How Iceland Changed the World by Egill Bjarnason
Iceland is a small country in the North Atlantic that has 376,408 residents living in 63 towns, most of which are tiny. Ring Road, 821 miles long, circumnavigates the land and connects most of the people who call Iceland home. Fishing is a major industry, and the author spent a lot of his youth working on ships that brought the bounty of the sea to the world.
The opening chapter teases the reader by revealing that Iceland was central to the French Revolution, winning World War II, the 1969 American moon landing, and warming up the Cold War with a chess match between the USA and the USSR in 1973. A woman, Gudrid Thorbjarnardotti, accompanied Eric the Red and other Icelandic explorers, as they explored the region, reaching North America 500 years before Columbus, thus paving the way for female empowerment.
The country is relatively young; its roots go back 1200 years to Norse settlements, but it only became a country in December, 1918. Iceland is the size of Ohio and was the last major country settled in the Northern Hemisphere.
Norsemen discovered Greenland but it’s not clear who discovered Iceland. The author observes that sailors from Norway discovered Greenland, but Iceland was an afterthought. Genealogical studies have revealed that Icelanders have Irish roots which means that sailors from Ireland also ventured to Iceland.
Scandinavian sailors ventured east and plied the waters of Greenland and Iceland. They claimed the good farmland of Iceland and established families. Erik the Red came from Norway and did a lot of exploration. He was a jerk who killed neighbors with whom he had land disagreements. His aggressive behavior led to his exile. He went back to sea and perhaps discovered Greenland. The name implied nice weather - not the case - and many people flocked to the land.
Erik’s son, Leif, was a sailor who landed in North America, probably in what we know of today as Newfoundland. He was not impressed and quickly left.
Making a living became more difficult as the walrus population declined. That may have been related to climate change. Anyway, a lot of traveling Norse sailors ended up in Iceland. It wasn’t as inhospitable as Greenland and it was in the neighborhood.
For most of its existence tracing back to around 1200, Iceland had no central government. Local councils sort of directed things rather than running the government. There were very few people and they lived very far apart, so this arrangement worked. There was an annual summer festival where local representatives – godi - met and discussed any issues that might be important. Consensus was the watchword here. The Icelandic church eventually developed a simple taxation system that helped organize the country’s rudimentary governing structure, with the churches keeping track of the money.
Snorri Sturlson, who was born in the late 12th century, became Iceland’s historian. He chronicled the evolution of the country. By courting the church, he eventually achieved some political success. He gathered wealth as well as power. He continued to write sagas, often about Norse gods.
He moved to Norway to curry favor with the powerful country’s leaders who essentially made him governor of Iceland, which they claimed as their land. There were rumblings and battles in Iceland as various factions fought for control. When he returned home, he was apprehended and executed. That started a civil war which led to the strengthening of the power of the king, who had been a figurehead.
The next few hundred years were uneven, with the Lutheran Church demanding that everyone convert. They were persuasive - often killing people who resisted- and soon the Catholic Church, which had been dominant, lost its power.
Another central figure to the story was Arni Magnusson, a scholar who meticulously documented Icelandic history from his position as a professor at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He transcribed countless documents that were in danger of being lost or damaged.
Eventually the king, one of Arni’s biggest fans, sent him to Iceland, a posting he did not want at first. The professor continued to document Iceland's past. He was tasked with doing a national census, which took thirteen years and was the first census of an entire country. He counted 50,358 people. Three years later, a plague hit and the population dropped to 30,000. He also made the first land register in 1712. It is still in use today.
Arni finally was recalled to Copenhagen. He carefully wrapped his countless documents and brought them to his university. In 1728, a fire destroyed much of the city, including the part of the university where the papers were stored.
The flames raged for three days, aided by an inept fire department that kept blowing up structures to keep them from burning. They often blew up a house that was nowhere near the fire. A third of the city was destroyed, with 20% of its citizens made homeless.
Arni managed to save three or four wagon loads of his books, including many priceless handwritten Icelandic documents. He was made homeless and jobless due to the fire which destroyed much of the university campus. He was a broken man who died a year later, but he gave the precious documents to a local institute where they reside today.
