This is so gonna get me hashed on the comments...So as I'm walking through the bright Fall sun this morning, tramping my way to work through an increasingly traffic-jammed Rvk, I was pondering some of the political/social questions that always plague the Icelandic life of Sma.
I managed to puzzle out just what it is that makes Icelanders as a nation such an apathetic people in the poli-social arena.
Its really very simple. Maybe too simple.
But my theory is that its all due to the fact that they've never had a revolution here. Ever. At least not one they started.
Some English sailor tried to take over the country during Iceland's time as a Danish colony, but the Danes, or the Icelanders granted power by the Danes put him down.
The Icelanders didn't gain their independence with a long and costly struggle against the Danes, rather they had it rather unexpectedly handed to them courtesy of both the Axis (who invaded Denmark) and Allied (who invaded Iceland) powers during WWII.
The economic revolution that transformed Iceland after WWII had a great deal more to do with copying other nations and massive influxes of cash thanks to the Marshal Plan than with anything the Icelanders did themselves. (Sorry, but its true)
About the closest thing they've had to a real revolution here was the women's rights movement, which led to at least official equality of the sexes here on the lava lump. But even that movement, after the heady days of the general strike, slowly withered away into an establishment, which then withered away into a bureaucracy.
The thing about revolutions is that even when they fail, they instill a bit of that rebellious spirit, that urge and drive to rise up and change things.
But there's no history of that here. Which is one of the central reasons why protest isn't so much looked down on but rather not understood.
"Why are these people shouting and yelling for change?" the average Icelander asks themselves, "They ought to just write a letter to Möggan and get back to work".
Why am I applying for citizenship again?
4 comments:
like i said bugger off to france they have lots of strike/protest
About your wish list of doom................the Hjálmar albums, I can help with that wish.
.......too apathetic to comment on the lack of revolution thing ;)
Technically he was Danish... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B8rgen_J%C3%B8rgensen) and he's a bloody national hero!
And we have fought back: Gúttóslagurinn 1932 and the NATO-protest in 1949. And...er...once, I refused to pay full price for some cabbage, 'cause it was a bit icky in the middle. How's that for revolting!
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