Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.10.2012, Síða 8

8
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 16 — 2012
Iceland | FAQ
Which one do you mean? There
is the most recent one in Den-
mark. The Icelandic gang was
caught with 35 kilos of amphet-
amines, and half a kilo of ec-
stasy. According to the media,
Icelandic, Norwegian, Danish,
Dutch and Spanish police were
involved in cracking the case.
And earlier this year an Icelan-
dic man was arrested for organ-
ising ecstasy trafficking from
Spain to Brazil.
Ah, the magic of globalization.
Icelandic criminals have been busy in
the last few years. Like ethnic gangs ev-
erywhere, Icelanders often trust other
Icelanders more than fellow crooks of
other nationalities. And if you are a
criminal, it can help to speak a language
that is spoken by only three hundred
thousand people world-wide.
Whoa, I didn't know you guys
were the Sicily of the North.
The medieval Kingdom of Sicily was
founded by descendants of Vikings, so
there is some relation. Vikings were
obsessed with honour, and so are mob-
sters, at least according to the movies.
And movies would not lie to us. Perhaps
these criminal gangs just took to heart
the President of Iceland's words in a
2005, pre-financial crash speech, that
Icelanders interpret "modern business
ventures as an extension of the Viking
spirit."
What, Vikings were
drug smugglers?
No, though that is more because there
were no illegal drugs to smuggle. Vi-
kings were happy to do anything that
would get them some money and had
few, if any, scruples when it came to
personal enrichment. In the medieval
sagas, there are two kinds of Vikings:
On the one hand you have those who
slaughter innocents, loot towns, and
take slaves; on the other you have the
really bad Vikings. So, in a way, the Ice-
landic drug smugglers are, to quote the
President again, "heirs of this proud tra-
dition."
I thought Vikings were fun. That
doesn't sound like any fun at all.
Vikings were gigantic cocknozzles, but
outlaws are often romanticised. The
same has happened with modern Icelan-
dic criminals. The media have reported
rather breathlessly on the underworld,
some crooks have become media dar-
lings. And this year, an Icelandic film
called ‘Svartur á leik’ (“Black's Game”),
based on a true crime book, showed the
rise and fall of a Reykjavík drug syndi-
cate, with plenty of time given over to
parties, sex and the high life. Though to
the film's credit, it did not f linch from
showing the bad parts too.
How bad were the bad parts?
I don't think I want to know.
Bad enough to not mention in a family
magazine. The main focus of the film,
however, is to portray the drug syndicate
as a model corporation. The main guys
are shrewd and ruthless businessmen
who enter a staid, traditional market
and upend everything with new ways
of doing business. The heroic Business-
Viking of the Icelandic bubble is reborn
as a cold-blooded, hard-partying drug
baron. In many ways, he is the ideal of
Icelandic society, at least the one that ex-
isted before the financial crash.
Oh, so if that's what some
people aspire too, I guess it
isn't surprising that there are
bunches of Icelandic drug
smuggling rings.
No, it is very surprising. As recently as
the ‘90s, the idea of Icelandic organised
crime was a joke. People were more
likely to believe in the existence of elves
than Icelandic drug syndicates. Films
generally portrayed Icelandic criminals
as fools. Not that there were no career
criminals, but they were of the small
time sort and sometimes even charm-
ing. Once, while burgling a house, a
noted crook came across a book by the
great Icelandic poet Steinn Steinarr on
the nightstand. He lay down on the bed
to look up a poem, got engrossed and
drifted off to sleep, later to be found by
the owners who called the police. This
was the image of the Icelandic criminal,
bumbling and basically good at heart.
Isn't that just the Viking way,
spitting rhymes out of one side
of your mouth and jugulars out
the other?
Perhaps it is, and some of the criminal
media darlings have gained fame for
having a way with words. It has been a
long time since the Age of the Vikings,
but that has not stopped many Iceland-
ers from thinking of themselves as mod-
ern Vikings. The problem with that is
of course that while being a Viking is a
splendid thing, until you die a gruesome
and violent death, living next to one is
dangerous to your well being. Alcoholic
axe murderers are not desirable neigh-
bours, even if you are one yourself.
So What's This Icelandic Drug Smuggling
Ring I Keep Hearing About?
Words
Kári Tulinius
Illustration
Lóa Hjálmtýsdóttir
“
As recently as the ‘90s, the
idea of Icelandic organised
crime was a joke. People
were more likely to believe
in the existence of elves
than Icelandic drug syn-
dicates. „
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1
The latter part of this month saw four of Iceland’s female
MPs announce their retirement,
which is pretty unprecedented to
say the least. First, Progressive Par-
ty MP Siv Friðleifsdót-
tir announced she
would not seek
reelection. This
made headlines
for maybe one
or two news
cycles before it
was completely eclipsed by Prime
Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir re-
tiring, resulting in a mad scramble
among Social Democrat MPs over
who their next party chairperson
will be. Also, Þórgerður Katrín Gun-
narsdóttir, from The Independence
Party, and Þúríður Bachmann, from
the Leftist-Green, announced they
weren’t running again, either. All of
these women have been members
of parliament for at least a decade,
with Jóhanna being in office since
the ‘70s. No male politician in office
offered to retire.
Foreigners living in Iceland reached a record 25,000.
Not that this should provoke
any xenophobic panic because
the percentage of foreign-born
residents has remained at 8% for
years. Interestingly enough, though,
Statistics Iceland has varying
degrees of foreign-ness: there are
straight-up immigrants, those born
to immigrant parents, and those
born to one foreign parent and one
Icelander. They’re all foreigners, ap-
parently; even the ones born here.
Go figure.
While some move to Iceland, others leave—
sometimes against their will.
This month, Iraqi
asylum seeker
Ahmed Kamel
al-Rubaie
was sent to
Norway, where
he will likely be
sent back to Iraq.
Icelandic authorities once again
evoked the Dublin Regulation in
this case, as they have in nearly
every other asylum seeker case.
This treaty gives countries the right
to deport asylum seekers back to
their last point of departure. And
since there are no direct flights
from war-torn, totalitarian, or crip-
plingly poor countries to Iceland,
the Dublin Regulation sure comes
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NEWS IN ICELAND
OCTOBER