Iceland Review
Not Coming Home for Christmas
“By the time you read this I’ve either just had my baby, am giving birth or am about to (my due date is Christmas Day). I might also possibly be in an ambulance, stuck in snowdrift somewhere between Blönduós and Akureyri, the so-called Capital of the North.”

These are the best days of our lives
14,400 minutes and counting
“After the game a couple of the parents planned a surprise mystery trip for the team. We received a list of things we needed to bring with us but had no idea where we were going, which only made the trip more fun.”

Icelandish
Has it really been a month?
“Even though I’m only enrolled part-time in my Strategic Management masters programme at the U. of Iceland, the coursework for my two classes have been fairly intense.”

Iceland banking crisis news and more
Flag burned at a protest in Iceland – and Eva Joly signing book
“And today, Eva Joly, Norwegian-born French magistrate, who is a special adviser by the Icelandic government to investigate the banking crisis, was a few hundred feet from the protest, in a bookstore, signing here book.”

When Sirry Jonasdottir found out Icelanders were struggling to send their children to school because of the country’s financial crisis, she’d had enough.

“Parents were calling their children sick for the first days as they couldn’t afford the books or the pencils,” Jonasdottir says. “There was a single mother with three sons and she could not afford to put all of them to school. That really, really, shocked me.”

Jonasdottir, 37, and her partner, Veigar Margeirsson, 37, are two ex-pat Icelanders living in Los Angeles, California. As well as running their music production company, they’ve set up a charity called Silver Lining, to help raise money for fellow Icelanders most affected by the country’s financial crisis.

Since the crisis began in October 2008, on the surface things didn’t look that bad. Yet according to Margeirsson there’s a silent problem running deep. “A lot of people who need this help are extremely embarrassed and ashamed,” he says. “So sometimes it looks like things are not so bad. But when we talk to the people who are giving out the food they say it’s worse than ever.”

One of those groups giving out the food in Iceland is the Family Help Center. They’ve been having 300 families a week use the service according to Jonasdottir. However, with the Christmas period fast approaching, they’re expecting it’s going to be more than double that number for the month of December.

“We hear from the Family Help Center they really are nervous,” she explains. “They know that in December… it’s just going to be needed more than ever because… you want a decent meal on Christmas.”

Charity origins

Back in the summer Jonasdottir and Margeirsson knew Christmas would be a time of increased need. So their charity went from an idea to a functioning non-profit within a month. Their goal is to send the sum of money they collect before the end of the year and hope people abroad can now donate without having to spend an extra $40 wiring the money to Iceland.

Since the charity began donations have come in from all over the world, including Luxemburg, Denmark and other Scandinavian countries.

Margeirsson is also seeing a lot of donations from people that have lost touch with Iceland, who seem to like the fact that somebody is trying to help. “It also shows that even though they’ve been away for a long time… they still sincerely care about their home country,” he says. “Even though we live here we’re still Icelanders.”

Initial donations

The first person to donate to the charity was 33-year-old Karl Jonsson. He’s an Icelander living abroad for the past 12 years, having co-founded a business based out of Singapore, with offices in Irvine, California.

“(I’ve) always been very proud of my country and where I come from. It has been very sad seeing the collapse over the last year,” Jonsson explains. “I felt bad that I couldn’t do anything. It’s not easy to transfer money to Iceland.”

So he opened his wallet to the tune of a few hundred dollars, which with the fall in the value of the Icelandic Krona, can go a long way, he says.

It’s a generous donation, even with the fall of the currency. Margeirsson hopes that many people will give whatever they can give, big or small.

As 2010 approaches then, the problems in Iceland are worse than they have ever been in the last several decades.“Unfortunately… predictions are… it’s not going to get better for a while,” he adds.

For more information on Silver Lining visit: http://www.silverliningcharity.org/

This is a short radio piece introducing the Silver Lining charity. It’s a charity set up in the wake of the Icelandic financial crisis of October 2008. It’s headed by two ex-pat Icelanders who live in Los Angeles, California. Veigar Margeirsson is an Icelandic composer who has created music for many Hollywood movies including Batman Begins, Ironman and The Da Vinci Code. His partner, Sirry Jonasdottir, is the charity operations manager. They took the time to speak with me at length about what Silver Lining is and what its goals are. Another ex-pat Icelander and first person to donate to the charity, Karl Jonsson, also spoke with me. His interview, including the Margeirsson and Jonasdottir interview will become a full audio package with complementing print story in the very near future.

Then throughout the day more media began to appear, all regarding the decision of Iceland’s McDonald’s franchise owner to shut up shop. And that’s an important difference. As Alda Sigmundsdóttir writes in the Guardian newspaper:

They are right that the McDonald’s closure is related to the country’s economic meltdown. The rest is a slight misrepresentation. Thing is, McDonald’s isn’t actually packing up and going home. The Icelandic owners of the McDonald’s franchise have decided to drop it. They will still run a burger joint in the same location, but under a different name – and using only domestic ingredients.

The BBC were next up with a video report entitled: No more Happy Meals for Iceland (har har headline writer, would you like a prize for being so witty! It’s almost as good as the Globe’s “The big whack”).

Rhiannon and Sam, two British ex-pats living in the country, chimed in with these anecdotal tidbits to round out the picture:

I have only ever been to McDonald’s once in Iceland; it was the most expensive burger I have ever eaten. The average cost for a MaccyD´s in England is roughly 4 pounds. Here I paid nearly 10 pounds!

I really want to say this is the last post on the issue, but I don’t think we’ve heard the last of this just yet.

In truth, it doesn´t effect us too much in our everyday lives. Food is more expensive here than in England but it just means you have to learn to cook better and make things last longer. Petrol here, although still expensive, is cheaper than in England. The English media would lead you to believe that people are moaning about the ´crisis´ all the time but they are not. Everyone is just getting on with it.

And…

As for the H1 N1 flu, I am unaware as to whether there is a plan to immunize people. The vaccine is available at the doctor if you want it, but you have to pay for it. Healthcare in Iceland isn´t free like the NHS.

Hats off to her for responding with these words.