Reykjavík Grapevine - 20.04.2018, Blaðsíða 10

#IcelandSmites ⚽
With gangs training for all-out brawls in
the forests of Russia, the injury curses
flying thick and fast, and clubs around
the world trying to sign our in-demand
warriors, here’s the
latest pre-World Cup
news from the Icelan-
dic camp, and beyond.
Iceland
captain in
demand
Aron Gunnarsson, the
totemic leader of the
Icelandic team, is out
of contract at Cardiff
t h i s s u m m er, b u t
there are no shortage
of suitors for his fear-
some services. The
Bluebirds are reportedly keen to retain
his smiting services, but UK Newspaper
The Sun reports that various teams in
Europe and the U.S. are trying to lure
him away, including Turkish cham-
pions Besiktas. Aron is rumoured to
have various demands in his contract,
including the rights to a large portion
of the spoils of war after storming
enemy cities. Time will tell where he
ends up, but people living in the lesser
cities of Turkey should be afraid. JR
Birkir cursed?
Birkir Bjarnason missed out on Aston
Villa’s game against Leeds last weekend
after suffering a suspicious spontane-
ous injury. “His back stiffened up and
he felt a twinge as he left the dressing
room,” reports the AVFC website. “It was
a funny one really, he hadn't actually
done anything to provoke it. He's a tough
character so it must have been bad for
him to pull out just before kick-off.” We
at Grapevine suggest hiring a witch to
scan the global psychic network for signs
of foul Argentinian magick warfare. JR
More than an
experiment
Infinite praise has
been heaped on the
role of infrastruc-
t u r a l i n v e s t m e n t
in Iceland’s current
international success,
but the team’s tech-
nical director Arnar
B i l l G u n n a r s s o n
insists that there’s
s om e t h i n g m y s t i -
cal about the current
horde of young foot-
balling warlords. "Many people have
talked about our coaching system and
our facilities being a big reason why
we can compete, but we have a golden
generation who started playing football
before those facilities came," Arnar told
football website Goal.com. "The system
of play fits them really well, their atti-
tude is fantastic, and everything’s
clicking together.” Stick that in your
pipe, self-gratifying politicians. GR
Battle of the hashtags
It’s no secret that with Team USA fail-
ing to qualify for the 2018 World Cup,
the 326,000,000 citizens of the United
States—at least, those who are enlight-
ened to the beautiful game—are looking
for another team to get behind. Iceland’s
population is around 0.1% of the US, so
there are various online efforts going to
bring a little extra support to Iceland’s
siege of the tournament. Einstök have
launched the #AdoptIceland initiative,
and a formal #TeamIceland hashtag is
also in use. Alongside #IcelandSmites
and—of course—#SmiteTheWorld,
that should still leave you a few char-
acters to tweet your victory yawp when
we crush the world’s finest beneath
our mighty heel this summer. JR
Russian gangs issue
threats
Russia’s famously violent football
hooligan “ultras” are in training to
face off against opposition supporters
on the 2018 World Cup. Online videos
surfaced recently online of all-women
gangs with names like Siege Girls
staging mass brawls in snowy forests.
Martial arts expert Viktoria, who runs
the Slavyanki Gang, said to the Sunday
Express newspaper: “This world can’t be
without traumas and everyone knows
there will be injuries.” The threats are
mostly levelled at England supporters
due to recent political tensions, but
anyone travelling to the World Cup
should stay alert, and stay safe. GR
Words:
John Rogers &
Greig Robertson
Illustration:
Lóa Hlín
Hjálmtýsdóttir
SPORT
10 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 06 — 2018
“We suggest
hiring a witch
to scan the
global psychic
network for
signs of Argen-
tinian magick
warfare.”
Follow our football
commentary on
Twitter:
@rvkgrapevine
Birkir
“Freyfaxi”
Bjarnason
Age: 29
Hometown: Akureyri
Club: Aston Villa
Position: Central Midfielder
Special Skills: Brutal big-game goals,
hair softer than the England team’s
backbone,wild gallops, gnashing hooves,
being perfect
Nicknames: Freyfaxi, The Besmircher of
Backlines, The Akureyri Antagonist, Equus,
Horror Hooves“

