Those Asshole American/British/Icelanders

Yesterday I posted a blog called Asshole Capitalist. I guess the title caught people's attention because the page got the most hits it ever got in one day. By the way the title is not my invention but was taken from the article "Wall Street on the Tundra"-

The rocks beneath Reykjavík may be igneous, but the city feels sedimentary: on top of several thick strata of architecture that should be called Nordic Pragmatic lies a thin layer that will almost certainly one day be known as Asshole Capitalist.

I think everyone can agree that this is a good title for the current crisis in Iceland and around the world. 

So I did post a few excerpts from the article. And except for the last paragraph, I did it not because I thought they were true, but because I thought they were humorous. Actually the whole angle to Lewis' article was intended to provoke and so I commented as little as possible on it and just put it out there.  And "out there" it stayed without anyone really commenting on it, at least on my blog.  On the blogging network there was plenty of comments- one person even described the Lewis' article as Kreppaklám.( Crisis porn). then right before the day is over this gets posted-

 Hjákátlegt þegar slúðurdálkahöfundur fer í sparifötinn og fer að skrifa um hluti sem hann hefur ekki vit á eða ræður við.  Þett er dæmigerð tröllasaga fyrir trúgjarna og illa upplýsta lesendur þar sem meira er gert með groddalegar rangtúlkanir og afbakanir í trausti þess að lesandinn hafi jafnvel minni þekkingu á málefninu en sjálfur höfundurinn, sem hefur augljóslega hitt í mark hjá Gregg.

Greinin er öll gegnsýrð af þeim hroka og dónaskap sem einkennir alla framkomu engilsaxa þegar þeir heimsækja þjóð sem þeir telja vera fyrir neðan sína eigin í goggunarröðinni, eitthvað sem Gregg augljóslega þjáist af.

Annars hafa íslendingar almennt það orð á sér að vera viðfeldnir og kurteisir, jafnt heima hjá sér og annars staðar, eitthvað sem ekki er hægt að segja um þjóðir eins og bandaríkjamenn og breta sem umturnast í hrokafulla dóna þegar þeir bregða sér útfyrir eigin landamæri.  Ég meina, við hvernig viðmóti býst mannfílan þegar hann gerir sér það að leik að ganga á fólk úti á götu?  Heimboð í kaffi og kleinur?

Annars er þetta karlahaturskjaftæði með eindæmum og ótrúlegt flæðið af greinum sem eru gegnsýrðar af þessu óhefta karlhatri sem  og hvert helvítis fíflið á fætur öðru er að dásama út í gegn.  Þessiúrhrök yrðu æf ef svona væri skrifað um gyðinga, konur, svertingja eða aðra hópa, en ef það er um hvíta karla vætir það brækurnar af hrifningu og hrýn afkátínu.

To which I responded (with the spelling now corrected here)

Bjarni,

Yes! Finally! Someone has the balls to write something with some meat to it.  I thought this blog was going to stay up the whole day without anybody objecting to it.  And you did it in Icelandic too. I almost can't stop smiling. Why doesn't everybody write in Icelandic? I don't do it because I would never want to cause Icelanders that much pain.  I mean they can see I'm reading the news in Icelandic so I must be able to comprehend something. Although to be honest I struggled through what you wrote, what with words like  "karlahaturskjaftæði " (man hating bullshit?). That one is definitely not in the dictionary. 

To be honest I found Lewis's article more entertaining than informative.  And of course he is making some broad generalizations about Icelanders in general and Icelandic men in specific. But all generalizations are built on some small grain of truth and I really can relate to the "bumping into" thing.  Not so much on the street but definitely in a bar.  Every foreigner I know who has lived here for some time will tell the same story.  I have relayed this to my Icelandic friends and they have no idea what I'm talking about.  I could take you to a packed bar in the US or The UK and walk from one end to the other and you would never touch a soul.  And if you did you would most certainly apologize for it. 

Sure British and Americans, especially Americans can be the worst tourists, the ugly tourists.  What I can say here is Icelanders have no problem dishing out the criticism (sometimes quite enjoyably) but are not really good at taking it.  Lewis has a point in saying that the Icelanders ignored criticism of their banks partly because of their cultural superiority complex.  Icelanders will tell you they have the best of everything.  Some of it is true.  The best water, cleanest air, pehaps the most beautiful women, but hey, I lived in California and if I hear one more Icelander tell me that they have the best pot in the world I think I will puke.

And what about this man hating bullshit. Lewis was a bit overboard in this theme , especially "the Icelandic male had a propensity to try to fix something it wasn’t his job to fix." paragraph. I work with Icelanders every day and the reason they try and fix everything is because they usually can. But when it came to the financial crisis even Icelanders themselves were convinced the men were the problem. They immediately put women over two of the three banks, and both Sjálfstæðisflokkur and Samfylking competed to put the first woman prime minister in power to clean up the mess. So again there is a grain of truth in the story.

I do agree that if Lewis had wrote about jews, women, blacks or some other minority in this way it would have created a firestorm.   That is just one of the disadvantages of being a white male. And as disadvantages go that ain't much.

