Halló halló!
We have a bunch of new subscribers to this newsletter—welcome! And thank you to those of you who have become paid subscribers recently. I truly appreciate your support for my work. 💓
It has been a while since I properly introduced myself, so given that we have new folks joining us I thought I might give a bit of background—apologies if you know all this already.
My name is Alda Sigmundsdóttir, which literally means “daughter of Sigmund". Here in Iceland most people use the patronymic system when it comes to names, meaning we take our father’s first name and add -son or -dóttir to the end. We don’t change our names when we marry, so if you have a couple who have, say, a son and a daughter, everyone in that family will have a different last name.
I was born in Iceland to Icelandic parents, but moved abroad at the age of five and more or less stayed there until I was 31 and moved back permanently. Most of my time abroad time I lived in Canada, and before you ask—no, it was not in the Icelandic settlements there.
I was socialized as a North American, and was essentially a foreigner when I moved back to Iceland. By which I mean that I had to learn to navigate the maze of Icelandic customs and conventions, that—it has to be said—are pretty fixed.
One of the first things that struck me about the Icelanders is how insular they can be. This is a very family oriented society. Families stick together and do things together a lot, and there are certain events that are very much entrenched in the culture, like confirmations, christenings, weddings, funerals, birthdays—especially the “big birthdays” (what the Icelanders call stórafmæli) that end in 0.
Families usually get together for these events and participate in rituals that everyone who has grown up in Iceland is familiar with, but that outsiders are not. And unless you are part of the family, or a very close friend, you’re not likely to be invited to such events. They are closed to outsiders.
Another—related—thing I noticed is all the cliques. Icelanders tend to form friendship groups really early, even in pre-school, and since I had grown up abroad I didn’t belong to any of those. For example, Icelandic women have these groups called saumaklúbbar, literally “sewing clubs”—a term that confused me because I assumed they came together to sew. They don’t: they do it to hang out and eat food and gossip. The group members take turns hosting and if it’s your turn you’re responsible for all the food and drink. It also seems to me that there’s always a bit of one-upmanship involved, a friendly competition about who can source the best recipes and serve the most impressive food. These saumaklúbbar usually last for decades, and often go beyond meeting at home and doing other things, like travelling abroad. A key feature is that, once they’re formed, they rarely admit new members.
Incidentally, men have these groups too but they don’t call them sewing clubs. They’ll get together to listen to new music, or watch sports, or eat rancid Icelandic food, or whatever. But the overall concept is the same: small, closed groups that don’t generally admit new members.
So these groups no doubt serve a healthy social function BUT they can also turn into unholy alliances that facilitate corruption, especially when the clique members are in positions of power. We see countless examples of this here in Iceland. This is such a small society, and Icelanders are extremely well versed in the art of looking the other way and not rocking the boat. Probably because they had to do that for centuries in order to survive, when the survival of the community depended on its unity. So you get enabling on a grand scale, where people in power, or who are simply audacious enough to go for it, get away with incredible things.
Example: Iceland has, pretty much since it became a republic in 1944, been ruled by a single political party, called the Independence Party, that gets away with the most incredible things. There seems to be no limit to their audacity. A random example that pops into my head is one where a gag order was placed on one one of Iceland’s independent media outlets when they were reporting on the murky financial dealings of the current prime minister, who at the time was minister of finance. (Yep, he tends to just switch seats, pretty much at will—such are the “musical chairs” antics of the never-not-in-power Independence Party.) That’s correct: a real life gag order, because a mafia hea high level Independence Party member preferred not to have his dirty business aired in the media.
This is the underbelly of Icelandic society that people don’t see a lot, and don’t talk about a lot—not even here in Iceland. There is enabling that happens here on a grand scale, which I happen to think is coded into the Icelandic DNA and is a trauma response from our history—something I wrote about here.
Anyway, I meant to introduce myself and wound up on a tangent about Icelandic political corruption, on which I am currently dangling and have no idea how to wrap this little letter up in a cohesive package where the end circles back to the beginning … but never mind. Perhaps I will get there in a subsequent post. 😁
Are you a foreigner living in Iceland right now? Or have you lived here in the past? What are/were your impressions of the Icelandic people, or Icelandic society in general? Have you found it as insular as I did 30 years ago?
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Our van broke down and we sat by the side of the road for two hours until our car rental agency brought us a replacement. All women. Not a soul even slowed down.
This is so fascinating. I love receiving your letters from Iceland. Thank you for sharing.