THE MAKING OF MODERN ICELAND

THE MAKING OF PHOTOGRAPHY BY GOLLI

INVENTIONS, INNOVATIONS

To really know Iceland, one must seek to understand Iceland’s history. But properly understanding any country’s history is more of an ideal; a long journey with no end in sight, and by no means a perfunctory task. It traditionally requires, rather unfairly in many people’s view, focusing unabashedly on a few pivotal characters to the exclusion of most everything and everyone else. Whereas previously, the entire field of history was reproachfully and perhaps justifiably referred to as: ‘history of, and by, middle-aged white males,’ more recently the recording and interpretation of history has in some sense been liberated, to become substantially more multilateral, including female and non-Western points of view. Multidisciplinary approaches to historical research are becoming more common and will hopefully continue to give us broader understanding of the past.

Of course, some middle-aged white men have impacted Iceland’s history, but sometimes the greatest impacts have come from the smallest, most overlooked things. Let’s look closer at some inventions, innovation, and events that have changed the course of Iceland’s history.

“IT’S BAD, BUT YOU GET USED TO IT.” – ICELANDIC PROVERB

To understand how much has changed and how far Iceland has come over the last 1,150 years since settlement, we will examine just a few of the most important developments that fostered modern Iceland. Guðmundur Hálfdánarson, Professor of History at the University of Iceland, explains that Iceland was in a state of profound stagnation throughout most of the last twelve centuries, only beginning to chart the path toward social and economic progress in the mid-19th century. From the time of settlement beginning in the 9th century and for the following thousand years, Iceland’s population hovered between 50,000 and 70,000 souls. The country simply could not produce enough food to feed more than that population; starvation was a constant

threat. Citizens’ health was abysmal, and ferocious diseases regularly decimated the population. Paid work was available to only a privileged few; most Icelanders lived hand to mouth eking out pathetic existences in dark, smoky hovels. In fact, in the 1860s, when steamship travel made passage to North America affordable, around 25% of the population emigrated over a fifty-year period, probably sparing themselves from mass starvation in the wake of over a decade of unusually cold winters and the devastating Askja eruption of 1875.

IN BLACK ON WHITE – THE PRINTING PRESS

It’s beyond any doubt that the modern printing press, which had finally become available and affordable in the last half of the 19th century, had a dramatic and lasting impact. The first printing press in Iceland had arrived centuries earlier (around 1550) and famously produced the Bible “THE WORLD AT NIGHT, in Icelandic translation, published in 1584 by FOR MUCH OF HISTORY, Lutheran bishop Guðbrandur Þorláksson. For WAS A VERY DARK PLACE the next three centuries, the Lutheran Church INDEED.” BILL BRYSON of Iceland had a monopoly on publishing and would produce hundreds of devout books, while non-religious manuscripts were for the most part ignored. With the advent of relatively modern printing presses, some books in the Icelandic language proliferated, but remained expensive and inaccessible to the majority of Icelanders. Newspapers, however, held sway in the late 19th century. These inexpensive broadsheets, often no more than four pages, distributed news stories, opinion columns, and fresh ideas to eager readers. Suddenly, Icelanders could read about what their government, dominated by imperial Denmark, was actually up to. Political ideas for reform spread, much to the disappointment of the colonial authorities. The new printing presses helped lead Icelanders out of the darkness of ignorance and introduced the population to the promise of the wider world. Iceland’s independence movement was arguably born in the pages of

MODERN ICELAND WORDS BY FRANK WALTER SANDS

& EVENTS

periodicals. Icelandic home culture evolved around newspapers and journals. It was an age-old Icelandic tradition for texts such as the sagas or poetry to be read aloud, sometimes called kveða, in most farms’ baðstofur (living rooms) by one reader to the rapt attention of entertainment-deprived households in the premodern period. Building on this tradition in the 19th century, it became common to read aloud from the newspaper, which kept the common people apprised of national and international events until well into the 20th century.

