Now & Then: We Read You, Queer And Clear

Pride in Reykjavík for 32 years

Iceland’s Annual Pride Parade took place on August 9. It was the 27th such parade, with the first, also pictured above, taking place on Sunday, June 27, 1993. Between 1995 and 1999 no Pride Parades took place in Iceland.

Fighting for minority rights requires consistency and patience. In a recent poll, 89 percent of Icelanders said they believed they lived in a country that was queer friendly. Furthermore, TGEU (Trans Europe and Central Asia) announced recently that Iceland had topped the ranking of TGEU’s Trans Rights Index for the second year in a row.

So, pretty good, right? Equality achieved. Mission accomplished. No, not really. Let’s look first to the past. In the early 1980s, Iceland was considered one of the most conservative countries in Europe when it came to LGBTQIA+ rights. And looking towards the future, the fight for LGBTQIA+ rights is far from over in Iceland. In a 2023 poll, aimed at young Icelanders under 18, young boys in particular express suspicion towards trans and queer people in general. Between 26 and 28 percent of boys said that they “disliked” trans people, as opposed to 5-7 percent of the girls polled. While 19 percent of boys claimed to “dislike” gay people in the same poll.

In an interview at RÚV in mid-April this year, Þorbjörg Þorvaldsdóttir, the spokesperson for Samtökin 78, Iceland’s national queer organisation, spoke of a “setback” in LGBTQIA+ rights in Iceland in the past few years, saying that the “discourse has shifted. It has become more common to say things that people generally wouldn’t have said just a few years ago.” While specifically citing comments made by Center Party MP Snorri Másson in this context, she also pointed out that the setback could mainly be attributed to foreign propaganda that undermines LGBTQIA+ rights in Iceland.

Recent polling has also shown that younger people in Iceland are likelier to get their news from algorithm-driven social media while people over 30 consume more mainstream media, which perhaps explains to an extent why younger boys in Iceland poll as having more negative views towards trans and queer people than their elders, and for that matter, girls the same age.

So the fight for LGBTQIA+ rights is far from over. And, unfortunately, will probably never be over. And this is why continuing to celebrate Pride, which in Iceland has become a day of LGBTQIA+ solidarity, is important. It is important to show up there, and to be seen doing that, so that younger generations can see with their own eyes that celebrating other people’s right to be who they are matters.

*This article was updated to fix a factual error on the number of Pride Parades that have taken place in Iceland since 1993.