musings of an expat in Iceland

A visitor lands in Iceland for the very first time and is immediately struck by the ethereal landscape from nearly every direction. Glancing out the window as the aircraft descends towards Keflavík International Airport, one might wonder if the pilot took a detour to Mars. The land is reddish and rocky in places, with few trees to be seen at all. Driving into Reykjavík (Iceland’s capitol) from the metropolis of Keflavík, one passes a 3,000 year-old lava field covered in thick, soft moss that is comfortable enough to sleep on, and an otherwise lush, verdant landscape — or one covered in snow and ice, depending on the time of year in which one travels. Giant hilltops punctuate the scenery, which is interrupted by signs of life every now and then:  a shopping center in the middle of nowhere, a smattering of summer houses popping up along the sea, the glimmer of tiny cars parked in the distance, looking noticeably out of place. It is a surreal landscape to the distant traveler, no questions about it.

An airplane traveling from New York touches ground in Keflavík in the early morning, sometime around 6:20 AM GMT. Stepping off of the plane, one’s immediate inclination is to gather their luggage and find the nearest passageway that will lead them to their hotel bed for a few decent hours of rest. The airport’s signs and intercom system introduce a seemingly incomprehensible language that is anything but helpful in this moment of need. In the spring and summer, the nearly blinding Scandanavian sunlight is already beaming offensively overhead as if it were already 1 PM. In the hushed sleepiness of winter, it is cold and dark, the rain and sleet fall sideways, and the savage wind ungraciously pummels its visitors, chilling them to the bone, and sometimes pushing their cars off the road as though it were a warning. It is an immediate awareness of one’s new surroundings, and a stark revelation that things seem different here.

There is a certain estimation of this land by outsiders that is premised on notions of purity. The vast, unending openness. The sheer quantity of untouched natural space. The possibility that one might exist for weeks, months, or possibly even years without encountering even a soul. The homogeneity of the human gene pool. The ratio of sheep-to-humans. The glacier water that runs through every home’s faucets. The reality that families might all trace a common connection within seven generations. The small population speaking a language that is guarded like a priceless treasure.  The tight-knit social circles that begin during early childhood, foreclosing the need to introduce any new acquaintances later on.  The ratio of non-creatives living among a swelling sea of creatives who are known for their creating. The lack of a military  presence at all.

Yet underneath the emblematic characteristics that distinguish Iceland from most places, there is a fundamental lack of recognition that there might be the very same kinds of people here with the very same kinds problems as there are anywhere else on earth. The ennui and listlessness might have been prodded by its isolation and cultural distances, but the results are either creation or destruction, just as they are anywhere. Maybe they are felt a little differently within a society of 319,000, is all.

The banks, borrowing from U.S. economic theories, hedged their bets and gambled away a sum amounting to more than 10 times the nation’s GDP. There were no bailouts because there wasn’t enough money with which to bail them out. Lawyers, bankers, and politicians alike were complicit in pilfering what was left of a growing economy, until there was nothing left to take. To date, virtually no one has been charged in connection with their behaviors, which caused the nation’s unprecedented economic collapse.

Ranger Rovers and iPhones are marks of economic status (or imbecility, depending on how you look at them), meant to demonstrate just how much one is willing to pay for a thing that costs much more than it ought to, when also considering added VAT and duties. Drivers are reminiscent of those on the New Jersey Parkway — brazen and senseless — but often without the savvy. Gas costs the equivalent of $9.95 per gallon, yet the presence of monstrous SUV’s is still frequent. Sex trafficking has become a common part of the news vernacular, as have sexual assaults and rape. Theft and robberies happen. Homicide happens, though less frequently than it does elsewhere. Teenagers are irreverent and foolish. Twenty-somethings drink too much.

Crime happens. Drugs happen. Drug-related crimes happen. The gang culture in Iceland has flourished over the last decade, much to Iceland’s chagrin, which is often attributed to an influx of foreigners over the last decade or so, and an increase in drug production and use. Yes, there are gangs even in Iceland, the land of miniature horses that resemble a caricatured species straight out of The Neverending Story. Most of the gangs are named after the U.S. and/or Mexican cartels and clans. There are the Hell’s Angels, the Mongols, the Bambitos, the . There are the Lithuanian, Russian, and Polish gangs, whose names I don’t know. Their headquarters are nestled in quiet neighborhoods with families and children, with signs hanging outside as though they’re just another local business. They have been known to smuggle guns into the country, where guns are generally prohibited, so that even the police don’t carry them. The increase in narcotics and marijuana production here has been attributed to the gang culture, as have the surge in amphetamine use and violence. They have been linked to robberies, money-laundering, human trafficking, and prostitution, among other things, though the accuracy of attribution and reporting here is often a subject of debate.

Svartur á leik, which translates to Black’s Game, gives us a glimpse of the Icelandic gang culture, circa 1999, though if there is one thing to take away from the movie, it is that not much has changed in the years since then. Heralded as one of Iceland’s best films in a very long time, and one that has actually been translated into English subtitles, the critics have been mostly right. The movie is set primarily in the weeks leading up to the new millennium — the ringing in of something new — and is loosely based on a series of real-life events that happened around that time, in the mid-to-late 1990′s, when the country’s gang culture went from something small and mostly comical, to a violent underground of ruthless, aimless thugs.

