Saga - 2007, Qupperneq 44

Abstract
g u ð n i t h . j ó h a n n e s s o n
B E T T E R A G O O D M A N ’ S M I S T R E S S
T H A N M A R R I E D B A D L Y
Air defence and civil defence in Iceland, 1951–1973
This article discusses the Icelandic fears of aerial bombardment and nuclear
attacks during the first decades of the Cold War, which led to the authorities
government enacting certain protective measures and wishing to do a great deal
more. However, extensive defence against aerial attacks would have been very
costly, not to mention preparations for nuclear offences and radioactive fallout.
In fact, was defence against the threat of annihilation even a possibility?
Preparation and measures against aerial and nuclear attacks were liable to have
doubtful consequences; therefore, they evoked harsh criticism, as traced in the
article.
An organised air defence appeared in Iceland during the Second World War,
but was discontinued at war’s end. Increased tension between the superpowers
led to the passing of new laws on air defence and the reviving of Reykavik‘s air
defence committee in 1951. Over the next five years, this committee prepared a
defence against aerial attacks on the city, but only to the degree that funding
allowed and in nearly every respect on the assumption that such attacks would
be similar to those during the war. A turning point was marked by the leftist
government of Hermann Jónasson coming to power in 1956. The government
then stopped funding air defence, based on the argument, voiced most loudly by
the Socialists, that such measures were pointless in the atomic era.
The issue was re-addressed when the Independence Party and Social
Democratic Party formed a government, under the leadership of Ólafur Thors.
Thus Iceland’s Civil Protection Department was established by law in 1962, with
plans to strengthen protection against nuclear threats considerably, among other
things by publishing instructional pamphlets. Nothing came of this, because the
government feared that such educational efforts would undermine the support
of Icelanders for Western cooperation on defence. For its first years, the
Department thus remained little more than a name and enjoyed scant public
support. In 1967, the act on civil protection was amended so as also to cover
natural catastrophes. This change of policy may be said to have saved civil
defence in Iceland, and natural disasters in the early 1970s thoroughly
demonstrated the need for organised protection against such hazards. As before,
defence against nuclear attack received next to no attention in Iceland, where
such defence measures never became substantial.
guðni th. jóhannesson44
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