Iceland review - 2013, Síða 53

ICELAND REVIEW 51
in America, having given birth to a son,
Snorri, in the New World. While there is
little doubt that Guðríður existed, histo-
rians point out that she did not sail west-
wards on a religious mission. Furthermore,
they have challenged the accounts in the
Sagas about a pilgrimage to Rome and an
audience with the Pope. But people in the
tourism industry and various statespersons
have not been that willing to share the
skepticism. Why spoil a good story?
THE VIKING SPIRIT
More portentously, in the immediate years
of pride before the fall of 2008, the nau-
tical feats of some thousand years ago
were linked to the alleged superiority of
Icelandic entrepreneurs on the internation-
al scene. Labeled as ‘Venture Vikings,’ many
of the business moguls ascribed their appar-
ent success to the ‘Viking Spirit’ of daring
and adventure. The body of statespersons
and politicians seemed to agree. Already
in 2000, the year of celebrating the west-
ward voyages, President of Iceland Ólafur
Ragnar Grímsson argued that “the spirit of
exploration and discovery” had been kept
alive in the minds of the Icelanders and
therefore they now excelled on so many
fronts.
This became a recurrent theme, but
the collapse of 2008 made of mockery of
the Icelandic ‘Venture Viking.’ Icelandic
businessmen (it was a male-dominated
profession) had not been imbued with the
positive features of daring voyagers but
rather made their fortune from borrowed
money and shady dealings. With this in
mind, the Viking connection only seemed
appropriate (and not so fortunate) because
the original Vikings had pillaged and plun-
dered overseas. Accordingly, one historian
recently wondered whether they should
not be described as the despicable ‘terror-
ists’ of their time.
contemporary parlance. Also, there were
other underlying motives at the time. For
instance, the Book of Settlements was partly
written to refute accusations from abroad
that the people of Iceland descended from
‘slaves and thugs.’
Thus, a positive, prejudiced version of the
past was created. History was used, or abused.
Then again, we need not look to distant days
for such behavior. During the years before
the spectacular collapse of the Icelandic
banking system in 2008, when state bank-
ruptcy was narrowly avoided, Iceland’s his-
tory and heritage were routinely skewed,
glorified and, yes, abused. Old myths or mis-
conceptions swelled, just like the super-sized
banks, the artificial stock market and the real
estate bubble. Nothing was safe from hype.
THE dIScoVERy oF AMERIcA
Today, nobody can dispute the fact that
Norse people reached the shores of what
we now call North America around the year
1000 AD. Archeological findings at L’Anse
aux Meadows in Newfoundland confirm
accounts in the Icelandic Saga of Greenlanders
and Saga of Eiríkur the Red. In 2000, the
Norse discovery of the new lands one thou-
sand years before was justly celebrated in
style, both in North America and Iceland.
A grand exhibition was put in place at the
Smithsonian, and a team of Icelanders sailed
on a replica of a Viking vessel from Iceland
to New York.
The ventures of Leifur ‘the Lucky’
Eiríksson and other Norsemen were a true
feat of navigation, individual resilience, and
courage. Even so, the overall importance of
these travels may be contested. Oscar Wilde
famously remarked that the ‘Vikings’ discov-
ered America but were wise enough to keep
quiet about it. Take for instance the noble
woman Guðríður Þorbjarnardóttir. She has
been hailed as a Christian missionary as well
as the first European and ‘white’ mother
hIsTORY