Reykjavík Grapevine - 17.07.2015, Side 22

22 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 10 — 2015
In the ten-year period studied, Iceland’s media cov-
ered New York Times articles about Iceland in 246
articles. I categorized the headlines as follows: 1. We
are liked, 2. We are not liked, 3. We are getting atten-
tion, 4. Other
A striking 55% of the headlines emphasized the
fact that Iceland, or an Icelandic person, place or en-
tity, was liked, disliked, or simply received attention.
The remaining 46% of headlines were unclear in
this regard, although in many cases, the focus of the
articles shifted from reporting the news in question
towards highlighting the fact that Iceland had been
featured internationally.
Lapping up attention
Perhaps most interesting are the headlines that boil
down to “We are getting attention,” making up 79
articles, or 32% of the Icelandic articles reporting
on New York Times articles about Iceland. A num-
ber of them follow the structure: “New York Times
is showing [Insert Iceland, or an Icelandic person,
place, or entity] interest.” For example, on January
10, 2011, visir.is ran the headline “New York Times
Shows Mamma Gogo Interest” (“New York Times
sýnir Mömmu Gógó áhuga”).
Others read “New York Times discussed [Ice-
landic thing, person, or place]” or “[Icelandic thing,
person, or place] was discussed.” For example, on
March 6, 2012, mbl.is ran a story with the headline
“Ólafur Is Discussed In The NYT” (“Ólafur til um-
fjöllunar hjá NYT”). Although people are referred to
by their first names in Iceland, the journalist’s deci-
sion to simply refer to him as Ólafur is interesting, es-
pecially given that Ólafur is the fifth most common
male name in the country and there are at least four
famous Ólafurs (as in the president, the handball
player, the artist and the musician). Again, according
to the headline, the emphasis in this story lies in the
fact that the New York Times deemed an Icelandic
Ólafur worthy of coverage. Ólafur’s identity is clari-
fied in the article’s lede, but the emphasis is still on
the fact that he received coverage.
In another example from August 2, 2012, Frét-
tablaðið published the article “Gylfi in the New
York Times” (“Gylfi í New York Times”). The article
begins: “Soccer player Gylfi Sigurðsson received
generous coverage on the New York Times’ website
yesterday. The occasion is Tottenham’s trip to New
York where the team played a friendly match against
the Red Bulls and was sized up for the FIFA 13 com-
puter game, which comes out later this year.” The
article continues: “Gylfi scored a fantastic goal in the
game and it is described in detail. The Times jour-
nalist writes highly of Gylfi and wonders how such a
small country could have so many successful soccer
players despite never having made it to a big tourna-
ment.”
Sometimes the headline contains no subject at
all, which makes it even clearer what is being em-
phasized. On January 15, 2013, for instance, mbl.is
published an article with the headline: “Receiving
Widespread Attention Abroad” (“Vekur athygli víða
erlendis”). This headline implies that the most im-
portant part of the story is simply the fact that the
world is taking note of Iceland. Others examples in
this category of headline include “Lots of Interest
from the Foreign Press,” (“Mikill áhugi erlendra
fjölmiðla”), “Getting Attention in North America”
(“Vekur athygli vestanhafs”), and “Getting Attention
from the World” (“Vekur heimsathygli”).
Basking in praise
Another 55 articles, or 22% of the Icelandic articles
reporting on New York Times coverage of Iceland,
have headlines that fall into the “We are liked” cat-
egory.
Often when the local media reported a positive
review, the New York Times is described as a “ma-
jor paper” (“stórblað”). It is not enough that a New
York Times critic is reviewing an Icelandic artist or
musician—the critic is referred to as a “respected”
(“virtur”) critic. This is the case in an article about
Kristín Ómarsdóttir that appeared in Fréttablaðið
on April 17, 2012: “Kristín Praised in the New York
Times” (“Kristínu hrósað í New York Times”). The
article opens with the sentence: “Kristín Ómarsdót-
tir receives a laudatory review in the ‘major Ameri-
can paper’ New York Times for the English transla-
tion of her book ‘Hér’.”
In a stranger breed of the “We are liked” head-
line, Icelandic journalists take a fact presented in the
New York Times and repost it as the headline of their
story. These headlines do not tend to come across as
being particularly newsworthy to an Icelandic audi-
ence, but the reader likely picks up on the fact that
they are remarks made by a foreigner, which again
makes them similar to the other types mentioned.
After all, why would the Icelandic media re-
port to Icelanders, “Icelanders are Hospitable and
Friendly” (“Íslendingar gestrisnir og vinalegir”)?
This article, which appeared in Morgunblaðið on
October 4, 2013, is based on a New York Times ar-
ticle entitled “Iceland’s Otherworldly Beauty.” This
headline is less newsworthy than it is prideful that a
New York Times journalist believes that Icelanders
are friendly and hospitable.
Only two articles have headlines falling into the
“We are not liked” category. One of those articles,
“NY Times Critic Not Impressed” (“Gagnrýnandi
NY Times Ekki Hrifinn”), which appeared in Mor-
gunblaðið on December 12, 2012, referred to a nega-
tive review of the play “Faust: A Love Story,” directed
by Gísli Örn Garðarsson and performed by troupes
from Iceland’s Vesturport Theater and Reykjavik
City Theater.
The other article, “American Geneticists Cast
Doubt on deCODE’s Results” (“Bandarískir er-
fðafræðingar draga niðurstöður ÍE í efa), which
appeared on mbl.is on February 9, 2004, relays criti-
cism from experts quoted in the New York Times
article before ending with a rebuttal from deCODE
CEO Kári Stefánsson.
While it’s possible that Icelandic journalists do
not adhere to the widely accepted “inverted pyra-
mid” news format—wherein the headline reflects
the most important part of the story—and instead
prefer to summarise or highlight a specific detail, it
seems remarkable that 54% of headlines placed em-
phasis on the sentiment “We are liked” or “We are
getting attention.”
An overview of how Iceland’s dailies have reported
on articles about Iceland in the New York Times
from 2004 through 2013.

