Reykjavík Grapevine - 10.03.2017, Blaðsíða 8

These Political Wonders:
Iceland Is No Utopia
Words
JOANNA
SMITH
Photo
ART BICNICK
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GPV.IS/UT3
I FIRST VISITED ICELAND two
years ago and came home smitten,
banging on about this geothermal, lib-
eral paradise. Watching the news with
me was a nightmare. If there was a
story about corruption in British poli-
tics I would chime in with: “In Iceland
they’ve jailed all their fraudulent bank-
ers.” If there was a depressing piece on
climate change I would say, “In Iceland
they run off geothermal energy.” If
there was a sad story about refugees I
would declare that: “In Iceland people
actually want more refugees.”
Now I’m back in Iceland interning
for three months and, having left my
rose-tinted glasses at home, I am realis-
ing that Iceland isn’t the liberal utopia I
thought it was. It’s no North Korea, but
this paradise I dreamt of currently has a
right-wing government, has flooded its
highlands to smelt aluminium, burns
160,000 tonnes of coal yearly (a figure
on the increase), and is deporting refu-
gees. Additionally, as the Grapevine
recently reported, Iceland’s corruption
level, as measured by Transparency In-
ternational, has risen in the past year,
making them officially more
corrupt than merry old Eng-
land, the Brexitting land I am
so disappointed in.
And it’s not just me—
many foreigners obsess over
these political wonders,
which in reality are not so
wonderful. So, why is it that
people feel the need to put
Iceland on such a pedestal? The an-
swer is simple: it’s comforting. It’s
comforting to watch terrible events
unfolding on the news and tell your-
self that somewhere out there people
have it figured out. When you feel as
if you aren’t being listened to in your
own country, it’s comforting to know
that there’s a place where you would
be. It’s comforting to know that your
dreams of the perfect society are being
realised, that it can be done.
Ignorance ≠ Bliss
But this ignorance is not bliss. It ac-
tually prevents people from changing
their own situation. Go back to me,
watching the news lamenting my Eng-
land’s choices whilst bragging about
Iceland. It does nothing to move my
own country towards becoming more
like this exalted liberal paradise. It
just makes people not want to watch
the news with me anymore.
One of Iceland’s redeeming factors
is that they’re fighters. Take the Pana-
ma Papers scandal, which embroiled the
former prime ministers of both Iceland
and the UK. Iceland, a country of around
330,000 people, mustered up 23,000
protesters who demanded their PM step
down (whilst throwing skyr at the Par-
liament building). It worked. The UK
on the other hand, a country of 64 mil-
lion people, managed a meagre protest
of 1000 people. It did not work. Where
was I when this protest was happening?
Probably telling everyone that Iceland
had sacked their Prime Minister.
Utopia does not exist, in Iceland,
or anywhere else. But despite this re-
alisation, Iceland still
has a special place in my
heart. Rather than my
make-believe liberal par-
adise, it’s my wild war-
rior wonderland: a place
where people stick up for
what they believe is right.
And, in all honesty, I’m
not sure I want to live in
a world where you don’t have to throw
skyr at a government building every
now and then. It may not be a uto-
pia, but it wouldn’t be half as fun.
EVERYTHING IS FASTER than it
used to be, more efficient, more con-
venient, digitized. This is obvious. The
pizza, the love, the taxi, the conversation
with your ex about your old Reeboks in
her apartment. The pictures, the empty
sex, the liberal talk shows, full of fake
laughs and smart jokes that
make you fall in love with
your lack of power and influ-
ence. The shopping, the news
of global horror and human
chaos. The dick pics, the pod-
casts, the music. It’s all right
there in your hand and you
shouldn’t doubt it. If you do,
you doubt the very concept of
progress. You will not save the world. It’s
not your role and never was. Technology
will. Data will. Systems will.
Pictures of Mubarak doing time
with shades on. That’s so interesting,
what’s your thesis about? A video of a
beheading and the knife is old. Didn’t I
see you at Kaffibarinn last weekend?🙈
Reveries, fears, pornsites. Read any
Camus?✌Love the guy.
What is the currency we pay for
these blessings? All those pictures of
the good life, the infinite music in our
ears, all this love in the palm of our
hand. I suspect it might be meaning.
The smartphone is gradually remov-
ing the element of ritual from our lives
and rituals have always been what
gives daily life meaning. Love meant
something entirely different when it
was about getting drunk in a bar and
looking for fire in someone else’s eyes.
The search for fireflies is over. Now
love is something found via images
and words online. Does it matter how
love begins? Of course. Details and
foundations matter.
We don’t write love letters any-
more—most people find them
corny—but we probably should, be-
cause writing by hand brings a physi-
cal dimension to the message. It has a
history to it and there’s a reason why
people have done it for thousands of
years. Repetition is the filter of history.
The love email (although ‘You Got Mail’
is admittedly a great movie
and “Email My Heart” by
Britney Spears is a person-
al favorite) and love Face-
book message lack this
element. The letter will
stay, other mediums dis-
appear, and if you want to
say something important,
you should probably go for
the resilient and beautiful medium of
the good old letter.
With great power comes great lack
of meaning, Uncle Ben should have
said to Peter Parker, and turned him
into an existential superhero. This
is today’s big dilemma. When there’s
no effort, there’s no meaning. You re-
move the rituals of daily life, all the
effort that makes different activities
unique—even small things like hail-
ing a taxi—and you take away their
meaning as well. We live in deeply
philosophical times. Why does Face-
book seem to make everybody sad?
It’s not because of all the fake shit,
all the cheap talk, the naked despair
and confusion of others. It’s because
when you sign in you understand on
a bodily level that what you’re doing
is sucking all meaning from your ex-
istence. And that this will kill you.
The Search For
Fireflies Is Over
Words HALLDÓR ARMAND Photo ART BICNICK Share this article: GPV.IS/HA3
DIGITAL MEANING
A: “LIGHTNING is actually more
common in Iceland than people
realise, however in comparison
to many other places on earth
we get very little of it. The simple
reason for this is that it doesn’t
normally get warm enough in
Iceland to create the conditions
required for lightning. Cumulo-
nimbus clouds are usually need-
ed to create thunderstorms. For
these clouds to form, the ground
has to be hot in order for hot air
to rise. Once risen, the water va-
pour in this air cools and forms
the cloud. The warmer the air,
the higher and larger the cloud
will be. At the top of the cloud,
pieces of ice form and crash
into one another, which creates
an electrical charge and with it,
lightning. Any electrical poten-
tial will diminish with smaller
clouds.

◂ ◂ ◂ ◆ ▸ ▸ ▸
“So, in Iceland, the ground is
rarely warm enough to cre-
ate these large cumulonimbus
clouds in the first place, mean-
ing that there is less chance for
this electrical charge to be cre-
ated and therefore, less chance
of lightning.”
◂ ◂ ◂ ◆ ▸ ▸ ▸
There you have it: Iceland is too
cold for lightning. That may be
a bit depressing to hear, but find
solace in the fact that you are way
less likely to be hit by lightning,
and that’s always a good thing.
◂ ◂ ◂ ◆ ▸ ▸ ▸
We asked Björn Sævar Einars-
son at The Icelandic Met Office.
If you have a question about
Iceland that you would like
answered, email us at ask@
grapvine.is and we will find
the most suitable expert in the
field in Iceland to resolve your
conundrum.
ASK A…
Meterologist
Q: “Why is lightning so
rare in Iceland?”
Photo: Rachel Cifelli
“Why is it
that people
feel the need
to put Iceland
on such a
pedestal?”
“The smart-
phone is
gradually
removing the
element of
ritual”
8 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 03 — 2017