HELLO WORLD, THIS IS ICELAND CALLING! – RADIO TRANSMISSIONS AND TELEPHONES

On a bright, midsummer day in 1905, the first instant communication between Iceland and the outside world was achieved with a Marconi radio antenna at the site of the famous Höfði house, where Reagan and Gorbachev would meet in 1986. The first message received via Morse code reported a tragic collision between two ships in the North Sea. One newspaper claimed, somewhat hysterically, that a man in the vicinity of the antenna had been knocked down and nearly killed by one of these mysterious radio transmissions. Even after the momentous event, uncertainty and rumours of fraud persisted, but eventually the efficacy and value of radio telecommunications was recognised, especially after hundreds of lives were saved due to an S.O.S. radio message sent from the sinking Titanic in 1912. The primitive radio transceiver remained in use until October 1906, when submarine telegraph cables promising greater reliability became feasible. Hannes Hafstein, a popular poet, lawyer, and businessman, became First Minister for Iceland in 1904 and Managing Director of the National Bank of Iceland before being elected as Speaker of Parliament, but is probably best known for connecting Iceland to the outside world with the 990km [615mi] undersea cable from Seyðisfjörður in Eastern Iceland to mainland Europe via the Faroe and Shetland Islands. The impressive feat was achieved with almost 1,000 kilometres of undersea cable and a 600-km long landline supported by 14,000 wooden telephone poles. The ability to communicate fluently with the world and receive immediate news and market updates gave the previously isolated island multiple advantages. Weather reports delivered in a timely manner saved countless sailors’ lives, knowing real-time commodity prices allowed seafood to be sold at higher profits and fuel and food to be purchased at more competitive prices. When World War I started in 1914, Icelandic shipping was able to sell fish at higher prices and avoid embargos as well as some of the perils of naval warfare. It would take until 1930 for radio broadcasting to reach Iceland’s small, dispersed population, modelled on the BBC which was founded in 1922. The first broadcast was limited to a few hours of programming; beginning with the news, the radio programming featured church services, some classical music, a few children’s stories, and without a doubt the most important to inhabitants of the windy and rainsoaked North Atlantic, the blessed weather report.

RUBBER BOOTS

Certainly among the biggest changes in Icelandic workers’ outfits in the first half of the 20th century, rubber boots represented, “extremely positive changes for the health and well-being of workers,” according to a contemporary journal. It is hard to grasp what a consequential impact rubberised boots had on Icelanders just a century ago. Iceland is a wet country, where it rains on average 150 days per year. Much of the country is covered in a thin topsoil that can only absorb a limited amount of precipitation, leaving puddles and wet patches on much of the populated lowlands. Even the turf houses where most Icelanders lived until the mid-20th century were damp. For fishermen and farmers in particular, but also town dwellers and laborers of all kinds, the discomfort of wet feet was all part of a day’s work. In the mid-19th century, Englishman Hiram Hutchinson bought the patent for making rubber footwear from the American tire manufacturer Charles Goodyear and began

manufacturing rubber “Wellies”, or Wellingtons, in the United Kingdom. It would take another half century for the first rubber boots to be sold in Iceland, in 1903, and it was not until World War I that they became widely adopted by Icelanders, especially farmers who could now, according to advertising of the day, “work all day with clean, dry feet.” Even today, practically every Icelandic toddler arrives to their first day of preschool with a shiny pair of rubber boots.

KEEPING WARM AND BRIGHT ON THOSE COLD WINTER NIGHTS

Geothermally heated water had regularly been exploited for pools and steam baths since the settlement period, but was generally only enjoyed by the privileged elite. Snorri Sturluson, a 13th-century chieftain and historian, built a heitur pottur (hot tub) that he used to relax and rest his weary bones, a reconstruction of which can be seen at his charming country residence of Reykholt (Smoke Hill) in West Iceland. With energy prices surging across the globe in recent months, Iceland may be justifiably envied as the only country in the world that obtains nearly all of its electricity and heat from renewable sources.

