September 2010

And all the animals in the zoo shall be enemies*

September 30, 2010

Well, the dust is settling after the uproar of a couple of days ago, when parliament voted to indict former PM Geir Haarde for his involvement in the economic collapse. It’s amazing to observe just how emotional the whole matter is for the Icelandic people — it clearly touches the rawest, most sensitive nerve running [...]

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Bread and circuses

September 28, 2010

Monumental day today: for the first time in Iceland’s history, parliament voted to indict a former prime minister for negligence and misconduct in the line of duty. I am, of course, referring to Geir H. Haarde and his involvement in the Icelandic economic meltdown. Three others were up for indictment with him [I wrote about [...]

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Support for EU talks goes up

September 28, 2010

Apparently support for EU negotiations has gone up again and is now around 64%, according to a survey conducted for Fréttablaðið. The results are published in the paper today and on visir.is. Clearly Davíð Oddsson and his cronies need to up the ante a little bit — spew some more anti-EU propaganda out among the [...]

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Inspired by Iceland?

September 27, 2010

This little news item is just too tasty to pass up [shamelessly filched from visir.is]. A new OECD report reveals that 60% of Icelanders are overweight. Twenty percent of us are obese. This puts Iceland in 7th place of the 33 most overweight nations in the world. By comparison, the other Nordic nations are way [...]

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Össur wags the finger

September 27, 2010

So our Foreign Minister Össur Skarphéðinsson was in New York last week at the United Nations’ General Assembly, along with an Icelandic delegation. Here they are listening to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe give his address: OK, either old Robert was giving the dullest speech in the history of the UN, or the Icelandic delegation did [...]

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Eyjafjallajökull sends more love

September 26, 2010

It’s been p*ssing down with rain today and thanks to the eruption in Eyjafjalljökull earlier this year we’ve got some serious flooding going on in South Niceland. Ash and mud from the eruption has filled up the riverbeds in the area, particularly in Þórsmörk National Park, where there are currently around 120 people trapped. For [...]

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A few morbid death stats to brighten your Friday

September 24, 2010

Some of you may have seen my Facebook status a few days ago about Icelandic birth stats [666 Icelanders born on Christmas Day, gah!] — now here comes some more useless trivia — death stats* [what else?] based on figures from 1996-2009. About twice as many Icelanders die during the winter than in the summer [...]

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So this is the wall of shields they promised

September 22, 2010

Apropos the discussion that evolved from the postscript in the last post, it just so happened that current affairs programme Kastljós did a segment this evening on home foreclosures and auctions after the meltdown. Some stats: In 2007 there were 175 auctions of homes [UPDATE: and retail properties] that had gone into foreclosure. In 2008, [...]

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Are we due for elections?

September 21, 2010

So parliament reconvened last week after the holidays and went right into fighting over discussing the report by the parliamentary committee that I wrote about here. There was much anticipation yesterday when PM Jóhanna took to the podium, since she had remained mum about her views on the report and everyone was eager to hear [...]

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Best of Reykjavík: Festivals!

September 20, 2010

It feels like ages since we’ve had a Best of Reykjavík day here on the blog. This time I thought we’d feature festivals, since we’re on the subject of them, an’ all. Personally I have a really hard time choosing my favourite festivals because each has its own unique flavour and obviously attracts different people [...]

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