‘the wind chill factor.’ No Icelander understands this. If we had this “feels like” feature in our weather reporting, we would say that it “feels like” 40°C whenever the temper- ature reached 20°C, without exception. This demonstrates the importance of ‘mentality’ and ‘attitude.’ But how can it be that such a warm country came to possess such a frigid name? Yes, the explanation is simple: MISUNDERSTANDING. Ingólfur Ar- narson, the first man that found Reyk- javík, wasn’t on his way here at all. He was en route to the United States of America, to buy grapes and other fast food that grew wild there in those days. He was very interested in food. And also homicide. On his way he noticed a cloud of smoke ascending to the heav- ens from an unknown country. His cu- rious nature got the best of him, and he changed his course and set sail to Reyk- javík (Reykjavík literally means “smoky bay”!). As he disembarked his ship, he saw that the smoke was in fact steam ris- ing from Reykjavík’s many swimming pools. He was therefore quick in tearing off the suit of armour that he had worn in case he’d encounter some Native Americans while picking grapes, and jumping into some swim trunks. After swimming a good 500 metres he sat in the hot tub and relaxed. After a fun chat with the locals he had forgotten all about America. Who needs to travel all the way to America to pick grapes when there’s a shop on Laugavegur called Vínberið (Vínberið literally means: “the grape”)? Ingólfur decided to settle here. He rented a small apartment along with his wife, Hallveig Fróðadóttir, who many claim was the daughter of Frodo from ‘Lord Of The Rings,’ Nothing has been proven about that, however. One day Ingólfur and Hallveig were taking a stroll around town. They were walking their dog, who was called Plútó and was a Great Dane. It was a sizzling hot summer’s day. It was long before the t-shirt was invented. They were both dressed in full suits of armour, with swords and shields and helmets and everything. They stopped by at Ís- búð Vesturbæjar in Hagamelur to get some ice cream and cool down. The story goes that Ingólfur asked the clerk whether she knew what the country was called. She thought it was called Thule. In- gólfur felt that was a stupid name. “No country can be called Thule,” he said. Outside the ice cream shop, a crowd had gathered. They had heard that foreign visitors were in town. A lot of those people were elves. Ingólfur then approached the crowd, raised his ice cream cone aloft and shouted: “Henceforth this country will be called Iceland, because one can get the world’s best ice cream here!”. Today we have a statue of Ingólfur. The statue depicts Ingólfur dying of heat, leaning on his dog. Don’t be a stranger, be like Ingólfur! Best regards, Jón Gnarr Mayor of Reykjavík Mayor’s Address: WELCOME TO REYKJAVÍK The accurate etymology of the name Iceland continuously remains in question. Some claim that since Iceland was a lush green paradise while Greenland was basically a huge block of ice, the Vikings, in their attempts to detour further in- vaders, ironically named the coun- try Iceland. This one is quite popu- lar with foreigners, who take pride in their supposedly off beat tid-bit. However, others (like Reykjavík Mayor Jón Gnarr) insist that Ingólfur Arnarson decided to name his new- found country Iceland “because one can get the world’s best ice cream here!” Although the reality may never be un- veiled, the loving bond between Iceland- ers and ice cream persists. Dairy has always been a major food group in Ice- landic culture, with the average Iceland- er eating about 100 gallons of dairy per year. Many ice cream locations across Iceland receive their supply of frozen deliciousness from Kjörís. The company has been actively supplying Icelanders with their favourite treat since 1969 and has remained throughout the years a consistently family run business. “Ice cream makes people happy,” says Guðrún Hafsteinsdóttir. Her fa- ther was one of the original founders of Kjörís, and she has been part of the family business from early childhood, and witnessed a steady increase in ice cream consumption for the past twenty years. Guðrún explains that the patterns of consumption have changed. "Now a-days people eat ice cream all year round." Instead of savouring ice cream for the rare sunny day, people are willing to enjoy it for what it is, a delicious treat, fitting any occasion. And weather. Yet, some things remain the same. The ma- jority of their income is still made in the summer months: June, July, and August. Guðrún says that they have been try- ing to introduce new flavours to excite the consumer. They have come up with flavours like strawberry, chocolate chip mint, hazelnut. There’s even an ice cream shop serving beer flavoured ice cream. However, "vanilla is always in highest demand," says Guðrún reas- suredly. According to statistics, vanilla is overwhelmingly the flavour of choice in most countries including Iceland and the U.S. “The Icelanders are more like the Americans,” explains Guðrún, “we love chocolate, caramel and the juicy stuff.” Which are usually nicely accented with vanilla. Speaking from a lifetime of experience in the ice cream business, Guðrún says "nothing can be compared to a good vanilla ice cream. It's because vanilla is a very sophisticated flavour, if it's good it’s good alone but also with cakes and many dishes." After a long dark and dreary winter, with only about five hours of daily day- light, Icelanders