Saga - 2014, Page 59

sem þeir leita að,“ var eitt sinn sagt.90 „[S]á sem trúir á draug finnur
draug,“ kvað nóbelsskáldið sömuleiðis.91
Abstract
guðn i th . j óhannes son
ACCeSSING AND evALUATING BRITISH AND US DoCUMeNTS
oN ICeLAND’S BANkING CoLLAPSe
The financial collapse of autumn 2008 has arguably been the most telling watershed
in Icelandic politics, economy and social history since World War II. A great deal of
scholarly literature on the collapse has accumulated since then, including input
from historians. For them in particular, the parallel issues of closeness in time and
restricted access to sources call for concern. This article discusses the challenge to
contemporary studies in light of the relatively scarce British and US sources which
have become available on the events surrounding 2008. After briefly describing US
and British rules on document access in government archives, the article focuses on
the classified cables from the US embassy in Reykjavík which were made available
in 2010 through the efforts of WikiLeaks. Although these documents do not include
top-secret cables, State Department memoranda or various other significant sources,
they do shed light on some aspects of the financial catastrophe. Primarily, they indi-
cate a degree of discoordination and inaction within the Icelandic administration,
thereby weakening the contention that US authorities were giving Icelanders a cold
shoulder when support was most critical — a view occasionally expressed by some
Icelandic players in the drama. As for British documents, requests for access which
are based on Britain’s Freedom of Information Act provide a mere glimpse into the
archives. Assumptions must therefore remain cautious and conditional. Still, the
redacted documents viewed so far confirm that after their initial rage, British
authorities were convinced that they had secured a reliable obligation by the
Icelandic government to cover all British-based deposits in the collapsed bank
Landsbanki Íslands. In conclusion, today’s situation regarding both British and US
documents leaves us first and foremost unable to write a full history of the collapse
using foreign archival sources, as the scanty documentation at hand poses more
questions than answers.
vitnisburður, aðgangur og mat heimilda 57
90 Thomas W. Smith, History and International Relations (London: Routledge 1999),
bls. 181. Sjá einnig Mark Hewitson, History and Causality (Basing stoke:
Palgrave Macmillan 2014), bls. 113; Paul A. Roth, „The Dis appearance of the
empirical: Some Reflections on Contemporary Culture Theory and His -
toriography“, Journal of the Philosophy of History, 1:3 (2007), bls. 271−292.
91 Halldór kiljan Laxness, Sjálfstætt fólk (Reykjavík: vaka-Helgafell, 10. útg. 2007),
bls. 464.
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