100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
The number of articles featuring Iceland in the New
York Times overlaid by the number of articles picked
up by the Icelandic dailies.
The Icelandic media's coverage of New York Times
articles about Iceland has remained fairly consistent
over the ten-year period. Typically, the number of
articles picked up by the Icelandic media increased
as the number of articles featuring Iceland in the
New York Times increased.
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
53%
36% 37% 34%3 4%
27%
71%
47%
50%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
The percentage of articles picked up by the Icelandic
dailies per year.
However, the number of articles picked up did not
change in proportion with the number of articles
featuring Iceland in the New York Times.
In other words, over the time period studied, a
record low number of articles featuring Iceland in
the New York Times appeared in 2006 and this cor-
responded to a record high 71% picked up by the Ice-
landic media. Conversely, a record high number of
articles featuring Iceland in them appeared in 2013
and this corresponded to a record low 27% picked up
by the Icelandic media.
This suggests that there is a threshold with re-
gard to the number of articles that will be picked up,
which could be due to the fact that the media has a
set amount of resources, including staff and time, to
cover a wide variety of topics in their print editions
and on their websites every day.

The percentage of articles featuring Iceland in the New
York Times picked up by Iceland’s dailies by category.
Iceland’s dailies have been most interested in pick-
ing up those articles. Of the 117 New York Times ar-
ticles in the Arts category, Iceland’s dailies picked up
71, or 61% of them.
The rate at which Iceland’s dailies picked up the
15 most featured subjects in the New York Times.
Articles featuring artist Ragnar Kjartansson were
picked up 83% of the time, which is the highest
pickup rate for the top 15 most frequently featured
subjects in the New York Times over this ten-year
period. After him, chess master Bobby Fischer, pop
icon Björk and artist Ólafur Elíasson had the next
highest pickup rates, at respectively 55%, 54% and
44%.
Articles about the Eyjafjallajökull eruption, vari-
ous elections and Kaupthing, a bank that collapsed
at the start of Iceland’s financial crisis in 2008, had
particularly low pickup rates, at respectively 12%,
11% and 11%. Interestingly, articles about whaling
had the lowest pickup rate of all, with none of the
seven stories being picked up.
BREAKING NEWS:
The World Noticed Us!
The World Likes Us!
45%
Other
We are getting attention
We are liked
We are not liked
1%
22%
32%
Icelanders seem to have a deep-seated preoccu-
pation with how they are perceived by the outside
world and a belief that “recognition comes from
abroad.” The modern Icelandic proverb express-
ing this sentiment, “upphefðin kemur að utan,”
can be traced back to a line in Nobel Prize-win-
ning author Halldór Laxness’s play ‘Stromplei-
kurinn’ (“The Chimney Play”) from 1961.
However, its essence is perhaps best captured
in his 1957 novel ‘Brekkukotsannáll’ (“The Fish
Can Sing”), in which an Icelandic opera singer
is celebrated in Reykjavík as the nation’s famous
“world singer” though nobody in Iceland has ac-
tually heard him sing. They assume that he must
be great, though, as he has performed all over the
world:
“I do not think that any paper was ever published
in Iceland in those days which did not carry at
least a brief notice about his fame as a singer,
and sometimes even more than one article in
each issue. The headlines always went some-
thing like this: “ICELANDIC SONG ABROAD”;
“ICELAND’S ART WINS FAME AFAR”; “ICE-
LANDIC MUSIC IN OTHER LANDS”; “THE
WORLD LISTENS TO ICELAND”; “IMPOR-
TANT CONCERT IN CAPITAL CITY”; OR,
“ICELAND APPLAUDED IN INTERNATION-
AL PAPER LE TEMPS.” The Subject of the ar-
ticles was always the same: Garðar Hólm had
yet again earned fame for Iceland abroad. In the
town of Küssnacht he had sung the following
songs: How Beautifully that Bird did Sing, The
Sheep are Bleating in the Pen, and The East Wind
Coldly on Us Blew, and the newspaper Küss-
nachter Nachrichten had said such and such.”
Although his novel is set in the early 20th cen-
tury, at a time when Icelanders were still fighting
for their independence from Denmark, Laxness’s
commentary on Iceland’s preoccupation with
being in the international spotlight seems as rel-
evant today as it was then. In fact, Halldór Lax-
ness’s fictional parody of Icelandic society and
journalism from 1957 seems to be the reality of
Icelandic society and journalism in 2015.
Recognition Still
Comes From Abroad
100%
90%
80%
70%
61%
31%
28%
38% 40%
41%
33% 33%
14%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
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What The Icelandic
Media Picked Up