Reykjavík Grapevine - 01.06.2012, Blaðsíða 10

10
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 7 — 2012
Mountaineers of Iceland • Skútuvogur 12E • 104 Reykjavík • Iceland
Telephone: +354 580 9900 Ice@mountaineers.is • www.mountaineers.is • www. activity.is
SUPER JEEP & SNOWMOBILE TOURS
Last month The Wall Street
Journal (WSJ)’s Charles
Forelle praised Iceland’s
unprecedented emer-
gence from economic
catastrophe. He was keen
t o note how Iceland has come
out smelling of roses, in particular when
compared to her fellow European eco-
nomic disaster areas, Spain, Ireland, Por-
tugal and Greece.
Echoing these sentiments in his far-
cically entitled piece “Iceland Continues
Economic Rejuvenation by Purging Fi-
nancial Parasites,” American Free Press
journalist Pete Papaherakles states: “Ice-
land’s recovery is a shiny example for
countries like Greece, Ireland and Spain
to follow.”
Aren’t all Icelanders Shiny Happy
People.
Above all else, as has been touted
willy-nilly across much international me-
dia, Pete says, “Iceland has proven that
default was the best thing it could have
done.” This works, as Charles Forelle
makes clear, because “…Iceland let its
banks fail, and made foreign creditors,
not Icelandic tax payers, largely respon-
sible for covering losses.”
In a wily comparison to Hitler’s Ger-
many, Pete says: “History has proven that
countries experience growth once they
get out from under the parasitic burden
of debt to the bankers. National Socialist
Germany from 1933–1939 is a perfect ex-
ample.”
What was their quintessential slogan?
“ARBEIT MACHT FREI”?
In his own foray into Icelandic eco-
mechanics, Forelle states: “Greece is
edging towards a cataclysmic exit from
the euro, Spain is racked by a teetering
banking system, and German politicians
are squabbling over how to put it all to-
gether.”
Despite the fact that your average Ice-
landic citizen appears to be oblivious/im-
pervious to it, Iceland is in fact growing
and unemployment is easing. Yet, where
are the signs? Where are the symbols?
In another WSJ piece, Sarka Halasova
points out: “What has largely changed
Iceland’s fortunes is that it has a mon-
etary flexibility and control that others
don’t have.” Due to the excessively weak
króna, exports have become extremely
competitive. Quoted in the same article,
Jamie Studdard of Fidelity Investments,
notes that “[t]hey have their own cur-
rency [the króna], and that means they
were able to make that classic emerging
market-style currency devaluation that
we saw in Asia in 1997, in Latin America
throughout the 1980s…” Remember Ar-
gentina?
Isn’t this all due to that classic seven-
letter word synonymous with emerging
markets? I’ll spell it out for you:
d-e-f-a-u-l-t
Both Reuters and WSJ tell us that Ice-
land’s little-big fishing industry is doing
roaringly well. On May 3, Reuters points
out that “[Icelandic] sailors are making
double their pre-crisis pay, haddock sells
to places like Boston and Brussels are
booming, and unemployment is almost
zero…”
Unemployment almost zero? Down
from 7% to 6%, but hardly zero. Who
takes those fracking statistics seriously
anyway?
But, coming back to fishing: Accord-
ing to WSJ, “[Icelandic] fishermen now
take home twice as many kronur for the
same amount of fish…One captain in the
VSV [a Vestmannaeyjar fishing compa-
ny] made €243,000 last year…”
Minister of Economic Affairs and
Fisheries Steingrímur Sigfússon rears
his shiny head again and is proudly quot-
ed as saying that Iceland’s present GDP
is among the highest in all of Europe.
“Sometimes it is easier to turn a small
boat around than a big ship,” he chuck-
les to Reuters. Jón Bentsson, an Island-
sbanki economist, is quoted by Reuters
as saying: “What we were left with was
quite manageable.” If you read between
the lines, what I think he’s really saying
is: “[Because we defaulted on most of our
debts,] what we were left with was quite
manageable.”
Without having to study chicken en-
trails, omens are already extremely auspi-
cious: At the beginning of May, Iceland
successfully sold a $1 billion bond and
according, to Reuters, “Icelanders are
getting work, going shopping and their
house prices are rising.”
And yet: “Household debt [still] ex-
ceeds 200 percent of GDP…There is little
trust in government…The Parliament
has the support of only 10 percent of the
public…” and consumer prices have risen
by 26% since 2008. As WSJ states: “Ice-
land hasn’t fully emerged. Even after loan
forgiveness, high household debt crimps
many families. The employment gains
in fishing have not spread everywhere.
