Reykjavík Grapevine - 07.12.2018, Page 16

16 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 21— 2018
2018 feels like it has lasted about five
years, mostly due to the never-ending
news cycle of madness coming out of the
United States. But Iceland also had its
share of news stories that either bright-
ened or dimmed the general mood of
the year.
The following are our personal
favourite, and least favourite, Icelandic
news stories of 2018, in no particular
order.
Favourites:
1. Volcano news. Öræfajökull and
Katla made headlines this year, both in
Iceland and around the world. These
stories are great fun to report, if for no
other reason than the fact that volcanic
eruptions are notoriously difficult to
predict, prompting other media outlets
(looking at you, DailyMail) to make wild
and inaccurate speculations that we are
more than happy to correct. Plus volca-
noes are iconic to Iceland, so people
always love reading about them, too.
2. The World Cup. It’s not often
that Iceland gets a chance to compete
on a global stage, but football is the
great equaliser: no matter what coun-
try you’re from, if your national team
has the talent, they can go all the way.
Iceland’s odds-defying performance in
the World Cup captivated football fans
around the world, to the point where
even supporters of national teams
that Iceland defeated offered heartfelt
congratulations, elevating the generos-
ity and sportsmanship of the game.
3. Municipal elections. This was a
great year for municipal elections for
one reason in particular: rural Iceland.
Sure, 16 parties were in the running for
Reykjavík City Hall, but it was the elec-
tions in such tiny and far-flung villages
as Árneshreppur that saw the real drama.
In fact, the elections there—mostly
centred around the proposed building
of several hydroelectric dams—proved
to be a national flashpoint, and inspired
one of our most popular feature stories.
4. The official exoneration of the
suspects in the Guðmundur and
Geirfinnur case. When the Supreme
Court of Iceland dropped all charges
against the five men accused in 1974 of
murder in one of Iceland’s most notori-
ous missing persons cases, there was
a bittersweet feeling of relief. Sweet,
because the court confirmed what many
suspected to be true all along—that their
confessions had been extracted under
duress, and there was literally no real
evidence to convict any of them. Bitter,
because so much time had passed, and
one suspect, Sævar Marinó Ciesielski,
died utterly ruined before his name was
cleared.
Least Favourites:
1. Anything to do with Hafþór Júlíus
“The Mountain” Björnsson. It’s really
hard to be excited about “man lifts the
heavy thing and puts it back down again”
as a news story, no matter who it’s about,
but there was a time when being an
Icelandic strongman at least meant you
were a role model for children (see: Jón
Páll Sigmarsson). Not so much the case
when it comes to Hafþór, who has gotten
himself involved in numerous domestic
violence accusations.
2. The weather. We know for a fact
that you love weather news. Even stories
as mundane as “it will storm tomor-
row” shoot up to the top of our ranks.
But consider for a moment having to
live under these weather conditions. We
didn’t even get a summer this year on
account of the low temperatures and
persistent cloud cover. We’ve been hit
by more storms than usual, necessitat-
ing having to rescue more tourists who
ignore weather warnings, which costs
us all dearly.
3. War games. Iceland is a NATO
country, but has no military of its own,
so in order to meet our obligations,
we let other NATO countries patrol
our airspace. This year, though, NATO
kicked things up a notch by bringing
hundreds of soldiers and ten warships
to our shores to conduct drills here as a
part of the Trident Juncture 18 exercises.
Ironically, the party which leads Iceland’s
government—the Left-Greens—has
included in their platform the aim of
withdrawing Iceland from NATO alto-
gether, but no dice. And these soldiers
drank all of Reykjavík’s beer, too. If that
isn’t an insult to Icelandic sovereignty,
we don’t know what is.
4. Foreign worker exploitation. This
country would grind to a halt without its
foreign workers, who more often than
not do the kinds of jobs that locals don’t
want to do but which are crucial to the
economy. They comprise 20% of the total
workforce despite making up just 13%
of the population. So when the inves-
tigative news show Kveikur reported
endemic exploitation of these workers,
it was doubly sad. First of all, because
foreign workers are entitled to the
same rights as any other workers in the
country, and second of all, because the
Grapevine and others have been report-
ing on this situation for years, but people
still reacted with shock and surprise at
Kveikur’s reporting, as if it was the first
they’d ever heard about the problem.
Our Most And Least
Favourite News
Stories Of 2018
The stories we love, and love to hate
Words:
Andie Fontaine
Photo:
Art Bicnick
and YouTube
From The World Cup to war games... greatest hits and biggest shits
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