Reykjavík Grapevine - 18.05.2018, Qupperneq 13

13 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 08 — 2018
in 2010.
For many of our readers, this is when
they first became aware of city politics
in Iceland. The Best Party ran on a plat-
form that was deliberately a parody of
the vacuous and absurd nature of poli-
tics. During one radio debate with then
Mayor Hanna Birna Kristjánsdóttir, Jón
Gnarr said that one of his first acts as
mayor would be to change the species
of tree being planted downtown. A fun-
filled political party led by a beloved
celebrity and his celebrity friends was
bound to be a success, and that it was:
they won an almost clean majority in
City Hall, and partnered up with the
Social Democrats.
This term was pretty much OK. The
biggest highlight was Jón Gnarr encour-
aging City Hall to finally approve a plot
of land for Iceland’s Muslims to build a
mosque—something they were consti-
tutionally more than permitted to do,
but up until that point, no party on the
right or the left ever dared to support.

4. The Notorious B.D.S. Dagur is
normally thought of as an innocu-
ous, charming mayor who is neither
a magnet for scandal nor great accla-
mation. All that changed in 2015, when
outgoing Reykjavík City Councilper-
son for the Social Democrats, Björk
Vilhelmsdóttir, submitted a proposal
to City Council that would prohibit
the city from buying products made in
Israel. The City Council majority passed
the measure, and almost immediately,
Iceland was assailed with an interna-
tional backlash. Under a torrent of bile
from Jewish groups the world over,
Dagur would eventually walk back the
measure, amending it to only include
Israeli companies operating in occupied
Palestinian territory, but eventually, he
put the measure out of its misery.
5. The Familiar Binary Returns.
This year, the Social Democrats and the
Independence Party—led by Dagur and
Eyþór Arnalds, respectively—are once
again the main competitors in what has
effectively become a horse race. These
two parties continue to exchange first
and second place positions in the polls,
even as an additional 14 (!!!) parties
have also thrown their hat into the ring.
Whether Reykjavík will veer to the right
or the left still remains to be seen, but at
least the race is anything but boring.
“These two
parties continue
to exchange first
and second place
positions in the
polls, even as an
additional 14 (!!!)
parties have also
thrown their hat
into the ring.”
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Former mayor Jón Gnarr, at Reykjavík’s zenith