Life Outside The Mainstream (1982–1985)

Bubbi Morthens and Utangarðsmenn hit the dull sugarcoated Icelandic pop scene in 1980, spreading raw excitement in their wake. Almost overnight all the seventies pop stars seemed passé. In 1981, the new rock scene exploded with bands such as Þeyr, Purrkur Pillnikk, Tappi Tíkarrass, Fræbbblarnir and Jonee Jonee doing their best stuff. The wave was perfectly captured in the documentary film 'Rokk í Reykjavík,' which was premiered in April of 1982. After that, things started to fade out. The rise and demise of Kukl has already been documented in these pages, and next time I plan to tell the story of my own band, S. H. Draumur, which struggled on in 1982–1986 to little fanfare.

The 'mainstream ' ret urns - Disappointment

Things were getting seriously "mainstream" all over again. Rás 2, a "pop" branch of Icelandic State Radio, commenced broadcasting in December 1983. Up to that point, "pop music" had not been a priority on the only radio station in Iceland, 'The Steam,' as it was nicknamed. Some people thought the new station would tend to fresh sounds, but soon it was obvious that it mainly took care of what was already popular. The seventies fun rockers Stuðmenn— who

Shattered glass and injuries at Iceland parliament protests

Over 30 windows were broken during protests at the Icelandic parliament building, the Althingi, last night. Three police officers and one protester were also injured.

The 8,000-strong protesters also showered the building in paint and food colouring and one window was smashed at the neighbouring Domkirkjan cathedral.

Police and protesters never clashed directly and the crowds were held back effectively by fences erected earlier in the day. A large bonfire was lit in the middle of Austurvollur Square (outside parliament) and police described the vast majority of the protesters as peaceful. Nobody was arrested despite the high level of vandalism.

Reykjavík Is Dancing

For several years now, Iceland has been building an international reputation for producing a rich and diverse range of independent dance makers. The depth of this relatively new community is growing at a fascinating rate, and taking huge strides towards building an environment upon which the art form can be sustained.

The trend up until now has been that equal numbers of Icelandic dance artists have chosen to work abroad as much as they do at home—largely because the conditions for making and sharing dance in Reykjavík have a long way to go before this city can offer the sort of fertile soil that some of its European neighbours can offer (think Berlin, or Brussels). Of course Reykjavík will never become the New Berlin, nor should it aim to be, but in its own way, the city is demonstrating great ambition and has the potential to offer a wholly different type of breeding ground for dance making in Iceland.

Much of the appeal attached to continental cities such as Berlin is the geographical location, which permits artists quick access to other hotspots, enormously improving touring possibilities and providing natural meeting points for the roaming international community. The qualities of Reykjavík are in many ways the stark opposite. Reykjavík, rather than large and central, is small and isolated, but these qualities are not to be sneered at, and by no means to be misconstrued as

Reykjavik International Film Festival breaks new record

Attendance at this year’s Reykjavik International Film Festival (RIFF) has broken the 20,000 mark for the first time in the festival’s history. Festival organisers say it proves that RIFF continues to grow every year.

The festival has been garnering good attention overseas, including regular coverage from the ARTE television station, Visir.is reports.

Last night the festival came to a climax with the awards ceremony and the première of the brand new Icelandic film, Brim. Over 1,000 people went to see the film on its first night at the Haskolabio cinema in Reykjavik.

It is usual for RIFF to repeat its

Where Is He Taking Us?

We're still wondering: What happened? How did Iceland get knocked so flat on its collective ass? And what's being done about it? So we thought we'd call up our Minister of Finance, Left Green chairman Steingrímur J. Sigfússon, and ask him. To our surprise, he picked up. Here's what we talked about.

The short version

Since this is a tourist magazine, and in English, we need to start at the beginning—we can't assume that folks will know what we're talking about. You are Minister of Finance—how did that happen?

It happened thusly: a government fell here in the end of January 2009, following a bank collapse in October of 2008. This resulted in great civic and political unrest, lots of troubles and hardship and the government that was then in place was forced to admit defeat. People had been talking about possibly forming a national government [where all parties collaborate] to respond to the unrest, but the then-government was not fond of the idea. But they eventually became exhausted, their coalition shattered and a new government was formed by the Left Green Party and the Social Democratic Alliance. The Progressive Party supported that government until that spring's election.

In the elections of April 2009, we and the Social Democrats won a pure majority combined [thus eliminating the need for the Progressives' support] and we formed a government. 

I am chairman of one of the two ruling parties, and have dealt with economics and finance, so it was natural that I would become Minister of Finance. Actually, I also served as Minister of Fisheries and Agriculture during our minority government period—that was a very busy time—but since May 10, 2009, I have focused only on the state's finances. It is a big job, as a lot of the problems created by the collapse wind up on my desk. I think I can safely assert that no one got as big a portion of collapse-related problems as I did.

That's the short version. 


Money. Lots of it

Can you describe taking over the job in February of 2009? What sort of estate did your predecessor leave you?

It was hard, of course, everything had been pretty much paralysed here by the horrific events that unfolded and the pressure of dealing with them. The government that burst was not very functional by the end and several matters were frozen. So we had to pull up our sleeves and get things moving, put a lot of projects into motion as soon as we started.

We resorted to various temporary measures to assist companies and homes that were experiencing trouble; we granted them various leniencies on payments and allowed taxes to be paid over a longer period of time. We greatly increased interest relief to help families that were hurt by how much their loans had gone up as a result of the collapse.

