Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.11.2011, Qupperneq 21

21
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 17 — 2011
Iceland As It Should Be
literature | Frankfurt Book Fair
“Is he Swiss?” asks a person in the
back row. “No, I think he‘s Esto-
nian,” replies another. The man on
the stage is, as it happens, Icelan-
dic, and is performing at the very
underground Frankfurt anti-book
fair at Café Exzess. Here, one can
attend lectures about anarchist
poster art and the history of an-
archism in Quebec, say, while the
flower of Iceland’s literati chase
international publishers around
like rabbits in spring in the gigan-
tic and rather airport-like Frankfurt
Messehalle.
Like your erstwhile journalist, [frequent
Grapevine contributor] Eiríkur Örn
Norðdahl plays both sides of the fence.
Here he quickly captures the crowd
with his peculiar brand of sound-po-
etry, performing rather than reading
in English, Icelandic and German. Lan-
guage is rendered largely irrelevant as
Eiríkur stakes a claim for poetry as the
music of the 21st Century, without the
aid of instruments or hooks. Having
seen him read for almost a decade on
the Icelandic scene, it is gratifying to
see him in front of a foreign audience
at the top of his game. “I can see he
has done a lot of slam-poetry,” says my
German friend. Perhaps, but his style
probably has more to do with drunken
and perpetually attention deficient Ice-
landic audiences rather than any par-
ticular type of event.
A VIRTUAl ISlAND
A few days earlier, the President of
Iceland, in front of an audience that
included the German Foreign Minister
and the Mayor of Frankfurt, presented
a portrait of Iceland as a country where
the bookshelf is the centrepiece of ev-
ery home. This comes as news to the
group of 30-something Icelandic writ-
ers who are crowded around the bar at
Café Exzess and whose relatives still
hope will someday get a real job. Most
of them have fled a country where they
never really managed to fit in, and now
live among their bookshelves some-
where in Germany, in Finland, in Swe-
den.
Perhaps Iceland has since its be-
ginning, like other settler communities,
been an idealised country, a country
where people can see what they want
to see. ‘The Saga Island’ gives other na-
tions, tired of their own reality shows
and tabloid media, an example to look
to. Even if this in itself is mostly virtual.
AN IMAGINARY HAVEN
Maike Stommer is a doctor of Political
Science who has lived in Iceland and
speaks the language fluently. She tells
me that while there are several people
in Germany well versed in Icelandic
culture and literature, she is among the
few who have studied Icelandic politics
which is why journalists tend to call her
asking about such items as the Inter-
national Modern Media Institute. Ev-
eryone loves the idea of a safe haven
for investigative journalism and free
speech and hence Iceland gets held up
as an example to follow. Sadly, this does
not necessarily reflect the facts on the
ground, where journalists can and do
get fined for quoting sources and even
other news stories if these are deemed
somehow offensive, however accurate
they may be.
Icelandic literature, thankfully, fares
far better than Icelandic journalism,
and the country has more than its fair
share of great writers. Some may not
always be appreciated as well as they
should be, but the book fair in Frankfurt
is a welcome opportunity to celebrate
Iceland’s finest. We still need someone
to look up to, after all, and my heroes
have always been writers rather than
bankers.
THE BEAUTY OF READING
During the boom, Iceland was seen by
many neo-liberals as a shining example
of the validity of their doctrine. After
the collapse, it was seen by others as
an example of its folly. The image of Ice-
land as a nation of entrepreneurs and
financial geniuses was never an accu-
rate one, as we now know. The image of
Iceland as a nation of thoughtful read-
ers and writers might not be entirely
accurate either, but it is a far better one.
The Icelandic exhibition room at the
Frankfurt Buchmesse is widely, and
probably rightly, considered the best in
years. One can have a cup of coffee and
sit down in an old-style sofa among the
many bookshelves and pick out a copy
of Laxness or Einar Kárason or, indeed,
Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl, and leaf through
the pages while the Geysirs and Gla-
ciers and Lava Fields and Fosses lull by
on the walls in the background, as if the
entire reading room had been trans-
ported to somewhere in the highlands
on an improbably warm and windless
day. This might not be Iceland as it is,
but certainly it is Iceland as we would
like it to be.
GRAPEVINE GOES FRANKFURT BOOK FAIR!
VAlUR GUNNARSSON
FRANKFURT BOOK FAIR