Reykjavík Grapevine - 12.08.2016, Page 14

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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 12 — 2016
14
Just a couple months ago, Kristín Rós
Kristjánsdóttir was an actor working
at a theatre in London. Today, she’s
getting ready to return to a refugee
camp in northern Greece, where she
will be building a library for people
who have fled the civil war in Syria.
A change of direction
Kristín first went to Greece earlier this
year, where she joined Þórunn Ólafs-
dóttir and other volunteers from Ak-
keri, an Icelandic NGO, at the Idomeni
camp near the Macedonian border.
Soon after her arrival, Kristín says the
Idomeni camp was evacuated by Greek
authorities, and the refugees were
moved to smaller military-run camps.
“The circumstances in that camp
were, to say the least, absolutely dis-
gusting,” Kristín says. “The army had
come in the day before and put up army
tents in this derelict factory building.
There was no water, no electricity, no
toilets. Nothing had been cleaned, and
there was dust, scrap metal and bro-
ken glass everywhere.”
Within a week of returning to Lon-
don, Kristín says she quit her job at
the theatre and decided to dedicate
herself to volunteering in the refugee
camp. When she returned to Greece
last month, she says the team from
Akkeri was the only NGO operating in
the camp. “We did a little bit of every-
thing. We distributed food, distribut-
ed clothes, pampers, baby food, water
boilers, whatever was most needed
at that time,” she says. “So we got to
know a lot of these refugees really, re-
ally well.”
The power of books
Kristín says she quickly realized there
was a need for good quality reading
materials. “A lot of their days just go
around sitting, waiting, hoping and
thinking about what might or might
not happen next,” she says about the
realities of life in the camp. “By get-
ting books they’d both be getting an
education, but also something that
they can pick up and immerse them-
selves in and hopefully take them away
from the situation.”
This initiative, which Kristín calls
“Books 4 Refugees,” is partly inspired
by her childhood love of reading. Most
days after school, Kristín says she
would finish her homework as quickly
as possible so she could crack open the
next book. “I really enjoyed the feeling
of being somewhere else, of experienc-
ing different places, and being some-
one else,” she says. Now she hopes to
share that feeling with the refugees in
the camps in Greece, who are mainly
Kurdish Syrians.
A path to education
Providing refugees with books is
also important so they can learn Eng-
lish, says Kristín. “There are various
levels of English in the camp, but it’s
the people who speak English who get
things done and who are more active
in the community,” she says. “The
ones who don’t speak English tend to
have less things to do, which encour-
ages depression.”
Although many volunteer organi-
zations are focused solely on provid-
ing refugees with books in English,
Kristín says she is also trying to pro-
vide books in Arabic. “As vital as it
is to study about the culture and the
language where they are going, they
also have their own culture,” she says.
“There are children who who will now
grow up in another culture, but I think
they should still have access to what
makes them them.”
Kristín has set up a crowdfunding
website to raise money for her proj-
ect. As of the time of writing, she had
raised over half of her £1,000 goal.
She has also been receiving donations
from book publishers, and will be re-
turning to the refugee camp in Greece
with about 200 books for the library,
with over 100 more books on their way.
Share this article:
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BOOKS4
Words
ISAAC WÜR-
MANN
Photos
KRISTÍN RÓS
KRISTJÁNS-
DÓTTIR
NEWS Building a library for
refugees in Greece
Bringing
Books To
The Camps
Iceland gets plenty
of credit for being
a country of toler-
ance, most of it well-
deserved. But this
doesn’t stop the ex-
tremely intolerant from trying to gain
ground here. This was underlined
again when many Icelanders woke up
one morning to find flyers in their
mailslots from the Nordic Resistance
Movement, a Swedish-based neo-
Nazi organisation. This group is look-
ing for recruits in Iceland, ostensibly
to take part in the kinds of activities
this group is known for, such as vio-
lently attacking Muslims, members of
the queer community, asylum seekers,
and basically anyone who doesn’t fit
some archetypal Scandinavian ideal
that never really existed in the first
place. No word on how many Iceland-
ers, if any, have joined their little club.

We would probably be remiss if we
didn’t mention that Iceland’s 6th pres-
ident, Guðni Th. Jóhannesson, of-
ficially took office on August 1. Guðni
already ranked highly amongst Ice-
landers of many political stripes when
he became the first president to take
part in Reykjavík Pride. Strange as
it may seem, our outgoing president,
Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, refused to
take part in these festivities for his
entire twenty-year tenure in office.
Whatever your thoughts on the presi-
dency in general, Guðni is having some
promising first days in office. - PF
Just as you were
get t i ng over
the thrill and
excitement of
one imported
donut ch a i n
o p e n i n g i n
Iceland, Hagar
just raised the bar:
now Krispy Kreme is rumored to
be coming here, on account of Icelandic
retail giant buying the link krispykreme.
is. Now you can have two choices of
where to get your deep fried, sugar-
infused baked goods delights!
NEWS IN
BRIEF
CONT.