Haukur Már Helgason heimspekingur skrifaði athyglisverða grein síðastliðið haust sem birtist í London Review of Books. Í greininni ræðir hann brottför Bandaríkjanna frá Íslandi, og hvernig það svipti á vissan hátt jörðinni undan Íslendingum, líkt og Styrmir Gunnarsson og Valur Ingimundarson hafa rætt síðustu daga. Greinin er í heild sinni hér:

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“The ever-present danger of perishing would not permit of a language restricted to gesture. And, the first words among them were not love me, but help me.” So said Rousseau, on the origin of language in the North. Admittedly, there is no Icelandic word for gesture, which goes a long way to explain awkward occurances in foreign relations. More words, however, are lacking. Hegemony. Structure – the concept has been translated, but the Icelandic equivalent feels too artificial to ever come out naturally.

And then there’s strategy, another untranslated concept. The republic of Iceland declared independence from Denmark in 1944, two years into a US occupation that would last over 60 years. The US army made us rich, during “the blessed war” as older people remember it – and then they stayed while the mid-atlantic rock was strategically important. That is, until 2006, when the Bush administration had thought up some better things to do with two fighter-jets. Their receptionist called our minister to say goodbye and thanks for all the fish and then they left. Whereas the US dollar is supported by the threat of military intervention and lots of people, the Icelandic króna is mostly supported by cod. After the army left, it took a while for the local economy – and politics – to realize there is no ground beneath our feet, anymore. In this epic narrative, which might serve just as well as material for a Marquez as for a deLillo, the most shocking moment for Icelandic authorities may have come just a moment before the collapse of the banks. At the end of September, the US Federal Reserve announced it would assist the central banks in Sweden, Norway and Denmark with a currency exchange deal – but not Iceland. As the Nordic countries, at least on the level of aristocratic authority, very much see themselves as one community, the signal was quite unambiguous: sink, Iceland, sink. The country’s first response was to take offense, and Central Bank manager Davíð Oddsson declared Russia would lend Iceland the money it needed. Russia did not agree. Sure enough Iceland is sinking, but the movement accords to the physical laws of cartoons, where a character runs off a cliff but then stops in midair: only when he looks down and realizes that he stands on nothing – or even: only when he admits this realization with an explicit gesture – does he fall. Symptomatically, for the last two years, positive news have proliferated in Iceland – since last february there has been constant sunshine and cute animal pictures on the covers of Iceland’s most prestigious newspapers.“