are bordering insanity when spring approaches. When the first rays of the spring sun hit, Icelanders tend to gather the whole family in the car, grab everyone an ice cream, and simply drive around whilst eating their treats. Guðrún explains: “Icelanders get that summer feeling. I have always found it very special that even if they must endure the gruelling winters, they still manage to get that summer feeling very strongly each year.” Yes, it is impossible to keep a good Icelander down. Their optimism always seems to shine through come summer. When the temperature is breaching 11 degrees Celsius, (which feels like 9 degrees Celsius) the good Icelander is wearing a summer dress or a T-shirt, while tourists are bundled in wind- breakers and snow pants. They may be skipping enthusiastically down the street, hopefully giving out high fives and spreading smiles. Yet there’s one thing that both tourists, Icelanders and foreigners will all probably be doing: grabbing a mouth watering, icy cool, yummy in my tummy, worlds best, ice cream. Ice | Cream Opinion | Hildur Lilliendahl WHY I BOTHER – PART II MELKORKA LICEA JULIA STAPLES Ok. So in part one I told you good people about some quite infuriating examples of misogyny in the Icelandic media. I even explained why they were infuriating, why the things that journal- ists, representatives of the justice system, and the police were saying were actually sexist, hurtful, degrading and plain fuck- ing wrong. So here’s part two. And yes, there’s going to be a part three. I promise. I’d like to keep explaining why I bother, why I can’t help being a hard-core militant feminist all day, every day. This time I’d like to focus on the international media— meaning news stories of misogyny that make it all the way to Iceland through the intrawebs and the power of social media. Let’s have a look at British MP Ken Clarke. In case you don’t know, here’s what happened: Ken explained, in an in- terview with BBC Radio 5, to us women, to us who have been raped, to us feminists, to all of us who don’t know better, how there was an obvious difference between being ‘raped’ and actually being raped. It’s a long and complicated story that you should Google. Here’s the short ver- sion: He’s pushing for a proposal for rap- ists’ sentences to be halved if they plead guilty. Meaning: confession should pay off. Makes sense, in a way. But (and this is a big ‘but’) in a BBC Radio 5 interview, he implied that date rape didn’t really count. He said that the tariff was quite long when the crime in question was "a serious rape with violence and an unwilling woman." The interviewer then interrupted him to say that, "With respect, rape is rape." To which he replied: "No, it’s not." He later apologised in that classic appalling way, saying something along the lines of be- ing sorry IF he had offended someone. Blaaaah. And along came British MEP Roger Helmer with a blog entry confirming his status as village idiot. (Remember his very homophobic tweet from last Janu- ary? No? He wrote: "Why is it OK for a surgeon to perform a sex-change opera- tion, but not OK for a psychiatrist to try to 'turn' a consenting homosexual?" No kid- ding. Google it.) Trying to weigh in on Ken Clarke’s remarks, he described a "classic stranger rape" scenario, where a "masked individual emerges from the bushes, hits his victim over the head with a blunt in- strument, drags her into the undergrowth and rapes her, and then leaves her uncon- scious, careless whether she lives or dies." He then described date rape thus: when a woman "voluntarily goes to her boy- friend's apartment, voluntarily goes into the bedroom, voluntarily undresses and gets into bed, perhaps anticipating sex, or naively expecting merely a cuddle. But at the last minute she gets cold feet and says 'Stop!' The young man, in the heat of the moment, is unable to restrain himself and carries on." Now, Helmer might not agree, but to me it seems like the 'young man' in question is forcibly having intercourse with an unwilling woman. And that, my friends, is a big fucking deal. Let’s check out a part of the whole Dominique Strauss Kahn fiasco: the sexu- al violence story of the year. Here’s a real hotshot, a high-profile, handsome and adored politician with a history of mas- sive chauvinism, debauchery, womanizing and even violence, from a country with a heavy tradition of not talking about these things. They’re 'personal.' You know. And here comes this nobody, this lower class immigrant, who blatantly says: He as- saulted me. The world sticks by her for a few weeks but before you know it, there are news reports saying she’s a prostitute, she actually knows people currently serv- ing prison sentences and she lied on her application when seeking asylum in the US. Oh, yeah, and the charges will prob- ably be dropped. And here’s why this is a problem for me: Her vagina was bruised, her clothes were torn, her shoulder was cut and his DNA was found on her and around her. His semen was there. News- flash: It’s quite possible to rape pros- titutes and the fact that you lied while seeking asylum does not mean that you’re likely to accuse an innocent man of an at- tempt to rape. Really. You see, this is what we're up against. Women are constantly being told that sometimes it's almost OK to rape them. There’s a whole world of trouble out there. I can't stop fighting it. I won't stop fighting it. The Ice Cream Tradition Myths don’t melt
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