Our stats this issue may be grim, but there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation. The murder of Hafnarfjörður resident Hannes Helgason on August 15 has put the topic in everyone’s brain, particularly for its unusual circumstances in this country. In an interview with Fréttablaðið on August 21, criminologist and professor at the University of Iceland Helgi Gunnlaugsson said that this case was particularly special because it is still under investigation. According to the article, most murders in Iceland are solved very quickly as the killer and victim usually have obvious connections, mainly crimes of passion with rapid confessions. The absence of connection between people involved in murder cases usually implies organized crime, however these are also associated with unsolved cases, which there are very few of. Overall, Iceland has an overwhelmingly low murder rate, the lowest of all Nordic countries and one of the lowest in Western Europe. There are also many years in which no murders have been committed at all, so we can usually worry about other things, like the price of beer and the poor quality of vegetables.Check out an interactive graph at www.datamarket.com
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