While it is easy to identify hot spots and volcanic vents across the country, and there are hundreds of waterfalls large and small, it was not until the global energy crisis of the early 1970s that Icelanders were forced to find alternatives to importing and burning coal and oil in order to heat and provide electricity to homes, businesses, and public facilities. Beginning with limited geothermal heating of a few buildings in the capital in the 1930s, the government embarked on a policy of identifying potential areas for geothermal exploitation, and over decades gradually built new wells and transmission pipelines that eventually reached a large proportion of the country’s towns, villages and farms. There is no national energy grid, because Iceland does not need such a costly energy distribution hub. Drilling between 200 and 2,000 metres deep near one of the country’s 600 hot springs produces high-pressure steam that turns electricitygenerating turbines. The by-product is a lot of hot water which is allowed to cool somewhat and is then piped to nearby towns at relatively low cost. It was not long before towns without a heated swimming pool were considered backward, and no respectable summer house these days would lack a hot tub. As a bonus, the last four generations of Icelandic children have been taught to swim as part of the school curriculum, certainly saving countless lives. Icelanders’ hygiene and in turn health over this period improved dramatically. Clothes could now be cleaned cheaply, and regular bathing became a hallmark of modernity. Reykavík’s iconic Perlan (The Pearl) on Öskjuhlíð hill was originally a cluster of geothermal tanks which stored hot water reserves for the capital area.

It would be a massive understatement to say that Iceland has reaped the rewards of switching from fossil fuels to geothermal energy. The economic savings derived from exploiting the country’s renewable resources while the rest of the world has kept burning fossil fuels have transformed Iceland from one of the poorest countries in Europe to one of the wealthiest, with among the highest standards of living in the world. Today, geothermal water heats around 90% of homes, and keeps many sidewalks and parking lots free of snow and ice during the long, dark winters.

MOTORBOATS

Originally built in Iceland as a wooden, six-oared Icelandic rowboat (sexæringur), the Stanley was the first boat in Iceland to be outfitted with a primitive two-stroke engine in November 1902. Although the boat was probably 40 years old at the time of its conversion with a newly imported Danish Mollerup engine, its successful mechanisation is considered to be the dawn of the revolution for the Icelandic fishing industry. First launched with an engine from Ísafjörður, despite initial doubts, the boat’s first motor trip proved a great success, convincing Icelandic fishermen that motorboats would soon come to dominate the fishing industry. Within a matter of ten years most of the Icelandic fishing fleet was similarly mechanised.

These early motorboats, while small by modern standards, had an enormous impact on the seaside villages where they were moored. They brought much needed income to coastal towns such as Bolungarvík and Seyðisfjörður, drawing in ambitious young people to work on the boats or on shore in salting and barrelling the valuable fish for export. These hardy workers, both male and female, ended up settling down and founding families. The new fishing-based communities grew rapidly and were a major economic force in the early 20th century. Unfortunately for most of these small towns dotting Iceland’s periphery, the competition from large, modern trawlers and a controversial fishing quota system have all but rendered the smaller motorised fishing vessels irrelevant. Many young people have been forced to abandon these quaint villages that appear stuck in an earlier time, seeking better-paid jobs and migrating to the capital region or larger towns like Akureyri.

THE BLESSED WAR

While all these changes were vital to the development of modern Iceland, when asked what one event or date was the most influential, Professor Guðmundur does not hesitate. June 10, 1940, when, despite the Icelandic government’s declaration of neutrality in the anticipated European war, the British warship HMS Berwick entered Reykjavík harbour with some 640 Royal Marines, who handed out flyers in broken Icelandic to curious onlookers and promptly set off to the nearby German embassy to arrest the Nazi Ambassador and take control of other strategic facilities. Within 24 hours, the British had taken complete control of Iceland, with the respectful but reluctant cooperation of the Icelandic government.

While most Icelanders realised the gravity of their government’s immediate capitulation to the Allies, many more understood that economically, politically, and socially, the country would never be the same. Within months of the British landing, Iceland’s unemployment had disappeared. Labour was in high demand thanks to the construction of Reykjavík’s massive airport and hundreds of defensive structures, and wages for ambitious Icelanders grew commensurately. For the first time in Iceland’s thousand-year history, countless women and men migrating from the impoverished countryside were able to gain employment in construction and services, and earn cash – actual money – instead of the standard room-and-board deal that farm work commonly offered. A popular joke of the era was to ironically refer to the armed conflict threatening freedom and peace as the “blessed war,” due to how quickly Iceland began to develop, and how dramatically locals’ lives improved. Fraternisation between American and British soldiers on the one hand and Icelanders on the other rejuvenated Icelandic culture. Young people benefitted particularly from the interaction, absorbing jazz and modern dancing enthusiastically, eager to learn everything about popular culture across the pond, while gaining access to educational and employment opportunities which would coalesce to create a large self-perpetuating middle class.

