While the Wall Street financial crisis gripped the world Icelanders woke up one day to find that the Icelandic state had forcibly taken over the country's 3rd biggest bank, Glitnir. The worry is now that one of the two larger banks could also fail and the state wouldn't have the resources to do anything as the two remaining of the big 3 have assets totaling 10 times the GDP of Iceland. While the Central Bank claims it was the only option in a bad situation, prior bad blood between one of the Central Bank's directors, a former Prime Minister, and the main owner of Glitnir have some wondering if Icelanders have just been witness to "the biggest bank robbery in Icelandic history." [Warning: The story you are about to read may make you reconsider the verisimilitude of soap operas]
posted on Oct 3, 2008 - View this thread

Jónas Hallgrímsson (1807-45) was an Icelandic Romantic poet and natural scientist. Dick Ringler, a professor at The University of Wisconsin, has a site that contains 50 poems and prose texts by Jónas in parallel English/Icelandic versions. Also on the site, a guide to traditional Icelandic verse, a biographical sketch of the poet and a map of Iceland with places Jónas wrote about marked. Here's his short Above the Ford: The cliffs on life's swift current/are cleft by shallow valleys./Masses have queued to cross there ---/crowds of billy-goat milkers./We'll go upstream, God willing,/to walk the hawk-high ridges/and pitch ourselves --- impetuous ---/plumb in the roaring torrent! [Today is Iceland's Independence Day]
posted on Jun 17, 2007 - View this thread

Bomb Iceland instead of Iran is the modest proposal of Princeton Professor of Political Economy Uwe Reinhardt in today's Daily Princetonian. Some enterprising Aussies are way ahead of him on that one. Heck, it wouldn't even be the first time the U.S. and Britain occupied Iceland. [via RÚV, the Icelandic state broadcaster]
posted on Apr 9, 2007 - View this thread