Reykjavík Grapevine - 07.10.2011, Blaðsíða 6

6
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 16 — 2011
Iceland | Class struggle
Reykjavík | Welcome to!
Dear reader,
Welcome to Iceland. Whether you’re here for fun
and travel or for business, I hope you’ll enjoy a
good time here and will get to know some locals. I
would also like to make a special request that you
spend a lot of money throughout the duration of
your stay. Do not save on dining and drinking.
Allow yourself some luxury. You deserve it, and
it is good for the economy. I ask that you do not
visit the retail outlets run by the Salvation Army
(Garðastræti 6, 101 Reykjavík) or the Red Cross
(Laugavegur 12, 101 Reykjavík). Even though they
are fun shops, they are rather inexpensive. You
should rather visit more expensive shops.
A lot of tourists that visit the country wonder
why it is called Iceland, because—despite what the
name might indicate—it isn’t at all cold here. The
average temperature in Reykjavík is 1°C. Nowhere
in the world has better summers than Iceland. It
might snow in the month of June, however. That
is called ‘a spring snowfall’. July is the hottest
month. When it comes around you better have a t-
shirt handy, because the temperature can reach up
to 20°C. Weather.com often states a temperature
followed with a “feels like” temperature. When
the heat in Reykjavík reaches 20°C, they will of-
ten say it “feels like” 15°C. That is probably due to
something known as ‘the wind chill factor.’ No
Icelander understands this. If we had this “feels
like” feature in our weather reporting, we would
say that it “feels like” 40°C whenever the tempera-
ture reached 20°C, without exception. This dem-
onstrates the importance of ‘mentality’ and ‘atti-
tude.’
But how can it be that such a warm country
came to possess such a frigid name? Yes, the ex-
planation is simple: MISUNDERSTANDING. In-
gólfur Arnarson, the first man that found Reykja-
vík, wasn’t on his way here at all. He was en route
to the United States of America, to buy grapes and
other fast food that grew wild there in those days.
He was very interested in food. And also homicide.
On his way he noticed a cloud of smoke ascending
to the heavens from an unknown country. His cu-
rious nature got the best of him, and he changed
his course and set sail to Reykjavík (Reykjavík lit-
erally means “smoky bay”!).
As he disembarked his ship, he saw that the
smoke was in fact steam rising from Reykjavík’s
many swimming pools. He was therefore quick in
tearing off the suit of armour that he had worn
in case he’d encounter some Native Americans
while picking grapes, and jumping into some
swim trunks. After swimming a good 500 metres
he sat in the hot tub and relaxed. After a fun chat
with the locals he had forgotten all about America.
Who needs to travel all the way to America to pick
grapes when there’s a shop on Laugavegur called
Vínberið (Vínberið literally means: “the grape”)?
Ingólfur decided to settle here. He rented a small
apartment along with his wife, Hallveig Fróðadót-
tir, who many claim was the daughter of Frodo
from ‘Lord Of The Rings,’ Nothing has been prov-
en about that, however.
One day Ingólfur and Hallveig were taking a
stroll around town. They were walking their dog,
who was called Plútó and was a Great Dane. It was
a sizzling hot summer’s day. It was long before the
t-shirt was invented. They were both dressed in
full suits of armour, with swords and shields and
helmets and everything. They stopped by at Ísbúð
Vesturbæjar in Hagamelur to get some ice cream
and cool down. The story goes that Ingólfur asked
the clerk whether she knew what the country was
called.
She thought it was called Thule. Ingólfur felt
that was a stupid name.
“No country can be called Thule,” he said.
Outside the ice cream shop, a crowd had gath-
ered. They had heard that foreign visitors were in
town. A lot of those people were elves. Ingólfur
then approached the crowd, raised his ice cream
cone aloft and shouted:
“Henceforth this country will be called Ice-
land, because one can get the world’s best ice
cream here!”.
Today we have a statue of Ingólfur. The statue
depicts Ingólfur dying of heat, leaning on his dog.
Don’t be a stranger, be like Ingólfur!
Best regards,
Jón Gnarr
Mayor of Reykjavík
Mayor’s Address:
WELCOME TO REYKjAVíK
Are Iceland's Cops Underpaid Or Over-Entitled?
