Old Style
Fog Elf
There, at the tip of the Monterey Peninsula, the fog would roll in at dawn then creep thickly through the seaside forests to infiltrate the town, muffling everything in cool white cotton. I remember walking to summer school through the damp, sweet, heavy mist and feeling like I had a secret, like the fog wrapping itself around me held some mystery that only I could see. Sounds were muffled, and even the squirrels and jays scuffling through the fallen pine-needles and flitting through the trees by the road seemed far away.
At the summer school I'd buy an extra big peanut butter cookie, sit on a bench and watch the ghostly figures of other children as I munched away. To this day, the taste of peanut butter cookies reminds me of those foggy mornings of my childhood. And fog itself still makes me feel safe, mysterious and warm.
Big Money
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| A photo of ubiquitous construction work going on downtown in 2015 that I added to this post as an ironic statement: Even after the crash of 2008, we're back right where we were when this article was posted...a dangerous place to be. |
"SMALL COUNTRY, BIG AMBITIONS
Feb 17th 2005
From The Economist print edition
Icelandic businesses are making big acquisitions across Europe
THEY are well-heeled, these Icelanders. Brave, too. Last year's flow of Icelandic takeovers in Europe looks ready to become a flood ~ not all of it into companies much fancied by other investors.
Bravest of Iceland's brave is the Baugur Group, run by Jon Asgeir Johannesson. Born as a supermarket but now an investment house in retailing of many sorts, last autumn it bought Magasin du Nord, a Danish department-store group which, after three years of losses, expects to lose $30m more in 2004-05, on turnover of about $350m. Last week, a Baugur-led consortium completed the $1.25 billion takeover of Britain's Big Food Group, which had begun losing money on sales of some $9 billion. On February 9th, another struggling British supermarket chain, Somerfield, revealed it was a target. A bid is only a possibility, but could exceed $1.9 billion. Baugur had already bought British real estate, besides clothing and jewellery stores, and London's famous toy-shop, Hamleys.
Among other Icelandic buys, in December SIF, a seafood group, bought Labeyrie, a French food firm, for $675m (debt included); Bakkavor, a supplier of chilled meals, has bought 20% of Geest, a large British firm in that line, and is now studying a full bid; Icelandair holds 10% of Britain's low-cost airline easyJet. Actavis, a maker of generic drugs chaired by Thor Bjorgolfsson, who made his first pile in Russian brewing, has bought drugmakers in Bulgaria, Serbia and Turkey, and is now buying into India, as a road into the American market. Only 4% of its $500m-or-so turnover today comes from Iceland.
The Icelandic banks helping to finance these acquisitions are themselves buyers. The biggest purchase so far came last year from Kaupthing Bank, Iceland's largest. After earlier lesser but sizeable buys in Finland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, it paid $1.25 billion for FI-Holding, a Danish bank strong in corporate lending. In Britain, by early 2004 it held 19.5% of Singer & Friedlander, an investment bank. Burdaras, an Icelandic investment company, later bought a 9.5% stake, and many expect a full Icelandic bid for the London bank, now valued in the market at $950m.
Burdaras itself is 50.2%-owned by three arms of Landsbanki, Iceland's number two, which has overseas ambitions of its own. Formerly state-owned, Landsbanki was privatised in 1998-2003. In 2000 it bought Heritable Bank, a small British housing-finance bank, and in 2003 a private-banking operation in Luxembourg. It has just agreed to buy one of Britain's few surviving independent stockbrokers.
All this from an island of only 300,000 people. Not all the money is Icelandic: SIF, for instance, paid for Labeyrie partly via a syndicated loan in London. Yet it raised $300m, mainly from local sources, in a later share issue; and this soon after a Kaupthing issue had raised $550m. What is the source of Iceland's financial muscle?
A broad answer is almost 14 years of deregulating and privatising government. Specifically, Iceland, like Luxembourg or Ireland, has become a friendly place for financiers and, like Switzerland, is not subject to EU tax-prying: Burdaras's biggest shareholder is Landsbanki's Luxembourg private bank. And corporate profits, taxed at 50% in 1991, and, after cuts, still at 30% in 2001, now pay 18%, the lowest tax-rate in the OECD after Ireland and Hungary.