GTB

If there is something I've learned about Icelanders, it is they like to talk to foreigners (well at least they did in the good ol' days) . They like to talk to the British about football and the Cod Wars, and they like to talk to Americans about presidents and all the other wars.  Icelanders like to talk about football, presidents and wars so they can make their own comments about them.  Sometimes these comments can be quite critical.  Believe me, I have taken my fair share of abuse, especially when Bush was president.  Being American or British or anyone from a large country opens you up to criticism for many things, many things you have nothing to do with.  I am used to that.  I could never read other people's blog pages here in Iceland if I wasn't.

If there is something else I've learned (and I noted this to Bjarni) is Icelanders are not very fond of any type of criticism. Scarcastic, humorous, or otherwise. If you ever watched a British (and to a lesser extent American) sitcom you would have to agree they are generally quite funny.  My friends and I have a theory for this. You see the British and Americans are such large and diversified countries that they are used to taking criticism about, well, everything.  And they have learned how to see the truth in the criticism they receive and turn it into humor.  Basically, they have grown tired of everyone else making fun of them and learned how to make fun of themselves.  When you make fun of yourself you are doing so by seeing through the eyes of others and so you learn a little bit, not about yourself, but about everyone else. Ultimately, you gain an understanding of why they are so critical; because there is a small truth to it. 

To be honest the Icelanders, being so small a nation and so isolated, have never really faced any real criticism.  They have mostly been heaped with praise about their history, language, fish management, geothermal energy and so on. Up until the crisis.  When Iceland became a world player financially, they opened the door to not only world praise but world criticism.   Although Lewis' article had some grain of truth to it, I never once thought the trash he was writing was at all serious, just funny.  I can see the humor in it because I can see the Iceland that he was looking at. Icelanders got a small taste of this humor from one of their own when Jón Gnarr and crew did the New Years Eve show (skaup).  This was probably one of the best New Years Eve shows ever but I know plenty of (mainly older) Icelanders who thought it was not funny.  They couldn't see the humor because it was about them and they haven't yet learned how to make fun of themselves.

  There will be whole volumes of books written about the world crisis and Iceland is going to make up several chapters. Icelanders need to grow a tougher skin and get used to criticism because this is only the beginning. Just wait until someone reports on Kaupthing as the new Enron. Then the shit will really hit the fan. Until Icelanders can see the humor in the whole thing they will never be able to see all the small truths that are there and never be capable of learning from them.

GTB  

 

Athugasemdir

[Steinunn (IP-tala skráð) 4.3.2009 kl. 17:27]

Dear Gregg, Icelanders have been telling kreppubrandarar since kreppan hit us so you can hardly say that we dont see the truth in the criticism we received and turned it into humor

[Gregg Thomas Batson (IP-tala skráð) 5.3.2009 kl. 08:03]

Steinunn,

I said it was just a theory.

GTB

[bjarni (IP-tala skráð) 8.3.2009 kl. 01:00]

Blessaður Gregg,

Þú er sérkennilegur dúddi, það verð ég að segja.  Ertu viss um að þú vitir yfir höfðu hvað þú ert að blogga um? Ertu að blogga um ókurteis íslendinga eða húmorslausa íslendinga?  En ég er ákaflega stoltur af því að hafa verið valinn sem dæmi um bæði (eða hvorugt).

En ef það er þér einhver huggun þá eru íslendingar miklir húmoristar, við hreinlega grenjum af hlátri þegar við heyrum dánartölur úr frelsisstríðinu í írak, við skríkjum af kátínu í hvert skipti sem amrísk drápstól murka lífið úr heilli fjölskyldu í brúðskaupsveilsu í Afghanistan, ekkert er eins sexy og pyntingarmyndir úr Abu Grahib og við hrópum hvatningarorð til bræðra okkar og systra í landi frelsis og hugrekkis þegar þeir og þær velja sér morðóða foringja.  Hvað viltu meira? Hér hafa aldrei verið seldir diskar með "dixie chicks" svo við höfum ekki hugmynd um hvað við eigum að brenna til að sýna ykkur samstöðu.  Við fundum jafnvel til samkenndar með ykkur drullusokkunum eftir 911 - svona áður en þið fórðuð að drepa allt og alla í kringum ykkur, umhugsunarlaust og án allar réttlætingar.  En við erum auðvitað húmorslaus fífl af því við föttum ekki plottið, plottið er nefnileg alveg brjálæðislega fyndið, plottið gengur út á það að sætta sig við að amrísk líf eru vermætari en önnur líf.

Svona í alvöru talað, ertu fábjáni?

[Gregg Thomas Batson, 9.3.2009 kl. 08:25]

Bjarni (or is it Bjáni?)

Learn how to read English before you comment. I never said a thing about Icelanders beign humorless and I have no clue how you came to such a stupid conclusion. On the contrary Icelanders can be quite funny unlike yourself. As for your little tirade about Americans, all that shit is quite old news, ang quess what, I've heard it ALL before. I would like to thank you for making my case stronger. I couldn't have paid someone and got a better example of how some Icelanders can dish out criticism but just can't take it. I mean if ignorance was cornflakes you would be Kelloggs.

GTB