Some of the more iconic imagery that arose
from the 2009 ‘Pots and Pans Revolution’
featured police tangling with protesters,
whether involving riot shields, pepper spray,
or a physical confrontation within parliament
itself. It is, of course, the duty of police the
world over to help maintain order and protect
people from harm. Iceland's police force en-
joys some of the highest levels of public trust
of any government institution. But now, with
Iceland's police force demanding a pay raise,
some are questioning whether or not the po-
lice are over-reaching.
A statement from the Police Federation of Iceland
(LL) recently stated in part that it is “tragic” to
“have to be a human shield between parliament
and the people” on the first day of the new ses-
sion. This remark was made after Left-Green MP
Árni Þór Sigurðsson was pelted in the face by an
egg on his way into parliament. As columnist Guð-
mundur Andri Thorsson pointed out in a recent
column, “In reality this statement means that the
police regret having to defend the citizens of this
country from violence. What are they taught at the
police academy?”
How did things get to this point?
PROBLEM?
Your average police officer makes about 350.000
ISK per month. The chief of police, meanwhile,
makes 600.000 ISK. Outgoing police superinten-
dent Geir Jón Þórisson recently told Pressan that
he believes the starting salary for a police officer
should be 500.000 ISK.
The problem? Prime Minister Jóhanna Sig-
urðardóttir says there's no money to provide these
salaries. "[The police] are very important to so-
ciety and of course we want to see if anything is
possible," she recently told RÚV. "But it is not pos-
sible to meet the demands of a pay raise or any-
thing like it in the wake of arbitration. I don't think
it will work.”
The response from the police was immediate
and strong. Members of riot squads in Eyjafjörður
and Selfoss have walked off the job, and the riot
squads in Suðurnes and Akranes are considering
doing the same. While having riot squads in small
country villages might seem like a wasteful expen-
diture, they are in fact the back-up force for the
capital's riot squad.
POLICE STRIKE?
When this didn't get the salary ball rolling fast
enough, LL kicked it up a notch: LL director Stein-
ar Adolfsson told Vísir there is a strong demand
within the police force to have the right to go on
strike again, in the realist sense of the term. In ex-
pressing regret that some essential officers would
be required to stay on the job in the event of a
strike, he quite clearly wishes the police had the
right to strike as an entirety.
Which isn't going to happen. The Boston Po-
lice Strike of 1919—which was also over a wage
dispute, as well as the right to unionise in the first
place—saw the city thrown into lawlessness for a
few days. Volunteer militias were required to re-
store order. This is why police officers cannot go
on strike.
On the other hand, the strike has always been
labour's go-to last resort weapon in negotia-
tions. It could even be argued that without even
the implied threat of strike lurking in the shadows
of possibilities at the negotiations table, it's very
unlikely management would be more cooperative
with labour.
TRUST THE POLICE
The police likely don't need to go on strike, how-
ever—they have the public trust. A Gallup poll from
2010 showed that 81% of respondents said they
trust the police a great deal. This made them the
second-most trusted institution in the country,
right after the University of Iceland, ahead of the
banks, the church, and parliament. It is unlikely
that this popularity has waned significantly. And
this is probably why, when LL wanted to meet with
Finance Minister Steingrímur J. Sigfússon over a
wage agreement, they got their meeting, and the
promise that a government work group will be as-
sembled to try and find a solution somehow.
But LL may be pushing their luck. Many Ice-
landers don't earn 350.000 ISK, and there have
been grumbles that the police are engaging in
emotional blackmail to get their demands met.
Journalist Illugi Jökulsson recalled the story of
seeing an officer on the news use, as an example
of the demands of his job, having a young boy die
in his arms at the scene of an accident. He dis-
closed both the boy's age and where the accident
took place, leaving little mystery as to who the
victim was. “If I had been the father of this boy,” Il-
lugi wrote, “I would not have chosen that [the boy]
be presented to the media as an example of the
struggle of police wages.”
As it stands now, the police are waiting to hear
what the government's work group will come up
with by way of a solution. Should the offer not be
to their liking, Iceland's police force could end up
joining the same protesters that their union re-
grets having to protect parliament from. But as
public patience wanes, Iceland's police force may
find itself on neither side of the divide, but wedged
between a government that cannot pay them as
much as they'd like, and a nation growing increas-
ingly weary of their demands.
PAUL FONTAINE
HöRðUR SVEINSSON
Do you wish he were YOUR mayor? Why/why not? We have a
fully functional letters page for you to tell us all about it.