65° - 01.11.1969, Qupperneq 8

Iceland Periscope
by
JON H. MAGNUSSON
Our president, Dr. Kristjan Eldjam used his
summer holidays for archeological excavations
on the small island of Papey, which is off the east
coast of Iceland. Dr. Eldjam was the director of
the Icelandic National Museum, before he was
elected president last year.
*
The newspaper Timinn reports in August
that Iceland exported in 1968 34,541 tons of
frozen fish to the U.S.A. with total value of Icel.
kr. 1172,5 millions. That is 67,3% of the total
export value of frozen fish, compared to 45,4%
for 1967, and 1969 will be a record year in this
market.
*
The Icelandic Symphony Orchesra gave 40
concerts for the 1968—1969 season, most of them
in Reykjavik, but also in towns like Vestmanna-
eyjar, Akranes, Keflavik, etc. The main conduc-
tors were Alfred Walter and Sverre Bruland.
The total number of musicians in the orchestra
for the season were 83, and they played music
by 45 foreign composers and 9 Icelandic com-
posers.
*
The Foreign Minister from Luxembourg,
Pierre Werner came on an official visit to Ice-
land on August 28th. This is the first visit of this
kind from Luxembourg.
*
The Australian Embassy in Sweden issued a state-
ment in August saying that 350 Icelanders lived
“down under” in Australia. Most of them, or
225, moved during the period of January 1967 to
June 1969.
*
The American Astronaut, William A. Anders,
came for a visit to Iceland late August and
among other things gave a talk on the American
Space Program. Mr. Anders served in the United
States Armed Forces at the NATO Base in Kefla-
vik from 1957—1958. He managed to go salmon
fishing, one of his favorite sports, during his stay.
*
The annual fall conference of the Nordic
Foreign Ministers was held here in Reykjavik in
early September. On the agenda were the common
problems and international affairs. There also
was an annual conference for the Nordic Mini-
sters of Justice. This is the 2nd time such a con-
ference has been held in Reykjavik — the first
one was in 1962.
*
We celebrated our 50th anniversary of avia-
tion in Iceland with a huge air show at the
Reykjavik Airport, showing mostly the develop-
ments of air transportation in Iceland plus ex-
hibiting other items such as the American Space-
craft “Freedom 7”.
*
This fall, elementary and high schools regis-
tered 42,100 students among which 17.800 at-
tended schools in Reykjavik.
*
The knitting factory HEKLA at Akureyri made
a deal to export 150,000 Icelandic woolen
sweaters to the Soviet Union by November, the
largest shipment of this type to Russia so far.
*
Continued on page 28.
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