Reykjavík Grapevine - 24.08.2012, Side 28

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SKÓLAVÖRÐUSTÍG 15, 101 REYKJAVÍK AND HARPA CONCERT HALL
28
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 13 — 2012
Feature | History
Iceland
1942: Love In The
Time Of War
Continued
1945
While the world celebrates VE Day,
British troops, seemingly provoked by
locals, riot in Reykjavík and fight police
with knives and clubs.
In the autumn, US authorities ask to
lease three bases in Iceland. The Ice-
landic government refuses. American
authorities claim the war in Europe is
not technically over and that airfields
here are still necessary to supply
troops in Europe.
1946
The “Keflavik Agreement” is made,
allowing the US to use the Keflavík
airfield and to have support personnel
stationed here, but all troops must
leave within six months. The agree-
ment is severely criticised by the left.
1947
The government collapses due to the
Keflavík Agreement.
1948
Iceland becomes part of the Marshall
Plan and receives more aid per capita
than any other country.
1949
On March 30, Parliament votes in
favour of joining NATO. This leads to
the largest protests until the banking
collapse 60 years later. The police and
police volunteers attack the crowds
with batons and teargas, who respond
by throwing rocks.
1950
The Korean War begins. Worries
about the approach of World War III
heighten. The US continues to press
Iceland for bases.
1951
On the morning of May 7, American
troops land in Iceland again. Later that
day, the Icelandic government an-
nounces the lease of the Keflavík base
to the Americans. Parliament votes
in favour of the agreement when it
reconvenes in the autumn. The troops
now number some 5,000, with half as
many Icelanders finding employment
at the base.
1955
The Armed Forces begin television
broadcasts in Iceland. These have con-
siderable impact, as they are the only
television broadcasts in Iceland for the
next eleven years.
1956
A new left-wing government agrees
to close the base, but the decision is
withdrawn when the Soviet Union
invades Hungary.
1960
The first of eleven ‘Keflavíkurganga,’
or “Keflavík march,” sees protest-
ers marching from the Keflavík base
to Reykjavík to protest the soldier’s
presence.
1971
Another left-wing government threat-
ens to kick the Americans out, but this
time relents due to the escalating Cod
War with the British.
1986-1991
Reagan and Gorbachev meet in
Reykjavík. The Cold War winds down
and comes to an end. The American
presence in Iceland is substantially
reduced, and the last Keflavík march
occurs in 1991.
2003
The War on Terror leads US authorities
to suggest abandoning their base in
Iceland. In an attempt to avoid this,
Iceland joins the Coalition of the Will-
ing in the Iraq War.
2006
The final US troops are withdrawn
from Reykjavík. European NATO
countries take over occasional air
surveillance, while the base itself is
turned into student housing. A 65-year
presence ends.
Eggert parties with American and Norwegian
soldiers and learns the new pidgin pick-up lines:
“Oh, darling, jú ar só pen!” And here comes the
twist: he meets an American army nurse and finds
they have much in common, not least their mutual
frustration over American men’s predilection for lo-
cal girls. No doubt hoping to turn the tables, Eggert
is shocked when the nurse instead proposes to him
before agreeing to anything else. She claims to be
rich and offers to take him anywhere in the world
he might wish to go, but Eggert chooses the high
road, decides to stay at home and marry a lonely
single mother instead. Before this can happen, he
finds his bride to be in the arms of an Icelandic
sailor. The sailor in turn is less than happy with her
dalliance with the poet, but decides it is at least bet-
ter than sleeping with Americans.

Cold War Kids

In 1954, the first part of ‘Sóleyjarsaga’ (“The Story of
Sóley”) appeared, written by Elías Mar (incidentally
one of Iceland’s first openly gay artists). It was wide-
ly criticised for being too sympathetic to the women
who succumbed to ástandið. More popular was the
novel ‘79 af stöðinni’ (“Taxi 79 From Base”) which
came out the following year, written by journal-
ist and former taxi driver Indriði G. Þorsteinsson.
The book tells the story of taxi 79’s driver, Ragnar,
whose duties include driving drunk soldiers back
to the Keflavík base and occasionally selling them
overpriced alcohol. While not about “ástandið” per
se, it remains perhaps the best-known work of fic-
tion about Icelandic women and American soldiers.
Ragnar is a true Icelander who has just moved to
the city, likes his meat and potatoes with a tall glass
of milk, drinks brennivín and shoots birds on his
days off, and beats up (or gets beaten up by) those
who insult the honour of his paramour, a slightly
older woman called Gógó. She is commonly called
‘hóran’ (“the whore”) by his coworkers, and by the
end of the novel he learns why. While pretending to
visit her mother on weekends, she has actually been
entertaining an American officer. Poor innocent
Ragnar leaves the big bad city in an excited state,
heads back north in his trusty cab with a bottle in
his lap, skids off the road and dies, yet another vic-
tim of foreign soldiers and feminine wiles.

