Coloniser Notes Colonisation: Danes Say Iceland Is An Oligarchy

This Saturday, Denmark’s oldest newspaper, Berlingske Tidende, ran a story it had been working on for months. The topic: the Icelandic fisheries industry. The conclusion: Iceland is an oligarchy.

Berlingske’s story sites numerous Icelandic sources, some anonymous, some current Alþingi MPs, and the sitting minister for Finance, Daði Már Kristófersson, in its depiction of the Icelandic fisheries industry as something that by now is “eating the [Icelandic] democracy from the inside” and furthermore describing the fisheries industry as using “fear, control and political influence” to wield power in Icelandic society. The story also specifically cites the case of fisheries giant Samherji while putting the power of the Icelandic fisheries companies into the context of declining press freedom in Iceland (the fisheries interest owns Iceland’s only daily paper), compared to the other Scandinavian countries, along with a higher ranking for corruption on other international lists.

Overall, the Berlingske story is just a repetition of things already well established; stories and facts reported on in Iceland by various media outlets, including ours, over the past few years. The Danish newspaper has however done one thing no Icelandic media could have done without being accused of hyperbolic framing (trust us, we tried), named the thing described as what it is: an oligarchy that is dangerous to Iceland’s democracy.

There is something specifically unpleasant for Icelanders that this truth is being uttered out loud in a newspaper that was founded while Denmark’s control over Iceland was at its most oppressive in the mid 18th century. At the same time, it makes sense that it takes a Dane to point out the obvious, when nobody else can or will. It was, of course, H. C. Andersen, a Dane, who wrote the now-famous story called “The Emperor’s New Clothes” (hint, he wasn’t wearing any).

Illustration by Halldór Baldursson

As noted above, The Reykjavík Grapevine covered one of the biggest fisheries companies in Iceland, Samherji, last spring in an article titled “A Poisonous Story of Corruption.” It talks about the company’s initiations of the biggest bribery scandal in Iceland’s history (no charges have been brought against the company as of yet) and discusses the company’s power, impunity, and how it has actively tried to suppress media coverage in Iceland of their activities. Incidentally, Berlingske ran a follow-up story yesterday about how two men, Páll Steingrímsson and Páll Vilhjálmsson, tried to discourage Berlingske’s journalist, Emil Eire Frerk Olsen, from pursuing his story on the Icelandic fisheries companies in general, and on Samherji specifically. This happened subsequently to the journalist reaching out to Samherji for comment on the upcoming story. Samherji didn’t comment, but one of the two Páll named above admitted to having heard of the journalist’s research from Samherji. These are tactics Icelandic journalists who’ve written about Samherji are all too familiar with, as our 2025 story also covers.

Check out the Berlingske story here. It is paywalled (and in the King’s Danish).