Reykjavík Grapevine - Nov 2021, Page 4

What Are Icelanders
Talkin! About?
All the headlines that nobody reads
further than
Words: Andie Sophia Fontaine Photos: Art Bicnick
Boy, do we have a surprise
for you: the big story this
past month has been the coro-
navirus pandemic. A big shock,
we know. It’s been quite the roll-
ercoaster since October 19th,
when Minister of Health Svandís
Svavarsdóttir announced that all
mask requirements were being
lifted, the social gathering limit
was being raised to 2,000 people,
and that all domestic restrictions
would be lifted in four weeks’ time.
The coronavirus apparently took
this personally, as daily domestic
cases began to rise rapidly. We got
put back in the “red zone” on the
EDC’s map of Europe, hospitals
began to swell, and we reached
daily infection rates we hadn’t
seen since August. Chief epide-
miologist "órólfur Gu#nason
expressed concerns that we may
need to re-think this whole “no
domestic restrictions” thing, and
even Svandís is starting to have her
doubts. Stay tuned—there may be
changes on the horizon.
October ended with a fin whale
beaching itself in South Iceland.
Whales beach themselves all the
time in Iceland—in fact, 83 whales
of different species have beached
themselves on our shores so far
this year—but this was a special
case. First of all, because fin whales
are enormous. Second, because it
happened to wash up just a stone’s
throw from a golf course near
Ölfus, making it trivially easy for
people to visit the carcass. Free
parking included! The dead whale
proved so popular an attraction
that the municipality of Ölfus
issued a statement October 29th
encouraging people to go see the
whale before its planned burial in
the first week of November. And
check it out they did, as the Grape-
vine discovered when we paid
a visit ourselves, as at least two
dozen people had brought their
children to witness the unfortu-
nate creature.
Remember the elections? Well, we
still don’t have a new govern-
ment. “But hang on, that was
five whole weeks ago,” you say?
Indeed it was, but keep two things
in mind: it takes a while for three
different parties to hammer out
a joint platform, even if they’ve
spent the past four years working
together, and also, the Northwest
District’s handling of the ballot
count is still being investigated
by parliamentary committee and
wow, do the hits keep coming in
that case. Many of the ballots were
left unsealed after the count, left
unattended in open boxes, count-
ing may have begun before the
polls were even closed, and in
some cases, perfectly valid ballots
were discovered in bins reserved
for blank ballots. As this could
mean a second recount, or even
new elections, the new govern-
ment is currently on hold.
4The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 11— 2021First
NEWS
Sad, but a natural part of Icelandic life
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