A morality play set to music

By the eighties, the war had developed into a com-
mon theme across literature, art and popular cul-
ture. Kjartan Ragnarsson’s ‘Land míns föður’ (Land
of My Father) was a musical portraying the invasion
as a farce; at the same time, Guðrún Helgadóttir’s
wartime children’s series Sitji guðs englar (God’s
Angels Sit Down) was becoming a popular hit. Ein-
ar Kárason’s acclaimed Devil’s Island trilogy mean-
while delved into the plight of Reykjavík’s poor as
they were moved into abandoned army barracks
after the war.
“Ástandið” remained at the forefront of the na-
tion’s consciousness, but the writing was markedly
lighter, as a new generation of writers tackled the
subject. In 1989, for instance, Hrafn Jökulsson and
Bjarni Guðmundsson’s book ‘Ástandið’ detailed the
history of ‘The Situation,’ albeit written with a light
touch. In fact, the last novel to disparage ástandið
is Andrés Indriðason’s teen-romance ‘Manndómur’
from 1990, about an innocent Icelandic boy who
loves a girl who prefers the company of foreign
soldiers. By no means as dramatic as Indriði Þor-
steinsson’s depiction 30 years earlier, Andrés’ ac-
count shows the profound shift in attitudes as “the
situation” became more distant.
Women’s voices, finally

A decade later, a slew of new books and articles
would appear about ástandið, and this time the
writers tended to be women. The view now was
rather different. In the early 2000s, books and ar-
ticles appeared with titles such as ‘Kynlegt stríð’
(“Sexual Warfare,”) by Bára Baldursdóttir and ‘Úr
fjötrunum’ (“Out Of The Chains”) by Herdís Hel-
gadóttir, as well as the first textbook on World War
II in Iceland written by female scholars, Jenný Björk
Olsen and Unnur Hrefna Jóhannsdóttir. Ástandið
now tended to be seen as an important step in fe-
male emancipation.
Where academia led the way, the arts soon fol-
lowed. In 2011, a radio play called “Ástand” by Ás-
dís Thoroddsen was aired, portraying the foreign
troops wooing local women not with gifts of silk
stockings or alcohol as before but rather with their
readings of English poetry. Enter the local patri-
archs, who quickly dispatch female poetry enthusi-
asts off to re-education camps in the countryside.
More recently, a play called ‘Tengdó’ (“Mother-
in-Law”) debuted this spring at the City Theatre,
which tells the true story of a woman who spent
50 years searching for her father. The missing par-
ent was not only an American soldier but also the
only black man in Iceland, who somehow slipped
through the cracks of Iceland’s “whites only” policy.
Adding further intrigue is the fact that the mother
was 42-years-old at the time while the soldier was
26, belying previous accounts that it was only help-
less young girls who succumbed to foreign charms.
Sadly, despite the impressions made by both
Americans and British during the war years, al-
most none of these works have been translated into
English. But no doubt they will continue to appear
here, on stage, in print, on iPads and iPods, in new
forms and in new interpretations, for though Ice-
land escaped the worst of World War II, it had never
been so profoundly and permanently altered as it
was during those tumultuous war years.
Timeline: Iceland vs. The Army
A Morality Play Set to Mus
ic

In 1977, the group
Mannakorn re-
leased their classic
album ‘Í gegnum
tíðina’ (“Through
the ages”), which
often pops up on
“Best Icelandic
Albums Ever”
lists. One of the
standout tracks is
“Braggablús,” (“Barrack B
lues”) about an Icelandic
woman living
in one of the abandoned
army barracks that littere
d the city in
the post-war era. The lyri
cs are well-written and sy
mpathetic
to her plight, but still one
cannot help but detect a
certain sort
of glee when the characte
r descends from dancing
with gener-
ous soldiers in her pink d
ress to having to peddle f
avours in
exchange for oil to warm
her shack.
The Megas track “Ég á mi
g sjálf” (“I Own Myself”),
which came
out two years prior on the
album ‘Millilending,’ also
seems to
be a morality play of sort
s. A spoof on a ‘60s ditty,
the song is
about a girl who is so inde
pendent that she turns to
prostitu-
tion since no man can ow
n her. Of course many for
eign soldiers
are amongst her clients, a
s she joyfully proclaims: “
Then came
war/And then came soldi
ers/And then came peace
/And even
more soldiers.” The latter
is a reference to the retur
n of the
Americans in 1951. Thing
s end after the whole arm
y and the
town too have had their w
ay with her and the girl co
ntently
counts her money while t
he listener is invited to fe
el either pity
or scorn.