Iceland review - 2014, Page 43

ICELAND REVIEW 41
noting Nazi ideas that Iceland is the cradle of Germanic culture,
that “if they want a community like that of the sagas they are wel-
come to it. I love the sagas, but what a rotten society they describe,
a society with only the gangster virtues.” Elsewhere he mentions
that Icelandic literature is all about revenge.
That’s all very well, I can hear you say, but what does that have
to do with economic statistics, and anyway, wasn’t all that rather a
long time ago? You could be forgiven for thinking that we’ve come
a long way since 1936, and in many ways we have.
One would hope that Auden’s reply to Christopher Isherwood
when asked about “life on small islands” would now be updated
from the one he gave in 1936: “If you have no particular intellectual
interests or ambitions and are content with the company of your
family and friends, then life on Iceland must be very pleasant.” The
roads are certainly better these days. A fold-out map in the book
shows no roads in the West Fjords and no drivable roads all the
way from Skaftá to Eskifjörður. But when Auden writes that “it is
extremely difficult for individual Icelanders to get English currency”
and when he warns readers to exchange as little English money into
króna as one can get away with “so that you are not landed at the
end of your visit with a lot of Icelandic currency which is difficult
to dispose of,” the statements ring depressingly true 77 years later.
And now we are onto the subject of literature and economic statis-
tics. For Auden and MacNeice helpfully include not only a chapter
advising travelers what to wear, what to see, and who to see in order
to make a trip to Iceland a success. They also tell their readers that
the official exchange rate in Iceland in the summer of 1936 was ISK
22.15 to the pound. In the summer of 2013 the price had increased
to ISK 195.
Yes, you say, we knew that Iceland has suffered chronic high infla-
lækjartorg square, the heart of Reykjavík, as it looked when w.h. auden visited iceland. in the background, there is the harbor where he first set foot in iceland.
photo By ÓlAfuR MAGnúSSon couRteSy of the nAtIonAl MuSeuM of IcelAnd.