Lava, lava, lava. Iceland's leading export is probably volcanic eruptions. In 2010, a volcano with an unpronounceable name spewed smoke and ash into the air that stranded 5 million European air travelers for up to a week until the atmosphere cleared. In 1765, an eruption that lasted seven months killed livestock and ruined crops for two years. As a result, ten thousand Icelanders -– one-quarter of the population – died as a result of famine.
June of 1783 was a rough month. Smog blotted out the sun for England and parts of Europe. Leaves began falling from trees in mid-summer. The following winter was the coldest in 250 years. The average temperature in the US was 8.6 degrees below the norm. For the first time ever, Baltimore’s harbor was icebound.
All of this happened because a volcano in Iceland went nuts. Eruptions of Mount Hekla in the town of Laki happened. Soon one hundred and thirty craters opened up, spewing lava and deadly sulfurous smoke far and wide. The eruptions lasted off and on for eight months and totally changed the world’s weather. It created 220 square miles of lava, enough to pave Chicago in basalt about three feet deep. Over 20,000 people died in England due to the volcano’s sulfurous fumes and farming was disrupted throughout Europe for many years. Some historians maintain that the ongoing famine in France led to instability that helped trigger the French Revolution in 1789.
Becoming a nation. For much of its history, Iceland was considered a holding of Denmark. Since the Danes were a major commercial partner, Icelanders were OK with that. England wanted to trade with Iceland to get fish, so on a Sunday in 1809 a few British ships landed in Reykjavik, kidnapped the Danish governor, and declared Iceland independent while most people were at church. A Danish sailor, Jorgen Jorgensen, offered to translate the Danish language for the Icelanders and Brits. He gained trust and eventually was running a lot of things in the country. Alas, Jorgensen was not really a sailor. He was a prisoner on parole who was assigned to the Danish ship as a condition of his release. He had heavy gambling debts. Jorgensen talked his way out of more prison time and eventually became a spy for the British and witnessed a lot of the big battles of the early 19th century. He ended up in Australia where he was appointed police chief in a small town and became a local legend. The author refers to him as the first Forrest Gump.
Even though Denmark had sort of been kicked out of Iceland, the two countries stayed close since they depended on each other for trade. Denmark loosened its grip on Iceland and let some nationalistic sentiment grow. A professor named Jon Sigurosson (John Smith in Icelandic) began writing political articles anonymously in Danish newspapers, making the case for a truly independent Iceland. Many Danes agreed with him and in 1845, Denmark restored the Albinji, the Icelandic parliament. It wasn’t full nationhood but close. In 1874, a constitution was adopted and in 1904 the Danes gave the country real home rule. In 1918, Iceland became a sovereign nation.
Lord of the Rings. In 1930, an Icelandic au pair, Arndius Thorbjarnardotti, came to work in the home of J. R. R. Tolkien, then a professor at Oxford. She told tales from Icelandic folklore to the kids at night. The professor was intrigued. He was fascinated with Iceland although he had never been there. He was inspired by Icelandic stories as he wrote the Lord of the Rings books.
World War II. In the 1930’s, Hitler’s Nazis saw Iceland as key to controlling the North Atlantic. They sent people to the country regularly to check things out. In 1939, Eva Braun, Hitler’s mistress, led a crew to film the country for propaganda purposes. The Germans liked Iceland for strategic reasons as well as for the fact that its residents were purebred Aryans.
The Depression caused problems in Iceland that led to the rise of the Communist party and the Nazis. Both movements were fueled by the fact that middle-class people were getting squeezed financially by the collapsing worldwide economy. Hitler sent Dr. Werner Gerlach to organize things. The doctor was an avowed racist whose beliefs cost him his professorship. Icelanders made fun of Hitler and refused to persecute Jews. Gerlach was OK with that. He said, “The Jews will never creep into local businesses. The Icelanders are simply worst swindlers.” Germany occupied Denmark and Norway so Iceland was a natural target. The country had no army or navy and wanted to stay neutral like Sweden. The problem was that Iceland was in a bad place - both Germany and Britain saw it as a key to winning the war.
