Iceland review - 2019, Page 46

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Iceland Review
In light of recent global mass migration trends, it was
inevitable that a politically stable and prosperous
state such as Iceland, despite its remote location,
would become a desirable destination for at least some
refugees and economic migrants. Currently over 10%
of the Icelandic population is of foreign origin, from all
over Europe and the globe.
In some important respects, migration to Iceland is
particularly challenging given the long, dark winters,
the strange cuisine and the onerous challenge of
acquiring the highly-inflected, difficult-to-pronounce
language. If that weren’t enough, obstacles created by
the high-context culture are especially daunting to the
uninitiated, where every first conversation between
Icelanders is dominated by how and to what degree
they may be related to each other. In addition to the
difficulties migrants and refugees might have to adapt
to in order to live on this subarctic island, Iceland’s
history of refugee reception is checkered. Yet many of
the island’s original settlers themselves were seeking
a better life themselves.
A nation of refugees
While most Icelanders can trace their roots to 9th-
and 10th-century migrants from Western Norway
and the British Isles, perhaps somewhat fewer realise
that these early settlers to Iceland were often fleeing
the political tyranny of their native lands. In Norway,
successive kings sought to unify the country under
absolute rule at the expense of the local gentry and
nobility. Beginning with King Haraldr Finehair (AD
885-930) who levied onerous land taxes on free farm-
ers and claimed ownership of family-owned hereditary
land, there was a strong incentive among subjects to
get out from under the royal thumb. Iceland was one of
the last significant habitable areas of the globe to be
settled and was right next door, so to speak.
Early settlers were drawn to Iceland for a variety
of reasons: some to generate income as craftsmen,
hunters, or merchants, or to farm the virgin land;
while others arrived for political, economic, and
even ideological reasons. Egill Skallagrímsson, the
Icelandic-born 10th-century warrior poet whose story
is told in the 13th-century classic Egil’s Saga, was just
one wilful subject of the Norwegian king who declared
“Út vil ek” (I want to get out of here) as he managed to
escape house arrest, a likely death sentence, and sail
to Iceland for refuge. By the year 930, chieftains of the
few thousand settlers from Norway had proclaimed
themselves independent, no longer considering
themselves subject to Norwegian authority. Iceland,
now free of the King’s hegemony, had officially become
a country; notably the first to embrace parliamentary
rule rather than ecclesiastic or royal authority. The
highest office in Iceland during the Medieval Period
was that of the Law Speaker, a position the famous
poet and chieftain Snorri Sturluson held in the 13th
century. Interestingly, there is compelling evidence
that Snorri himself wrote Egil’s Saga, the hero of which
he claimed as a direct ancestor.
Blue blood
Centuries later, in 1802, Iceland would again become
a refuge, this time for a young black man fleeing
bondage. Legally declared a slave in the Danish courts,
despite his literacy and heroic service in the Danish
Navy during the British siege of Copenhagen, Hans
Jonatan narrowly managed to avoid being sent back
to his native Saint Croix in the Danish-controlled
Caribbean as a slave. He did this by eluding his captors
and stowing away aboard a merchant ship. The ship
arrived shortly thereafter in the tiny East Iceland port
of Djúpivogur, where Hans managed to find employ-
ment as a merchant and eventually bought a farm,
married a local, and lived out the rest of his life with
his family. Intriguingly, Hans Jonatan was the first
known person of African descent to live in Iceland,
and his dark skin was described by locals not as black
or brown, but blue!
Today, there are well
over a hundred liv-
ing Icelanders who
proudly count them-
selves as the fugitive
slave’s descendants.
While Hans
Jonatan received a respectful welcome, Icelanders
were not always as willing to reach out a hand to
people in need. Although Iceland had achieved home
rule from Denmark in 1918, the government tended to
closely follow Denmark’s lead in legal matters. When
the Danish government approved a shameful new law
in May 1938 that would forcibly return Jewish refugees
from Germany and Austria, Iceland followed suit and
enacted the same law just weeks later, even offering
to pay for the refugees’ repatriation to Nazi Germany.
Although Jews were virtually unknown to Icelanders,
the prevailing antisemitism that was prominent in
the newspapers of the time and the eagerness to
appease the powerful and belligerent Nazis meant
that refugees from Germany would not be allowed
to disembark upon reaching Iceland. As awful as
that is, Iceland’s refusal to help Jewish refugees was
hardly unique; similar policies prevented far too
many desperate Jews and other refugees from finding
sanctuary in western democracies, including Cuba,
Canada, and the United States of America.
A formal process
In the dreadful aftermath of World War II, there was
a general recognition that much of would-be refu-
gees’ suffering leading up to the war could have been
PREVIOUSLY THE ICELANDIC STATE SOUGHT
TO ICELANDIFY FOREIGNERS WHO CHOSE TO
REMAIN AND PURSUE CITIZENSHIP THROUGH
ASSIMILATION, EVEN TO THE EXTENT OF LEGALLY
COMPELLING SO-CALLED (AT THE TIME) “NEW
ICELANDERS” TO TAKE ICELANDIC NAMES.