Reykjavík Grapevine - 07.06.2013, Page 8

Continues over
10 YEARS AGO
…From Issue 1, 2003
Hooray! It's our tenth birthday, we're
having a party and we'll cry if we want
to, damn it! For a humble street rag
like Grapevine, turning ten is a pretty
big deal—we barely expected to make
it to ten issues (and, indeed, all of our
contemporaries Reykjavík's street rag
market have long since bid farewell...
miss u, Undirtónar!). To celebrate our
decade of existence, we thought we'd
get a little introspective. You can see
evidence of that on our cover, where we
are getting choice cover stars from ev-
ery year to pose together, and elsewhere
in this issue, where we look at some fun
stats and the history of the paper.
Also, we thought it would be a fun
idea in our anniversary year to reprint
some choice articles from the past that
are for some reason significant, accom-
panied by commentary and even up-
dates. Call it a "blast from the past" or
"a look into the dark cauldron of time"
if you want to—we call it fun. Thus, for
the next ten issues expect a page dedi-
cated to a year of Grapevine's existence,
starting RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW,
with a look back into magical 2003.
Keep coming back for more. And
see you at our party (there is informa-
tion elsewhere about this...)
When the first is-
sue of the Reykjavík
Grapevine came out
in June 2003, there
were still more locals
than tourists in Ice-
land in the summer,
the spectacular and far-sighted transfor-
mation of the economy with aluminium
smelters and private banks was just tak-
ing off, and the Independence and Pro-
gressive Parties had just been elected into
office with promises of lower taxes for
everyone. A decade later the paper is still
here, but everything else has changed, not
least the political discourse, as this article
by Filippa Guðmundsdóttir from our first
ever issue demonstrates. It is printed be-
low, exactly as it was printed then.
– Former Editor Valur Gunnarsson
In the weeks before, the Party’s launched
their campaigns in the traditional way,
with huge pictures of smiling politicians
on every billboard, over phrases like “vote
for freedom” or “vote for justice”, and so
on. Of course, nobody cared and when the
pictures of our elected liars and thieves with
fake smiles were starting to get on peoples
nerves, the tone suddenly changed and the
parties tried a different approach
After years of silence on the matter, tax-
es suddenly became the hottest campaign
issue. The right wing incumbent Indepen-
dence party started the pissing contest by
promising 22 billion krónur worth of tax
cuts Of course the mildly left Alliance
party quickly pointed out that most of that
money would go to the rich and instead
proposed a modest 16 billion tax cut ben-
efiting the poorest. The Progressive Party,
the junior government partner, at the time
facing political oblivion according to the
polls, joined the game with their own 17
billion pledge
Feeling some resentment from the
voters and with the growing gap between
rich and poor being a sore spot, the Inde-
pendence Party raised their promise to
37 billion, making sure that everybody
would benefit more from their suggestion.
Stunned by this, none of the other parties
dared to outbid them.
The list of other campaign promises ran
long and included reducing tariffs on food,
higher real estate loans and lower interest
rates. In fact, the Independence Party was
just an inch away from promising to send
everyone bundles of cash in the mail though
in the end all they could manage was coffee
A lot of people found it funny, how when
elections were in the air, there was suddenly
plenty of money to lower taxes by several
percent while at the same time, the police
numbers were being reduced to stay on an
ever tightening budget, and with a healthcare
system groaning under the weight of severe
government cut backs
When the votes were cast and counted, at
first, everybody seemed to have won.
After the election night, the leaders of
the minority each went on television to an-
nounce that their party was the real winner
of this election. The leader of the Liberal
Party proudly announced that his party dou-
bled its number of parliamentarians, jump-
ing from 2 to 4, while The Alliance Party
got over thirty percent
of the votes and became
the second largest party.
Even the leader of the
Left Green Party felt vic-
torious because they had
lost less than expected.
At the same time, the
leaders of the incumbent
coalition happily announced that they would
govern this country for four more years.
They shed no tears over losing the trust of
the people and 7% of their vote in four years.
Thanks to a surprisingly good performance
from their junior coalition partners the pro-
gressives they had the numbers for a third
term and that, of course, is what matters at
the end of the day.