In May of 1939, four British warships sailed into Reykjavik Harbor in the middle of what was supposed to be the night. However, in May there is no darkness in Iceland – the sun is out all 24 hours. It was a holiday so many people were still up, drinking and partying, as the ships sailed in.
Only two people knew what was going on. The British consul had received a telegram announcing the visit. The German consul noticed that the flags on the ships were the Union Jack so they weren't his nation’s vessels. The diplomat ordered the janitor to burn all sensitive papers. Unfortunately, the custodian had a bad back that day and was very slow getting to work, so the papers were not destroyed. This delighted the Brits.
After the ships landed, an officer came ashore and asked a policeman for permission for his troops to leave the ships. The cop was very accommodating as the soldiers came into the city.
The German consul had frantically contacted his superiors but got no response. That was probably because the Nazis were busy invading Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.
The British troops set up roadblocks to keep Germans from escaping and arrested Dr. Gerlach. They sent him back to Germany where he did despicable things for the war’s duration.
People in the United States were still against getting involved in the war. Franklin Roosevelt could see that the United Kingdom was getting hammered by Hitler, so FDR set up the Lend Lease program which provided military equipment to the UK. He also extended something called the Pan American Security Zone to Iceland from Greenland. This involved a formal request to Britain to defend the country, so the UK sent 25,000 soldiers to secure Iceland. During the war there were 40,000 American troops and nurses in the country, representing about 40% of the population then. Local women and American troops naturally got together, which really irritated local men.
The war helped the local economy. People left rural areas to work in the growing service sector in the towns and cities and made more money than they could by farming. Iceland became a safe place to publish books so that industry took off.
FDR asked Churchill to send 25,000 British troops to Iceland. This request infuriated Hitler and led him to declare war on the United States on December 11, 1941. Had the Nazis not declared war, the US would probably not have entered the war against Germany for a long time. Adolph did FDR and Winston Churchill a big favor by getting America involved in the fight against Germany.
Dwight Eisenhower said that the war was shortened by months and that thousands of lives were saved because Iceland was with the Allies.
Creating Israel
“You are God’s chosen people. We are God’s frozen people.” –Icelandic Prime Minister Oddsson to Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.
In 1941, the Icelandic prime minister appointed his brother, Thor Thors, to be the country’s ambassador to the United States. (There is no word for nepotism in Iceland since most people in the tiny country are related.) Iceland’s first embassy was in the ambassador’s garage since the fledgling nation didn’t have a lot of money for a fine building. Thor later became his country's representative to the newly created United Nations General Assembly.
The Balfour Declaration in 1917 supported the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, which was then held by Great Britain, as was much of the world. Many Jews emigrated to Palestine, much to the consternation of the 1.3 million native Palestinians. The issue bounced around but got new life after WW II when the horrors of the Holocaust were revealed. The UN set up an ad hoc committee to work on the issue.
Members of the committee visited the area and came up with two proposals. One would create two states, Israel and Palestine, sharing a local currency and trade opportunities. The other would carve out a separate land for the Jewish people. The natives rejected both. They did not want any of their land taken.
The UN supported taking a lot of Arab land to create the state of Israel but no one felt good about doing this. The Middle East was a vital source of oil and taking land away from Palestine would not be popular in the region.
The UN was divided on this, with some members for the proposal and many against it. As it turned out, Iceland’s representative, Thor Thors, would be key to the outcome. Abba Eban, the founder of modern Israel, identified Thor as someone that the UN members respected. That was probably because Iceland was a true neutral and it was the newest country to be in the UN. Eban put a full-court press on the plucky Icelander and he was effective in his schmoozing. Thor gave a masterful speech saying that it was now or never to give the Jewish people a home of their own. The UN voted 33 to 13, with many abstentions, to create Israel. The Middle East erupted and went to war, but eventually the protesting countries were defeated and Israel was established.
Thor became a celebrity of sorts. He visited Martha’s Vineyard and Hyannisport in 1948 and hung around with the Kennedy family. His daughter, Margret, dated John F. Kennedy that summer, after which her family returned to Iceland.
