The Last King Of Iceland: Coming To Terms With Davíð Oddsson’s Legacy

In early 2003, Prime Minister Davíð Oddsson and Foreign Minister Halldór Ásgrímsson added Iceland to George W. Bush’s Coalition of the Willing, giving whatever minor support this country would muster to the invasion of Iraq. Notable Icelanders bought a full-page ad in The New York Times, (and the Reykjavík Grapevine), headlined “Not in Our Name.” “Afturhaldskommatittir!” was Davíð’s response in a speech, only “afturhaldskommatittir” would be opposed to the invasion, he claimed — a neologism translated in this paper as “Reactionary Commie Losers.”

A cynical observer might claim that the reactionary commie loser reaction was not just too little, too late — the ad appeared in January 2005, nearly two years after the invasion — but mere posturing, virtue signalling even, avant la mode. Regardless, it stands out as a reminder of a bygone age of innocence. Apart from Iceland’s own cod wars against the U.K., the country had until then remained neutral in all military conflicts, even, controversially, throughout WWII.

Privileged by their own literal isolation, Icelanders’ prevailing attitude to military ventures could be described as ironically detached pacifism. Good-Soldier-Svejk-ism, perhaps. Seeing warfare as foolishness, at best, was considered self-evidently correct, needing no further examination. This is an island of peace, people could say. We like peace. We support peace. We might even spread peace.

“Being Western was not as self-evident for Icelanders then as it may seem these days.”

In 2003, Iceland partook in an illegal and unjustified invasion of a distant country. However symbolic and otherwise inconsequential our support may have been, the invasion of Iraq was, in a sense, the modern republic’s first taste of blood. Many have had a hard time forgiving Davíð Oddsson for his hard-headed leadership in that venture. His wager was that the support would gain us favour in the White House, and ensure the lasting presence of the U.S. Navy in Keflavík, a base which was strategically important throughout the Cold War but seemed less relevant at the turn of the century. Holding on to the military base was a matter of employment, yes, but also of a worldview, performing Westernness.

The West

Being Western was not as self-evident for Icelanders as it may seem these days. Russian Ladas were still a common sight on Reykjavík’s streets, and Polish Prince Polo chocolate wafers lingered as a default choice for a snack. All that was superficial and decorative, though, compared with the substantial presence of an actual military. As bodies piled up in Iraq and beyond, evermore Icelanders felt uneasy about Davíð’s bargain: How many children did we bomb today? Are employment figures in Keflavík worth it?

On the face of it, Davíð lost his wager in 2006, when the U.S. Navy left its base in Keflavík without much ado (leaving local authorities defenceless when the public rioted against authorities two years later — more on that in a while). Fast forward two decades, however, and it becomes clear that in a deeper sense, Davíð has won. In those 20 years, Icelanders’ attitude to warfare has shifted drastically, in a way that many now describe as increased maturity. We get it now, we are not naive, we are grown-ups and will defend, even celebrate, Iceland’s participation in whatever wars may come our way.

“What matters is to bow your head when you meet whoever has the biggest gun. Once you get used to it, you stop even noticing.”

This attitude now seems just as self-evident as the country’s principled pacifism seemed during earlier days. Whether upgrading aircraft hangars in Keflavík to support nuclear-capable bombers, spending small fortunes to donate ammunition to Ukraine, militarising the local tech sector, actively developing AI drone control systems for military use, software solutions for NATO, Ukraine and beyond, or allocating 1.5 percent of the country’s GDP to such matters, the government, the opposition and an apparent majority of the public seem genuinely shocked if they hear anyone doubting the merits of thus becoming a “worthy ally.”

At the time of this writing, in the wake of our ally’s war of aggression against Iran, it remains unclear whether 140 or 165 or 180 children were killed when a bomb hit a girls’ school in Minab. It is also unclear whether that bomb was dropped by U.S. or Israeli forces. This will not shake our resolve, though. The current administration knows, and the opposition knows, what Davíð knew before them, that in the grand scheme of things, this does not matter. What matters is to bow your head when you meet whoever has the biggest gun. Once you get used to it, you stop even noticing.

The Jester

Before Davíð Oddsson, the politician, there was Davíð Oddsson, the comedian. Many have attested to what they considered his promising future as an author. In his early and mid-twenties, Davíð wrote and performed for the popular radio programme Útvarp Matthildur, satirising Icelandic society, not least its politicians and bureaucrats, their mannerisms and stagnant ways, left and right. Davíð and his coworkers found no shortage of material. The 1970s and 80s feel nostalgic for those who weren’t there.