The main character, Stébbi “Psycho” (Thorvald David Kristjansson) falls into the world of drugs and crime after reconnecting with his childhood friend, Tóti (John Haukur Johannesson), outside of the police station in Reykjavík where he was released from following a hard night of partying downtown and a subsequent brawl. In need of a lawyer who might help get him out of possible criminal charges, Tóti, who began his career as a debt collector for a local drug ring, offers to help on the condition that Stébbi do him a favor: break into an apartment under surveillance by the police and who knows whoever else, and recover a stash of drugs that could be hidden anywhere inside. But don’t get caught. And so Stébbi begins a descent into a world in which he is expected to do all sorts of crazy things, all while he is consistently high. When the shady and notably insane Bruno (Damon Younger) returns from Denmark and walks into the picture, things get particularly strange as Tóti and Bruno decides to take over the local drug market. Stebbi quickly loses control of his life after becoming enmeshed in a series of schemes that eventually go very wrong.

In a sense, there is nothing terribly original about this movie. It is an Icelandic take on the gangster genre à la Casino or Goodfellas: there are men who fall into bad things that involve drugs and crime and greed and lunacy. There is the token female who is glamorous and objectified. It takes the pace of a violent thriller, with the soundtrack and camera direction complementing a twisted yet compelling plot. But what keeps people virtually on the edge of their seats while watching this film is not so much the plot itself as it is the slow realization — and settling stupor — that this all takes place here, that it is happening here in the place where babies are still left to sleep outside by themselves, where the longest jail sentence one can receive is 16 years, where people generally don’t kill other people.

On the one hand, the film probably overdramatizes the gang culture here, like the media and police have been accused of doing, too. If there isn’t a lot of crime going on generally, then why not focus on something that seems to be a tangible problem (example: there are gangs and drugs) in need of tangible solutions (example: police need tasers and guns to protect the citizenry), even though there hasn’t been a single shooting attributable to gang activity? On the other hand, one of the gangs’ head honchos is currently in jail for trying to sever the fingers of a woman who allegedly owed him a debt. It seems as though the next logical step would at some point involve an assault with a gun.

I image that in many places, it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly why someone joins a gang. After all, there are probably all kinds of reasons why people engage in criminal activity: boredom, desperation, mental infirmity, a dare, a need to fit in, or maybe because they’re just a jerk. Living in New York City for many years, and at one point, a couple of blocks away from a local gang in Brooklyn, I sometimes wondered whether members joined simply for the feeling of comaraderie and kinship, much like people do with fraternities on college campuses in the U.S., except that people in gangs back home tend to have less privileges in life than a college education. Or maybe it has something to do with territories and safety — an agreement to watch over one another. Perhaps it has little to do with a primary intention to engage in criminal activity at all.

In Iceland, there aren’t violent, dangerous neighborhoods with high crime rates in them. The standard of living remains quite well overall, even despite the status of the economy and the ensuing inflation. For foreigners living here, the reality can be different, although possibly better than their prior living situations to justify staying here. Still, people can attend university for cheap, and one need not worry that their medical needs won’t be covered.  It seems mostly that the activity here boils down to boredom and/or an involvement with drugs than with an acknowledgement that one’s opportunities seem unreachable. It seems to boil down to these things, but maybe it isn’t that easy to speculate.

Svartur á leik is based on a novel with the same title written by Stéfan Már, who, in recent interviews, has indicated that the world depicted in the story reflects a world that is larger in scope — it defines a transitory period in Icelandic culture that went from something now reflected upon as innocent and pure to something that is considered less so, but what that means isn’t exactly clear. It wasn’t so long ago that this country was rather poor, when the living standards were significantly different than they are now, and especially different than they were in the pre-economic collapse days of 2007, when more people than many lived beyond their means, and excess became an accepted way of life.

In the last two decades in Iceland, there has been a significant diversification of the markets, with less reliance on traditional industries such as fishing and farming, and new sectors forming and evolving, like software, energy, and finance. New start-ups seem to pop up every month. In 1994, Iceland joined the EU through the EEA Agreement and, at least technically, opened its doors to foreigners from sister nations. As a result, Iceland has had one foot in the EU and one foot at home in terms of legal and regulatory matters. The financial sector has transitioned from one that is government controlled to one that is increasingly based on neo-liberal policies, creating greater friction and distance in the standards of living in this society. There are haves and there are have-nots, hierarchies of privilege, and there are those with a lesser ability to rise above their current conditions. There is an increasing sense of tension among these groups of people.

In Svartur á leik, the ringing in of a new millennium signifies the ringing in of a new reality for Iceland — a new future which, for better or for worse, has lead us to where we are now. And maybe there’s not much point in looking back anymore, because like finger pointing, where does nostalgia really get anyone? Of course, there are neuroscientists who would suggest that nostalgia is a built-in survival mechanism that our evolved brains have developed to keep us on track, to keep us motivated while longing for something that no longer exists, and its inaccessibility makes it alluring. But there is something to the way that our minds trick us into believing in something different, something more. Perhaps it’s not so much a yearning to go back, but a way of making sense of the present by understanding how we’ve dealt with difficulties in the past, and even surmounted them. But as time moves on, the past has limited utility in guiding us, because there are new variables introduced to our lives, like the way cloned animals become distant replicas of their original selves. That’s not to say that we should accept gun culture and violence as though they are as common as the schizophrenic arctic weather. No. But we also cannot pretend that things will ever be the same again, and that moving forward isn’t the only path to be taken.

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