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 […] Read more
September 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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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, […] Read more
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 […] Read more
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 […] Read more