Practically everyone agrees Iceland must
end its capital controls, though there is
little agreement when and how.”
Canada’s National Post recently inter-
viewed Swiss-based Icelandic economist,
Heiðar Guðjónsson, who is a major pro-
ponent of Iceland’s adoption of the Cana-
dian dollar. When asked how serious this
proposal was, he said “[w]e need a solu-
tion within the next year or two…capital
controls which are in place are stifling
economic growth…otherwise Iceland ac-
tually faces defaulting on its foreign debt
as early as 2016…”
A word for the wise, Steingrímur:
Don’t turn that little boat around. Not just
yet
Member of parliament árni Johnsen
recently arranged for the transpor-
tation of a 50 tonne boulder from
the Hellisheiði mountain pass to
his backyard in Vestmannaeyjar—a
more ideal environment árni says,
for the family of elves who inhabit it.
Yes, a set of grandparents, a couple
of parents and three children, who
stand no more than 80 centimetres
tall, have reportedly joined the 4,000
people who live on the small island
off the south coast of Iceland.
Árni says he became acquainted with
these particular elves after a high-speed
crash in 2010, wherein his car torpedoed
40 metres off the highway, destroying
the vehicle, but leaving him unscathed.
“[The elves] told me that they wanted to
be in the grass,” Árni says. “Now they
have windows looking toward the sea
and the island, and some sheep as neigh-
bours. Everything is under control.”
COURTING THE ELF ELECTORATE
Árni, who will run for re-election next
year, says he is not the only MP who be-
lieves in elves, though he refuses to give
up the identities of others.
Despite the fact that only 8% of Ice-
landers admit to believing in elves out-
right, according to a 2007 poll conducted
by Terry Gunnell, head of folkloristics at
the University of Iceland, Headmaster of
the Elf school, Magnús Skarphéðinsson
says plenty of government officials and
ministers, including President Ólafur
Ragnar Grímsson, believe in elves. It
would be “political suicide in Iceland to
claim elves don’t exist,” Magnús adds.
Indeed, some government projects
take this elf stuff seriously. As an MP
who sits on the Committee on the En-
vironment and Transport, Árni says
construction workers needed to move a
large stone when building a road from
Keflavík International Airport to Reykja-
vík two years ago. Árni sent a specialist
to check if the boulder housed elves, and
his suspicions were confirmed.
“When I came close to the stone, I
could see light in it. There were a few
elves there,” Árni says. “If you move
them, it’s okay, you just have to be very
careful and speak to them and be very
gentle.”
More recently, residents of Bolun-
garvík in the Westfjords blamed elves
for construction equipment breaking
down as workers were drilling a tunnel
through a mountain last June, potential-
ly disturbing elf homes. Townspeople,
workers and a priest came together to try
to ward off the elves’ spiritual backlash.
“Of course they have lots power,” Árni
says. “Even for such little creatures,” Árni
says.
ELF RELOCATION IS
CONTROVERSIAL
Árni maintains that the elves were will-
ing immigrants to his backyard, not-
ing that television personality and self-
proclaimed elf specialist Ragnhildur
Jónsdóttir signed off on the move. But
elf scholar Magnús Skarphéðinsson is
crying foul.
“This could be dangerous,” says
Magnús, who has spent the last 30 years
studying the lives of elves and hidden
people (the latter being just as mystical as
elves, but are reportedly human-sized),
during which time he says he has met
more than 700 people who have seen or
talked to elves. Elves don’t typically con-
sent to having their homes moved over
land and sea, Magnús says. He claims
Árni’s actions were a “maniac idea” that
would likely result in “a sort of revenge.”
Árni has resuscitated his own po-
litical life after he was sentenced to two
years in prison in 2003 for embezzling
government funds from a project to re-
furbish the National Theatre. Former
Prime Minister Geir Haarde pardoned
him in 2006, and Árni wasn’t ready to
say that the elves look down on his trou-
bled past: “You should ask God that ques-
tion. He knows it best.”
News | Iceland in the international eye: MayNews | Elves
Little-Big Boat In A
Bloody Ginormous Ocean
MARC VINCENz
Do you think maybe these MPs are all talmbout 'elves' all the time to draw
attention away from the fact that non of them have done anything of worth
for decades?
The Elves Could Not Be
Reached For Comment
“It would be political suicide
in Iceland to claim elves
don’t exist”
Words
Cory Weinberg
photography
Árni Johnsen