Despite the horror of the war, for the first time since the settlement in the 9th century, hope took hold of Icelanders – and didn’t let go. With hard work and dedication, it was understood that life would indeed improve. The government followed the post-war Scandinavian model by promoting a liberal society based on social welfare. Business and the arts flourished. Women suddenly saw the opportunity to use their collective power to bring about more gender equality, an effort which continues to this day, but has made the Icelandic feminist movement a world leader, and in the person of Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, produced the first democratically-elected female President of a Western nation, in 1980. More than any other invention, innovation, or event, those five years of war transformed Iceland into a modern state.

There are plenty written sources that illuminate Iceland’s history over the past century. Written records from Iceland stretch back to the mid12th century, including legal and religious documents, and of course there are the Icelandic Sagas. But where does our knowledge of Iceland’s early history come from?

HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

Despite a total lack of written records, the field of historical linguistics has been able to bring ancient languages back to life, such as the over-6,000-year-old language of the ProtoIndo Europeans, from which nearly all European languages are derived. Similar regression methods have effectively proved how old Icelandic actually sounded, in the absence of any voice recordings.

RADIOCARBON DATING

The carbon-14 revolution, which began in the 1950’s, measures the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 isotopes of organic matter to estimate age and geographic origin.

DNA ANALYSIS

The breakthrough in next-generation DNA sequencing has allowed scientists to identify full genomes of organisms, whether alive or dead. Making use of big data, archaeologists can upload datasets of genetic information into powerful computers to find matches that determine, for example, who is related to whom as well as reveal complete genomes of not just plants and animals, but microbes such as bacteria and viruses.

PALEOECOLOGY

TThe study of fossilised plants and animals is yet another field which has been contributing to our better understanding of Icelandic history. Scott Riddell, a doctoral student of paleoecology at the University of Iceland, says his research makes use of the tiniest bits of data in order to create a clearer image of the past. Much of his time is spent identifying and counting pollen under a microscope, taken from core samples at archaeological sites. In the wake of frequent volcanic eruptions in Iceland, tephra (basically volcanic dust), ash, and gas are ejected and often spread over large swathes of the country. With time, these layers of volcanic dust are covered by additional layers of earth. Using a method pioneered by Icelandic geologist Karl Grönvold, cylinder-shaped samples of soil are taken at various depths. The age of the thin layers of soil or peat can then be determined by their position relative to the layers of ash and dust, providing potentially more accurate results than radiocarbon dating techniques, which can only be used on carbon-based materials that were once living organisms. When a sample of this soil is analysed, one can get an estimate on the prevalence and abundance of particular vegetation at different time periods. The study of plant pollen and macrofossils has also given us a better idea of how plants colonised Iceland prior to human settlement, a process which took place over millions of years.

GEOLOGICAL SEDIMENTS

Remarkably, the sediments of most of Iceland show a clear change right around the year 871 broadly consistent with the appearance of archaeological features associated with the settlement of Iceland during the Viking Age. Before the Norse settlers arrived, the sediments tended to be darker and more organic. This is what would be expected in an area with both copious wetlands and substantial forests. After the initial settlement of Iceland in the late 9th century, however, the earth is found to contain more minerals and is lighter, indicating a dramatic ecological change over a very short period.

Post-settlement soil contains more coprophilous fungal spores, which is associated with the presence of cattle dung and can be seen to increase over the first few centuries. Charcoal residue is also abundant in the post-871 soil samples, consistent with the concentrated burning of timber. Analysis indicates that most of Iceland’s forests were eradicated within decades of the arrival of the Norse.

We can also see from other spores in sediments that dozens of plants used for medicinal purposes were imported and cultivated during the first centuries of settlement. Valerian, an herb native to the European mainland and used as a sedative, is one such import, commonly found today in areas where ancient Benedictine and Augustinian monasteries were once located. The monks’ and nuns’ knowledge of medicinal plants was well known to Medieval Icelanders who often sought treatment for their ailments at the cloisters.