Much like Freyfaxi—the galloping stallion of
Hrafnkels Saga—Birkir Bjarnason is a glori-
ous creature to be admired—but not insult-
ed by the touch of mere mortals. Indeed,
it is rumoured that Bjarki is so genetically
perfect that his face and hair are insured
for a whopping 3 trillion ISK, with his team-
mates forbidden from coming closer than
five metres to his awe-inspiring beauty dur-
ing training sessions. Should so much as a
lock of his golden hair be set out of place,
Icelandic parliament reserves the right to
punish the offender by death on grounds
of sacrilege.
Of course, Bjarki is much more than just
a visual gem and has consistently shown
gratitude for his colleagues’ restraint on
the training pitch. Whether deployed in a
combative defensive midfield role or given
license to scythe through the opposition
as a wing’d attacker, “The Besmircher of
Back-Lines” adds invaluable élan to any side
lucky enough to have him on their books. His
record at club level demonstrates as much:
he has scored 56 goals and assisted in a fur-
ther 23 in 329 games for Viking, FK Bodø/
Glimt, Standard Liège, Pescara, Sampdoria,
FC Basel and Aston Villa.
However, Bjarki’s mane flows freest in
an Iceland stip, as evidenced in Euro 2016,
where he raised his game higher than the
Hammer of Thor to smite the Portuguese,
then to secure a glorious 2-1 scoreline
(reflective only of the 45 minutes, sadly)
against the French. In fact, the perfor-
mances of “The Akureyri Antagonist” were
so dazzling that he transcended the very
sport of football and was offered a model-
ling contract with ASOS via Twitter. With all
due respect, after winning the World Cup in
Russia, Bjarki can expect the advances of
more sophisticated brands, and a signature
range with 66°North is rumoured to be in the
pipeline. GR
MEET THE SMITERS
We Will Smite
Them On The
Beaches
In two months, football’s
Ice Age begins

Russian gangs are preparing forn the arrival of the world
April 20, 1602, was a momentous day in
Iceland. It was on this day that the King-
dom of Denmark first imposed a trade
monopoly on Iceland. This didn’t just
mean that Iceland could only trade with
Denmark; it also meant that only a few
major players in Denmark were permit-
ted to reap the wealth from Iceland.
The trade monopoly is a great
example of how planned economies
are not always socialist in nature.
For 184 years, Danish merchants
controlled 20 to 25 designated “trad-
ing posts” in Iceland, dividing them
amongst themselves and charging
a fixed rent. The King of Denmark
himself set a fixed rate of prices, too.
What did this mean for Icelanders? Not
a lot of good, as you might imagine.
Almost all of the wealth generated
in Iceland was funnelled to Copen-
hagen, Malmö (now in Sweden) and
Helsingør for the first few years; after
1620, it all went to Copenhagen. For a
long time, Denmark sent a single ship-
ment of goods to Iceland each year, a
great deal of these goods of substand-
ard quality, with food often spoiled
or already rotting. In short, Denmark
got fat and sassy while Iceland strug-
gled to hang on as a vassal state.
Skúli Magnússon, the national sher-
iff and at one time the most power-
ful man in the country, helped put
an end to this nonsense. For most
of the trade monopoly’s existence,
Danish merchants sat at home count-
ing their money. Skúli passed a decree
that merchants needed to
permanently live in Iceland
in order to engage in their
craft. At the same time, he
allowed them to invest in
other forms of employment
besides the merchant trade,
as royal decree had previ-
ously forbidden. This led to
a revenue stream coming
back into Iceland, which
helped it develop rapidly.
Both the end of the
American Revolutionary
War and the disastrous
eruption of Skaftáreldar in
the same year, 1783, precipi-
tated an economic freefall
in Iceland, and the situation
quickly deteriorated. This
made the trade monop-
oly very unfeasible for
Denmark and, on New Year’s
Eve of 1787, the monopoly
was brought to an end. Skúli Magnússon, a man who took
no shit from the Danes
Words:
Paul Fontaine
Photo:
GV
THIS DAY IN ICELANDIC HISTORY
Danish Trade
Monopoly Begins
Iceland was once a colony, and the Danes
made sure we undestood this