The moon landing. Iceland was chosen to be the training site for the Apollo moon landing because it had terrain that could have been on the moon. Volcanoes had created a moonscape of gray basalt rock where astronauts could practice walking and living in a desolate place with no vegetation or animals. They also worked on their geology skills in collecting rock samples in a bulky space suit. The moon landers also got a crash course in understanding what volcanos looked like in case they found them on the lunar landscape. Nine of the twelve people who walked on the moon trained in Iceland. (The country also was where scientists practiced putting the 2020 Mars Rover through its paces on terrain that looked a lot like Mars.)
The US beat the Soviets to the moon. As Neil Armstrong took one small step for mankind on the lunar surface on July 20, 1969, Ingolfur Jonasson, a young sheep farmer, listened live as history was made. Jonasson swelled with pride knowing that the man he helped train on the desolate surface of Iceland was the first man to walk on the moon.
Chess and the Cold War. After WWII ended, American soldiers left Iceland. After a few years, as the tensions between the USSR and the USA ratcheted up, both countries wanted to have a military presence in the strategically located country. Joseph Stalin butchered a lot of people and ran over a lot of countries as he led the USSR. Iceland wasn’t into that sort of behavior so in 1951 the country welcomed American troops back. The troops were housed in a big base (Keflavik) with one of the world’s largest airports. Having Americans in the country was good for the economy and also good at keeping Stalin from deciding to invade.
Saemi Palsson worked at the base and moonlighted as a dancer like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. He wanted to be a cop and his celebrity got him appointed to the Reykjavik Police Department. One night in the summer of 1972 he was told to guard an important American who was a tad eccentric. Chess whiz Bobby Fischer was in town to play Boris Spassky, the world champion from the Soviet Union. Saemi was good at keeping Fischer relatively grounded. They would go for long drives in the beautiful Icelandic countryside where Fischer was totally relaxed. Chess was huge in Iceland where the government generously supported good players. This international match had taken a long time to schedule. An American billionaire put up a huge amount of money for both the winner and loser of the contest. Henry Kissinger intervened to convince Fischer to go to Iceland to play. Fischer thought it was too cold there - it really wasn’t - but he was impressed that the country loved chess. Fischer wasn’t focused and lost the first two matches. He was getting ready to quit and head home when Kissinger called him and convinced him to stay.
The summer of 1972 had seen a thaw in Soviet-American relations. President Nixon had sent a table tennis team to China to help open up that country, and the USSR and USA were involved in negotiations to calm down the Cold War. The Olympics increasingly became a forum for competing for the world's attention. The Fischer-Spassky match was a sports event on steroids.
Two months into the match, the two were essentially tied. In the 21st game, Spassky made a mistake and resigned the next day. Bobby had won. Despite the win, the Cold War didn’t thaw much. In the 1970s, American and Soviet hockey teams were brutal when they played each other, with lots of players getting injured. The Soviets narrowly beat the USA Olympic basketball team in a match that may not have been on the up and up. In the 1980s Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met in Reykjavik and almost pulled off a momentous arms reduction deal but that fell through. Despite that failure, the two countries did develop better relations, and in 1989 the Soviet Union fell apart.
Gender equity. Despite a law on the books guaranteeing gender equity, in the 1970s, women were paid about 70% of what men received for the same work. Women had organized a group called the Redstockings that did protests and street theater to point out the inequities in the system. They called a national strike on October 24, 1975, that literally shut down the country. Flight attendants did not go to airports. Retail clerks stayed home. Teachers did not teach. The Icelandic parliament took notice and passed a bill granting three months of paid maternity leave, a huge win. Later, other laws were passed to address gender equity issues.
By 1980, only a handful of women had ever been elected to major public office in Iceland. In 1980, Vigdis Finnbogadottir (say that fast five times) was a single, divorced, unemployed mother who became president of Iceland.
In 1980 Finnbogadottir had just stepped down as artistic director of Reykjavik City Theater. She was taking a break, trying to figure out what to do next. Vigdis had been on TV on the Icelandic equivalent of PBS earlier in her career, so she had some visibility, but she had never done anything political.