Personality wise election 2003 saw the
making and breaking of two of Icelands´
premier political figures Late last year,
Halldór Ásgrímsson the leader of the Pro-
gressive Party, became a laughing stock
when he admitted that he had the dream of
becoming prime minister. Being one of the
least popular politicians and joked about
for never changing his facial expression or
tone of voice, he was simply dismissed as
delusional. At this time The Alliance party
came forward with their candidate for prime
minister, the mayor of Reykjavík, Ingibjörg
Sólrún. Very popular and successful in lead-
ing the city for 8 years, she now became
the leader of the opposition. On the back
of her heavy weight personality the Alli-
ance soared to undreamed of heights in the
polls surpassing their biter rivals the inde-
pendence party for the first time in history.
Poor Halldór, on the other hand, didn’t even
look like he would make it back into parlia-
ment. But, as they say in Westminster, even
a week is a long time in politics never mind
a few months. The alliance made that clas-
sic and unfortunate mistake of peaking too
early and Halldor made the most impressive
return from the dead since lazarus
Now, no one is quite sure how it hap-
pened, but on Election Day, the Progressive
Party got an impressive 17% of the votes,
after having gone as low as 8% in the polls.
Since the Independence Party and the Alli-
ance Party are sworn enemies and the other
party’s were too small, a new government
would again have to include the Progressive
Party, and Halldór would get to choose who
went in with him.
The morning after the elections, The Al-
liance party, desperate to form a new gov-
ernment, offered Halldór his dream job as
prime minister. With that offer, he then went
to the Independence party, and accepted
their offer to continue their coalition, with
Halldor taking over as prime minister from
David Oddsen within two years, something
no one would have believed a few weeks
ago. The man regarded by many as the
doormat of the government, finally got his
revenge. As for Ingibjörg Sólrún, well po-
litical fall from grace does not come much
harder. Having quit her top job as mayor to
run for prime minister, become briefly the
most popular person in the country and the
darling of the left, the cold political light of
Sunday morning saw her miss even election
to parliament by a handful of votes.
Now, only few weeks later with high po-
litical drama already a fading memory, all
the promises are forgotten, the fake smiles
have been removed, and most people can’t
even remember who got elected. Here’s to
four more years of blissful ignorance before
we all become experts on politics again.
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First summer
The first issue was published on
June 13, 2003. As the reader should
know by now, we publish on Fri-
days, so the first issue went onto
the streets on Friday the 13th. The
thought crossed our mind that it
might be bad luck, but we are still
here and still going strong; knock on
wood.
First office
Separate your personal life from
your work life, they say. But what
about when the work you do is
what you are? When you are pas-
sionate enough about something,
you spend all your waking hours
working on it. There is no personal
life. The waking hours reached
long into the night that first year,
and from time to time, some of us
literally lived in the office, a tiny cel-
lar on Blómvallagata in 101 Reyk-
javík. There was no going home;
the Grapevine was home. The first
office had some strange features.
There was no phone line, hence
no office phone, and we got our
internet connection via the electri-
cal lines, something that Reykjavík
Energy was pushing at the time but
has since stopped offering. Also,
the ceiling was strangely low, at
only two metres. This caused some
literal headaches, as during many
a stressful or exciting moment the
need to jump up and down was felt
and acted upon while the ceiling had
other plans. Other features were the
round windows reminiscent of the
Titanic, the dim lights and the scent
of sleep deprived, chain-smoking,
coffee-drinking magazine people.
Those were the days.
First backstage pass
After having published three issues,
we decided we needed a short break
and the whole staff went to a small
village near Borgarnes to chill out
and drink excessively. Nearby, the
most popular band in Iceland since
the 1970s, Stuðmenn, were playing
a show. By this time we had worked
up the guts to call up famous peo-
ple and did just that. We asked for
free tickets to the show, and to our
surprise, tickets were granted. Fur-
8The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 7 — 2013
by
Jón Trausti Sigurðarson
Oddur Óskar Kjartansson
Valur Gunnarsson
Haukur S. Magnússon
G
R
A P
E V I N
E
M
ILESTON
E
S
Valur was last seen working for the Berliner Zeitung. His second novel is expected in the autumn.