Republic of Iceland Seventy Years Old Today

Today is 17th June, Iceland’s national day. It is a public holiday and one of the biggest festival days of the year.

There are many official and unofficial events in practically every city, town and tiny village across Iceland. A parade featuring a brass band, the scouts and police in ceremonial uniform are widespread; as are speeches by local officials and a reading by Fjallkonan – the mountain woman. The mountain woman wears an ornate version of the Icelandic national costume, with gold trimmings. Symbolically, she is the spirit of the nation.

In Reykjavík, the ceremony takes place on Austurvöllur Square; where a speech is given by the Prime Minister, and all ambassadors and other diplomats gather. The event is broadcast live and is open to the public (with the exception of the mass in Dómkirkjan cathedral).

Later in the day it is common to find free concerts, public barbecues, displays and exhibitions, and general outdoor merriment.

Luckily the forecast for today is excellent, with temperatures in excess of 20°C forecast in some places.

The 17th June is the day in 1944 on which Iceland declared its full independence from the Danish crown, following a landslide referendum result. Iceland unilaterally held its independence referendum whilst under Allied occupation during the Second World War, and while Denmark was itself under Nazi German occupation. Today marks precisely seventy years since the Republic of Iceland was proclaimed. The 17th of June is also the birthday of Jón Sigurðsson (1811-1879), Iceland’s most famous hero of the 19th Century independence movement. The choice of 17th June was therefore no coincidence.

At the same time as Iceland is celebrating its 70 years of independence that was only possible to achieve because of the American occupation (more correctly described as protection) during WW2 (american forces came here before Pearl Harbor), this oldest and most trusted alliance is drifting apart (rember we were one of handful of countries supporting your Iraq invasion, even though we couldn´t contribute much, it hurt the governing parties politically) because of Obama´s government insistance on snubbing us because of our sustainable approach to our marine resources.

One of those is our abundant whale stocks which we of course harvest like any other, but even though Iceland has one of the worlds best sustainable fishing system (Individual Transferable Quatas) and industry the government is barring our representitives from a big conference they are holding about world´s oceans. A good way to treat allies, and over what? Sensibilities because some animals are more cute than others, and thus should be allowed to put an imbalance on our efforts to sustainable use of our marine resources (if we hunt some, but not other species, the imbalance accumulates).

http://grapevine.is/news/2014/06/12/iceland-snubbed-over-whaling/

Their banking system got screwed over, but did they shift the debt to the taxpayers..?

No.

They bit the bullet and got through the pain fast and are much the better for it.

We have a lot to learn from this tiny country.

Not pure democracy, more like a libertarian heaven (anarcho-capitalist) where the government didn´t have any executive power. There was one weakness in that system, the chieftenships, that were in fact the lawmakers and judges, was a tradable commodity and the hencemen of a foreign power (Norwegian king) slowly and stealthy acquired them, which became easier after taxation was introduced after the establishing of Christianity as a state religion (taxation was through and by the church, the primary instrument of norwegian influence in the country).

But it created nearly 300 years of relative stability in the propably most free society of the time on earth, but then after the loss of the independence the situation slowly deterioated, until after the lowest point in the end of the 17 hundreds (eruptions, diseases and the little ice age which we are finally getting out of and is thus called global warming) we lost about one third of our much reduced population, the ideas of liberty, that the US rebellion had sparked finally made their way hither.

The fight for independence started in 1830 and culminated by the declaration of independence under the protection of the American military the 17. of june 1944.

You can read about the Icelandic Free state (the former independent period of the country) by Miltons Friedmans son here:
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Iceland/Iceland.html

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