Few as they are, Icelanders are also feeling richer. After a slide in 2001-02, the economy is back to 4-6% growth. And, with inflation and interest rates mostly low, house prices, bonds and equities have soared in recent years, encouraging a sharp rise in household borrowing. Some of this has gone, indirectly, into investment overseas. Local banks meanwhile have borrowed heavily abroad; an OECD estimate out this week suggests that the country's external debt may have risen by some $6 billion in 2004. A chunk of this has flowed out again into the overseas-investment spree. After all, there are not a lot of attractive opportunities for Iceland's ambitious businessmen at home."
Long article, but worth the read. Thanks, Miguel!
The Hospital
This classically-styled building is the National Hospital of Iceland, opened in 1930 and designed by architect Guðjón Samúelsson who also created Hallgrímskirkju (click here for a charming set of photos of that church and Guðjón's natural inspirations for it's design.) I think this is a beautiful facade, thaough unfortunately the original front entrance with it's tree-lined walkway is not used anymore.
Night View
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| Reykjavik in winter viewed from Perlan |
Here's downtown Reykjavik at night. You can see the Big Church, Hallgrimskirkja, in the distance. This view is from Perlan, the massive glass-domed Pearl of Reykjavík...a definite Must for any traveler to Iceland. There, you can experience an indoor geysir, have a gourmet meal (or just an ice cream and coffee) and take in a 360 degree view of the Capital from the outdoor platform. It's like our local Space Needle, or Eiffel Tower.
Tonight, the annual Vetrarhátið, or Winter Festival, begins in Reykjavík. Hallgrímskirkja will be lit up in fantastic colored lights synchronized to live pipe organ music broadcast outside the church. A ton of other things will be going on as well: gallery opeings, dance performances, light shows by the lake, concerts, etc. Fun for everyone all weekend long. Icelanders love to find reasons to hold festivals!
Stark Beauty
The cemetery is full to bursting with the history of Reykjavik etched on headstones and buried deep in the earth. Though no new burials take place here, relatives still leave flowers and candles on the plots of their departed loved ones, traditionally on Christmas Eve.
I highly recommend taking a serene and contemplative stroll through this historical urban wilderness...
Grafarholt Used to Be a Barren Windswept Hill
This is out in Grafarholt (section 20 on the linked map), one of the newer developments in the Greater Reykjavik area. Nice shot, pretty sky, but the reason I took this pic is because there's a funny little story behind it...
A few years ago when construction first started on this rise, I was driving past it with my girlfriend Eva. She was gazing out the window, then let loose a heavy sigh.
"What's up?" I asked her.
"Memories," she replied.
"Not good ones, it sounds like."
"Mmm. Well, about four or five years ago I was working for the city, with the work program they have for teenagers each summer. I was stationed out here, at Grafarholt, every day for a month. It was freezing cold and very windy and just awful. My back hurt, my hands froze. Pure labor. For less than minimum wage."
"What were you doing?"
"We were planting trees. Hundreds of trees."
"Where, though?"
"There." She pointed up at the raw land, speckled with earth movers bulldozers, being readied for development. "That's the thing: they've torn them all up. They're all gone."
Ahh, progress.
Lakagigar - the Laki craters
June 8, 1783
Dead: About 9,000-10,000
Damage: Historians noted haze from the eruption as far away as Syria, one-quarter of human population died in Iceland. [plus nearly a third of all livestock].
(source: nationalgeographic.com)
I just received my latest National Geographic in the mail, always a happy event (my father has been renewing my subscription for the past twelve years or so...thanks, Pabbi!).
While reading the "World by Numbers" page by volcanologist Chris Newhall, I thought to myself how funny it is that Icelanders seem to think they have the corner on the volcano market; one glance at an international mag like NG serves to remind that the Earth's crust is splitting and bubbling and spewing all over the place, and not just in our little corner of the world. But "The Land of Fire and Ice" is our unofficial national slogan, and this ironic glacier-meets-volcano attitude seems to have informed the country's consciousness in the past few decades, for better or for worse. We seem to ignore the fact that other snowy mountains in other lands have spewed lava before, and most probably will again, i.e. that it's not just an Icelandic phenomena.
So while I was musing over Icelander's tendency toward superlatives and toward seeing the whole world through very local eyes, I flipped the pages of the mag to the "Who Knew?" page where, to my surprise, I found the following tidbit:
Fire and Ice
It wasn't until 1784 that a scientist suggested that volcanic eruptions could affect global climate. It was a year after the Laki fissure zone in Iceland erupted fort eight months - the greatest outpouring of lava in historic time...That scientist was none other than Benjamin Franklin.
