Reykjavík Grapevine - 16.08.2013, Síða 22

Five Years Ago
Hooray! We turned ten this year. For a
humble street rag like Grapevine, turning
ten is a pretty big deal—we barely expect-
ed to make it to ten issues (and, indeed, all
of our contemporaries from the Reykja-
vík'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
and reprint some choice articles from the
past that are for some reason significant,
accompanied by commentary and even
updates. 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 ten
issues, expect a page dedicated to a year of
Grapevine's existence, starting one issue
ago, with a look back into magical 2003.
This issue is a look at 2008, our sixth
year of existence when Steinunn Jakobs-
dóttir was assistant editor of The Reykja-
vík Grapevine. Read on for some reflec-
tions from Steinunn.
The year 2008 can be remembered for many things.
Bobby Fisher died in his Reykjavík apartment, Ice-
landic peacekeepers got trapped in a life-threatening
carpet-shopping trip on Kabul’s chicken street and
Ólafur F. Magnússon became the capital’s fourth
mayor in only two years following an unbelievable
turn of events that led former Grapevine editor Sve-
inn Birkir Björnsson to describe city politics as “an
absurdist play where Machiavelli waits for Godot.”
Iceland Airwaves celebrated its tenth anniversary,
Reykjavík was hit by a record-breaking heat wave
and Björk and Sigur Rós organised and headlined the
‘Náttúra’ concert in an attempt to help save Icelandic
nature. We at the Grapevine joined the fight with our
very own Nature-themed issue, co-edited by some of
Iceland’s leading environmentalists.
However, on October 6, all of those events seemed
to turn irrelevant, and the year 2008 will go down in
history books as the year the Icelandic financial sys-
tem came crumbling down and our then prime minis-
ter Geir H. Haarde asked god to bless the nation. The
party was over.
There is no need to remind you readers of the
political turmoil that followed. The Grapevine wel-
comed you to “Icelandistan” and tried to grasp what
the fuck had happened. At this time, I had just moved
to Dublin to study and experienced the crisis a bit dif-
ferently. Like the rest of the world, I watched from
afar as the banks collapsed one after the other, my
meagre savings turned into pennies overnight and a
pint of Guinness became a luxury.
I remember that my professors found our small
island highly intriguing and were much more inter-
ested in discussing the Icelandic króna than IMF’s
stronghold in Africa. Suddenly, everyone was an ex-
pert in Icelandic economics and not afraid to express
their opinion. I was proud to tell the teachers about
my fellow countrymen who stood up, and armed with
pots and pans, marched down to Austurvöllur square
every Saturday to demand change. The birth of this
interesting movement was nicely covered in a story
by Valur Gunnarsson “The Day We Started Fighting
Back.” ‘Búsáhaldabyltingin,’ try to pronounce that,
professor!
The nation went through stages of mourning—
denial, anger, depression—but eventually, got back
up and accepted that things wouldn’t, and probably
shouldn’t, be the same again. It had been a great party,
but now there was time to clean up the mess. At the
time, I didn’t expect the Grapevine to survive nor did
I realise that the credit crunch and the global news
coverage of our situation proved to be a massive boost
to our tourism industry. Walking down Laugavegur
five years later, the city centre has never looked live-
lier and thanks to the Grapevine Appy Hour, beer is
affordable again.
Cheers to life in moderation, cheers to our tourists
and all their money and cheers to another ten years of
The Reykjavík Grapevine!

By Steinunn Jakobsdóttir (assistant editor of The Reykjavík Grapevine from 2007-2008)
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Remembering 2008
22The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 12 — 2013