Iceland is a small country with good radio, print, and television resources. It is easy to promote new products and for a non-politician to develop political muscle. Some companies do test marketing in Iceland because it is a relatively simple task to get the word out about the latest, greatest product. TV is especially ubiquitous in Iceland and Vigdis’s video experience helped her connect with voters. She was a pleasant-looking person who knew how to dress and speak for TV audiences. She was telegenic.
The office of president is largely symbolic, with the parliament running things, but a good one can do wonders to unite the country and move ahead. Vigdis is charismatic, especially when she is meeting with live people. Iceland is so small that a candidate can meet a lot of voters who will talk to other voters if they’re impressed. In short, you don’t need a lot of political experience to be elected president.
As of February,1980, Vigdis had not been mentioned as a candidate. A woman who had worked with her wrote a letter to the editor of a major paper touting Vigdis for president. Talk radio discussed her qualifications, and the media all over the country all of a sudden ran with the story. It went viral in a time without digital media to spread the word.
Vigdis was not radical enough for feminists to endorse her but she had a broad appeal as a sensible person who as a single mother raised a child while having a good career. She had an impressive academic background including a degree from the Sorbonne in Paris. She married a medical student who wanted to do his residency in Denmark, so they were separated and the marriage fell apart. As a single parent, she adopted a daughter.
Four months after announcing her candidacy, Vigdis Finnbogadottir won the election by 1,911 votes.
She and Margaret Thatcher were contemporaries but they were very different. President Finnbogadottir was a beloved public figure who appealed across the ideological spectrum and was in office for 16 years until she chose to retire. She had a great sense of humor. Prime Minister Thatcher was a polarizing, strong figure who was both loved and hated by the British people. She accomplished a lot but no one remembers her for her gentle side. Vigdis moved women’s rights sharply ahead, and not just in Iceland.
The Great Recession of 2007-2008 hit Iceland hard. Fishing was a strong base for the economy, but a lot of financial insiders were creating flimflam investments similar to the sketchy mortgage devices that were popular in the United States. The Icelandic economy cratered. Unlike in the US, many crooked bankers went to jail. Here, only one person at a very small bank actually did time. In Iceland, many women headed financial institutions and they were much less likely to have pursued silly, crooked investment schemes. As a result of the recession more and more women are leading financial institutions in Iceland today.
The last part of the book talks about COVID’s impact on Iceland. The country did well by setting up lots of testing stations early and in identifying and quarantining infected people. Contract tracers did a great job in identifying people who might have been infected by contact with a sick person. The pandemic spared Iceland from bad outcomes but it killed the tourist injury upon which the country depends for much of its income. As of mid-2021, tourism had not come back, but author Bjarnason is optimistic that soon people will be traveling to Iceland to experience its wonders. Optimism is an Icelandic virtue.
Bob’s Take
“Quirky” is the word to describe Iceland. It is a new country that has had an outsized influence on world events, not the least of which was acting as a staging area for the discovery of North America.
“Small” is another word to describe the country. Its total population is much less than Boston’s. People really do know each other and lots of folks are related to other Icelanders. People often marry cousins (distant we hope). It is easy for an idea or a person to get noticed through word of mouth, with neighbor talking to neighbor and relative talking to another relative. The smallness creates cohesion. Iceland is a nice place.
The first 80 pages are hard to get through as the author recounts the early history of Iceland. The names are very similar and very confusing. Who knew that Thorbjarnardotti was a common name? Daughter Caroline, who gave me this book, listened to it as she was driving to work. It is easier to hear the early descriptions than to have to read them, but it still could be a bit overwhelming.
Iceland and the United States have a special relationship. American troops protected the country from potential Russian influence and American tourists flock to the country each year. Apollo astronauts had fond memories of working on the volcanic basalt that is all over the country.
The author, Egill Bjarnason, has an engaging and light writing style which moves along easily. A lot of what’s in the book is humorous, as is this comment from an Icelandic prime minister: “The population of Iceland is 1,000 times smaller than that of the United States. We do not hide behind our apparent lack of superpower status. What we lack in manpower, we make up in volcanoes. But we are still trying to figure out how to aim them.”