-Heidi Schultz
So there I had it: "greatest." Another superlative to add to the list of bests, mosts, cleanests, biggests, smallests, fewests, firsts, etc that pepper Icelanders' proud commentary on their country, plus the national Tag Line in bold print, and a bit of Ben Franklin, to boot. It reminded me that very often we can justify our cheeky self-regard and almost overwhelming hubris.
What we do have every right to be proud of is the fact that we somehow survived this terrible, drawn-out eruption. Wikipedia offers the following quote:
"This said week, and the two prior to it, more poison fell from the sky than words can describe: ash, volcanic hairs, rain full of sulfur and salt peter, all of it mixed with sand. The snouts, nostrils, and feet of livestock grazing or walking on the grass turned bright yellow and raw. All water went tepid and light blue in color and gravel slides turned gray. All the earth's plants burned, withered and turned gray, one after the another, as the fire increased and neared the settlements."
(Rev. Jón Steingrímsson, Fires of the Earth, The Laki Eruption (1783-1784)
Somehow, some of us survived those few hundred years ago and have found a way to keep our rightfully-proud culture alive.
By the way, if you take the highlands bus while here during the summer, seeing the Lakagígur and Eldgjá region are a must!
photo courtesy of Yann Arthus-Bertrand
Witch
This shot is, of course, of my little witchy-poo, Valentína. She went out with her two girlfriends to con candy from shop owners by singing little songs, and came home with quite a sugar-haul.
She'd left her pointy hat and broom at home due to wild weather outdoors, and only had the sprayed-black hair and goth makeup of her costume left. "Mamma," she said, "when we sang, they kept asking if I was supposed to be Björk!" I thought when I took this shot that something seemed a little familiar...!
Fleet
Hvalur = Whale
This is Iceland's decomissioned whaling fleet, four ships in all. They were retired in the mid-eighties and sit as relics of another, more ignorant era.
But Iceland's involved in this "scientific" whaling business, isn't ?
Yes, it is. Other ships are used. Read this very responsibly-written piece on the history of whaling in Icelandic waters to get a better idea of what the bigger picture is. Make sure you click on the "more info" link at the end of the page.
This is a very volatile and complex issue for the nation, and one not to be easily resolved.
Deconstruction
UEA at least seems to have weathered the times a bit better than this building down by the shipyards of Reykjavík, but then again Icelanders haven't historically invested much expense or energy in erecting structures with millennia of usage in mind.
Houses and buildings go up, suffer pounding artic winds and salt corrosion for sixty years or so, then come down, replaced by fresh and more modern architecture. Very literally, the city of Reykjavík did not begin to emerge as more than a gathering of iron-clad timber dwellings until a century and a half ago. We have no indiginous architectural history aside from turf houses, though some would say our brightly-painted corrugated roofs count as local tradition.
Buildings like the one above were erected during the great Cod Boom of the Forties, and were purely a matter of form following function. Icelandic industry reached it's apogee after the Second World War, and cement in all it's variations helped fulfill the Nation's need for immediate urban development. Cement and rebar became the structural stuff of dreams, housing the hopes and visions, the industry and determination of the Icelandic people as they vaulted into the modern world with vigor.
Joy Ride
Troll
(Be the first on your block to own your very own Icelandic viking troll! Sure to thrill the kids and intrigue the neighbors! Add a touch of real Nordic culture to your home!)
Honestly, the Rammagerðin store on Laugavegur at Skólavörðurstígur (near the Elves Hall) has put this cheery guy outside their store with a price tag in the above-mentioned amount, presumably with shipping and handling included...
Norwich
This year I was lucky enough to have an excellent adventure drop in my lap. I was graciously invited to a Nordic Translators Symposium at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England by FILI, the Finnish Literature Information Center in concert with the British Centre for Literary Translation. The fifteen or so guests from the UK and Scandinavia were very well taken care of, and we were offered an enlightening series of lectures and discussions on the state of literary translation in the UK today.
Summation? It seems everyone could read a book or two more on life in another land, and should, and that there are some very wild and talented translators out there working faithfully to bring the literary universe to the English-speaking public (you know who you all are...wink wink!)
Would anyone out there like to read good Icelandic books in English? Let me know your thoughts...
William's Castle
Ancient Humor
All you that do this place pass bye
Remember death for you must dye
As you are now even so was I
And as I am now so shall you be.
Thomas Gooding here do staye
Wayting for God's judgement daye.
The Adam and Eve
I highly recommend this local. We were well served and very gently and politely removed after being tolerated well after last call. Try the Old Peculiar on tap...good stuff.