Reykjavík Grapevine - 24.05.2019, Qupperneq 4

What Are Icelanders
Talking About?
The everlasting fire of Icelandic
social media
Words: Andie Fontaine
A s y o u m i g h t h a v e
guessed, of greatest prev-
alence on social media over the
past two weeks has been Hatari
at Eurovision. For those of you
following along at home, if you
think the international response
has been contentious, boy do we
have news for you about the Icelan-
dic discussion. In the run-up to the
performance, there was fervent
“will they or won’t they make some
grand gesture” talk, with some
threatening to "cancel" the band if
they didn’t pull some kind of stunt,
and others helpfully suggesting to
the band what stunt they ought
to pull. Once the band displayed
scarves with the Palestinian colours
as the Eurovision public votes were
being announced, the conversa-
tion then turned to either praise
for Hatari or “they should have
boycotted” criticisms. Either way,
no one’s reactions were lukewarm.
And now on to something less
controversial: abortion. Iceland’s
Parliament recently passed into
law a landmark piece of legislation
which allows for the termination
of a pregnancy up until the end
of the 22nd week, for any reason.
This has received surprisingly
little attention abroad, consider-
ing the sheer volume of fake news
reporting that has been done about
Iceland and abortion in the past,
but it proved to be a heated topic
in Iceland. While most Icelanders
were jubilant about the change to
the country’s abortion laws, which
had not been updated since 1975,
there was a small but very vocal
anti-choice contigent (see page
12), as well as some criticism from
the disabled community. Since the
bill originated with the Minister
of Health, any objections had little
chance of having an effect.
The Centre Party has been
receiving considerable buzz lately,
in particular for their concerted
misinformation campaign about
the Third Energy Package (TEP).
This European Union regulation is
actually a pretty boring law on the
sale and distribution of electricity
and gas in the European Economic
Area, of which Iceland is a part, but
the truth shall never stand in the
way of the Centre Party’s demon-
strated goal of grandstanding and
fearmongering. They have repeat-
edly, and falsely, contended that the
TEP will spell the end of Iceland’s
energy sovereignty, engaging in
protracted filibustering into early
morning hours, further delaying
attempts for Iceland to officially
adopt the TEP. Reform Party chair
Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir
described these tactics as “Bannon-
ism,” referring to former Trump
advisor Steve Bannon, which she
described as “repeating misinfor-
mation long enough to generate the
foundations of fear in the general
public.” You’d think that’d be a bad
thing for the Centre Party, but polls
show their support is slowly climb-
ing. Who knows what stunt they’ll
pull next? Wait and find out!
4The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 08— 2019First
The moment the Eurovision audience gasped
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