Reykjavík Grapevine - 14.03.2014, Blaðsíða 8

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The Reykjavík Grapevine
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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Iceland | For Dummies
It can't be worse than when Pharaoh
Mentuhotep II called General Intef "a
cowardly penis horse."
It is hard to pick just a single low
point, but perhaps the most telling
of the many low points was the spat
between the Minister of Finance
and Top Banana of the Indepen-
dence Party Bjarni Benediktsson
and the Second Banana of the Social
Democratic Alliance Katrín Júlíus-
dóttir. It is so juvenile that it's hard
to explain what happened without
slipping into teenspeak.
Please do. Nothing's funnier than
when adults imitate teens.
Katrín was speaking in Parliament,
like, what's the hurry 'cause we have
plenty of time to discuss this 'cause
there are no other big issues up for
debate. Then Bjarni got all up in her
face by putting the parliamentary
schedule on the podium as she was
speaking. She got all angry and
called him a goddamn dirtbag. Then
he got all yeah right and told her,
like, calm down. She got furious and
got in an argument with the Speaker
about whether Bjarni was being an
unprecedented dirtbag, or just a
precedented one.
This sounds less like something that
happened in reality and more like a
scene from reality television.
Once you start to look at the last
couple of weeks through the lens of
a reality TV camera, everything falls
into place. This is the moment in the
season where everything spirals out
of control. Things seem to be going
well and then suddenly a series of
small clashes turns a peaceful epi-
sode of Iceland's Next Top Minister
into a houseful of people yelling at
each other incoherently.
What triggered the meltdown? Did
someone cheat to get a Cheese Tiara
of Immunity?
What kicked things off was the de-
cision of Minister of Foreign Affairs
Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson to put forth
a proposal to formally withdraw
Iceland's application to join the EU.
This pissed people off, as both gov-
ernment parties had repeatedly said
ahead of last year's election that they
would hold a referendum on wheth-
er or not Iceland would continue
talks with the EU. What made this
particularly silly was the repeated
attempt by the government to ex-
plain away their campaign promises
as a precautionary measure, unlucky
phrasing, or something they mis-
took for a small, f lightless bird.
You made that last bit up about the
flightless bird... right?
I did. The whole debate got off to an
odd start when the human tornado
of angry weirdness that is Chair of
Parliament's Budget Committee
Vigdís Hauksdóttir started spin-
ning. On a TV show she said both
that a famine was ravaging Europe
and that Malta was not an indepen-
dent country. Then things got a bit
more uncomfortable when she took
offense at a piece that was written
about her in an internet magazine
and called on the company whose
advertisement appeared alongside
the article to stop advertising on
that website.
Isn't that the same politician who
threatened state broadcaster RÚV
with budget cuts and then followed
through on those threats?
Yes. Not only that but Gunnar Bragi
at one point refused to be inter-
viewed by RÚV unless certain con-
ditions were met. He has in the past
criticised them for being one-sided
in their coverage of the EU dispute.
The next day a study was released
that showed that RÚV was far from
being one-sided, and in fact was a
little bit more likely to give anti-EU
sentiments more airtime.
Ouch! That has to be a low point for
that guy.
The furore kicked up by his proposal
to end negotiations with the EU has
resulted in a series of low points for
him. The lowest was during parlia-
mentary debate when he shouted at
the former finance minister: “At least
I did not lie to parliament like you!”
Later he apologised for his words,
only to qualify that apology—by
qualify I mean retract—by saying
that he still thought the former min-
ister was a liar.
Surely someone has come out of this
with a shred of dignity?
Mostly it has been the politicians
who have kept quiet. The best indi-
cation of how bad things are is the
fact that the person acclaimed as the
voice of reason, a former right-wing
minister for education and culture,
got the nod for a series of comments
that included calling members of
the government "blackshirts." Yes,
things got so bad that calling people
Nazis amounted to calm, reasoned
discourse. It is a wonder no one was
called a cowardly penis horse.
Politicians say the darnedest things. That has been
true at least since their words were commonly re-
corded in hieroglyphics. For people to take notice, the
volume of silly talk from politicians must be very large
or what they say has to be especially ridiculous. In the
last couple of weeks, both of these things have been
the case.
— by Kári Tulinius Illustration by Lóa Hjálmtýsdóttir
So What's This Silly Talk In
Parliament I Keep Hearing About?
Continues over
Keeping the themes of acceptance
and mutual respect in mind, many
Icelanders’ eyes were on Russia
last month. Prior to the start of the
Olympic Games, several of Iceland’s
leading queer organisations encour-
aged Iceland’s politicians to boycott
the ceremonies, or at the very least to
“hold aloft the banner of the rights of
queer people.” For his part, Minister
of Education and Cultural Affairs Illugi
Gunnarsson wore a rainbow scarf
although he did not have the op-
portunity to discuss queer rights with
Putin while in Russia. President Ólafur
Ragnar Grímsson and his wife Dorrit
Moussaieff did have an audience with
the Russian leader, but based on the
big smiles and hearty handshakes, it
seems clear that Ólafur Ragnar didn’t
rock the boat.
Elsewhere in sinking ships, a distress
signal sent out from Faxaflói bay in
early February mobilized a team of 180
people, including the Coast Guard’s
divers, rescue boats, and helicopter.
With no ships unaccounted for in the
harbour, the distress call was eventu-
ally announced as a hoax and put
under investigation with the police.
Unfortunately, this fake call was not
the only one of its kind this month: a
13-year-old Icelandic boy called in a
false bomb threat to WOW air, strand-
ing a plane travelling from London on
the Keflavík runway and forcing it to
be evacuated.

When you need to reconfirm your faith
in human goodness, there is generally
a cat story at hand, particularly in
Iceland. Cat lovers banded together to
save Bjósi the kitten after he was run
over by a car and seriously injured.
Warm-hearted do-gooders raised the
necessary 200,000 ISK for Bjósi’s vet
bills in just ten hours via a crowdfund-
ing campaign.
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