Of course we didn't manage to finish everything we intended to, such as greatly improving the state of our democracy by introducing a direct, person-based voting system, a constituent assembly, etc. We managed to complete some of those goals, but not all. However, this was in my view a diligent and energetic government that was successful in doing the best it could in the short time that it had.

As an amateur, I have to wonder what it was exactly that had to be dealt with...

On one hand all the loans skyrocket along with the interest rate, the króna collapses and there's suddenly a gaping void of money that needs to be filled... The effects on the state treasury were dramatic, and its income basis collapsed completely. It's evident when you note that in 2007 the state treasury had a surplus of 89 billion ISK, while by the end of 2008 there was a 216 billion ISK deficit. The downswing in state income was also unprecedented.

And the Central Bank went technically bankrupt and we had to refinance it. That's the largest single amount we've had to pay thus far, what the state had to shell out because of the Central Bank. We wrote off 192 billion ISK in 2008 as a result. That's a lot of money. 


Imaginary assets 

This money that vanished—where did it go?

A lot of the state's assets burned up; our equity lost its value and both real and imaginary assets got lost. We don't mourn the imaginary assets, the bubble assets, but a lot of very real ones burned up and became worthless overnight, in companies and banks. Unemployment skyrocketed; a lot of people that previously had well paying jobs lost them, which meant a decreased income for the state. This is a vicious circle. The public's spending power decreases, so income based on tolling and taxing imports is lost—and then we have to pay interest of our debts.

A lot of what we need to do to accomplish this can be hard and painful—and we're not finished yet—but we've made some great advances. Things are going well, and the situation now is a lot better than was predicted in the direct aftermath of the collapse. Inflation is fast receding and our economy is straightening out, so despite everything that's gone down in the past eighteen months we are definitely on the right track, even if it is a big struggle. I don't want to credit the state treasury or me as Finance Minister with our success, but we have still have managed to solve a lot of problems connected to the ministry.

 This is where the biggest and hardest problems created by the banking collapse wound up to be resolved—aside from running the state treasury and managing problems related to that, our banks went bankrupt so we needed to reconstruct them. The Ministry of Finance handled all that work and the negotiations connected to it.


Processing the collapse

We also are in charge of the horrible IceSave affair that remains unsolved, and we needed to negotiate with foreign states and central banks to receive currency loans. We also handle a big part of the International Monetary Fund negotiations, we're restoring the savings banks... these are all hard and complicated tasks that are added to the ministry's day to day duties.

We've worked towards assisting the economy, helping businesses and homes through troubles. We're trying to work beyond just putting out fires and solving problems, presenting new ideas such as tax breaks for start-ups and innovators, and we introduced stimulating measures to increase demand for contractors, raising VAT rebates for construction and restoration work. We are sending out the message that now is a good time to build or renovate, and the state is supporting that with tax breaks... I could go on.

We've started an innumerable amount of these kinds of measures, and any claims that this government has been inactive are wrong, simply put. We have worked very hard, under very difficult circumstances. Of course this has been trying; it has been a busy and unbelievable time. And on top all this, we have been investigating the collapse and what lead to it, the SIC [Special Investigative Committee] Report, the Special Prosecutor; there are a lot of things to tend to in terms of processing the collapse. So to sum it up, you could say our task is threefold: to keep things running, to investigate the collapse and its causes, and laying the foundations of a renaissance. And I think it's going very well, even though the situation is still fragile...


No room for ideology

Following the discourse, and especially in terms of what the opposition is saying, it wouldn't seem like you're doing all that much, nor that you've had any success. Based on their criticisms and their track record, can you imagine what a coalition between the Progressives and The Independents would be doing? Would their measures be any different, in your view?

I am not sure of that. As I have said, reality takes over in the end. You may foster an ideology and lots of ideas on how to do things, but they ultimately clash with reality.

In a situation such as ours, people have to be realistic, face it as it is and seek out the solutions and methods that are available, to pick the comparatively best ones. That leaves little room for ideologies.

I am not saying that how things are done isn't important, it certainly is, but to some extent our options are very much limited by our circumstances. I am convinced that any government would have chosen a mixed way as we are doing—it's the only option, really. Reality takes over, and even the most hardline neo-liberals would realise that you cannot solve these problems without resorting to every measure. The choice to be political

Iceland has more than one Justin Bieber

There was no prime-time national search on TV and no newspaper appeal; but Iceland has, nevertheless, managed to find its own answer to the pop darling Justin Bieber…but Iceland is getting twice as much Bieber for its buck!

Twins Johannes and Steinn Thorkelsson began at Reykjavik’s respected Verslo school this autumn and it has been something of a whirlwind ever since. Both twins bear a striking resemblance not only to each other, but also to Canadian Justin Bieber – the hottest property in the pop world today.

“We first started hearing this about a year ago,” says Steinn – adding

Ingibjorg Solrun Gisladottir still has brain tumour

The former foreign minister and ex-leader of Iceland’s Social Democrats, Ingibjorg Solrun Gisladottir has revealed that she still has a brain tumour diagnosed in 2008. She was this week spared from the Landsdomur high court; but former PM Geir Haarde will face negligence charges.

“The removal of the whole tumour was unsuccessful, and so there is a part of it still there,” Gisladottir told Stod 2 in an interview yesterday evening where she discussed parliament’s decision to send Geir Haarde to the Landsdomur court, but not her.

Gisladottir was diagnosed with the serious tumour at around the time of the