Everyone knows about the beer ban. Less known are the chocolate restrictions. Icelanders’ fondness for the aforementioned Polish chocolate wafer Prince Polo, by default accompanied by a bottle of Coca-Cola, was not exactly a matter of taste, as much as it was designed through import restrictions. To protect local producers of chocolate, chocolate imports were generally forbidden. Exemptions were decided on at the highest level of authority. And there was one. For anyone wanting a cocoa-flavoured snack, Prince Polo was the whole menu.

Take it as a synecdoche, a part to represent the whole. Life in Iceland was restricted in various ways. Some say the lack of choice didn’t much bother people. But it was certainly mockable. While Davíð the comedian made fun of a society running past its expiration date, Davíð the upcoming politician also evangelised the changes ahead, as a contributor to the periodical Eimreiðin, an entertaining publication which, in between lighter reading, brought readers’ attention to the works of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek.

The changes ahead? Less restrictions. More fun. At the age of 25, Davíð joined Reykjavík City Council and, a decade later, he became mayor. His highly disputed major construction projects, Perlan and City Hall, have since become iconic and integral to Reykjavík’s cityscape.

Just as memorable was the party Davíð threw to celebrate Reykjavík’s 1986 bicentennial, including the largest cake in Iceland’s history and a grand outdoors concert featuring all that year’s most popular acts. The whole thing was televised, and for a kid in Iceland’s countryside it made Reykjavík look almost mythically jocular, a place akin to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Politics as spectacle, the critics would say. Ritual gatherings — and monuments — essential to communal belonging, supporters might respond.

More to the tune of Davíð’s ideological commitments was the privatisation of Bæjarútgerð Reykjavíkur, a fisheries firm established by the municipality in 1947, expanded in 1959, and sold off in 1985.

The Keys

The death of Davíð Odddson was announced on March 2. Among those who commented on his passing that same day was prominent author Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl, recounting how, in 2004, he cut out a page from a newspaper with a captioned photograph of Prime Minister Halldór Ásgrímsson just to remind himself that Davíð no longer served that role. Eiríkur claims to have kept that reminder on his wall for a decade.

If it seemed somewhat inconceivable to our generation that anyone else would become prime minister, it was not just because Davíð served the role for a very long time and not just because that time coincided with our formative years — in 1991, when Davíð was handed the keys to Prime Minister’s Office, Eiríkur and I were both 12 years old. When he let go of them, in 2004, we were 26. It wasn’t just that. Davíð seemed to prime minister so fully. He embodied his role, its power and his policies in an authoritative, if not outright authoritarian, manner, creating the feeling that power was not just a question of mandate, but something that resided in a person.

“He embodied his role, its power and his policies in an authoritative, if not outright authoritarian, manner, creating the feeling that power was not just a question of mandate, but something that resided in a person.”

Equating a person with their mandate in that way is not, essentially, a democratic sentiment, as his opponents could have pointed out. Or as their guts might have said, in any case. It was a gut feeling, more than ever articulated. On the contrary, said his admirers: Davíð is that rare democratic figure of a ruler who, once in power, works diligently towards curbing his own powers.

In the role of prime minister, Davíð’s major accomplishments were twofold. Relinquishing to the demand of his first coalition partner, Social Democrat Jón Baldvin Hannibalsson, Davíð led Iceland to join Norway’s and Liechtenstein’s EEA agreement with the EU. Bye bye chocolate restrictions, hello Polish industrial workers, bye bye retired grandmothers and the permanently disabled, gone off to Spain, hello exchange students and multinational staff in all service jobs.

The Good Years

And hello privatisation, Davíð’s second major accomplishment. One by one, Davíð sold off all sorts of businesses run by the state. A ferroalloy factory, a fertiliser factory, the major construction company Íslenskir aðalverktakar, a fish farming company, a mineral wool factory, an investment bank, and the public phone company. The process reached its zenith by the end of 2003, when the last remaining stocks of the state’s two major banks, Landsbanki and Búnaðarbanki (later collapsed under the name Kaupthing Bank), were sold off at once. Having accomplished all that, and joined a war, Davíð served as Foreign Minister for a year, while his coalition partner, Halldór Ásgrímsson, took over as Prime Minister, before appointing Davíð as Central Bank Governor.

Meanwhile, Iceland’s wealth, finally free, blasted off. Money, emancipated. In hindsight it was a very brief period, 2004-2008, referred to as the good years while they lasted. Anecdotes? Which banker was it who flew in Elton John to play at his birthday party? Who recruited 50 Cent for his? What was that thing about the Russian mafia? The money laundering, was that ever resolved? Eating gold, they did that, but that was a thing at the time, right, adding gold to all sorts of food? You’ll find the stories elsewhere. If not in print then in hearsay. Some of the excess is only whispered about, if mentioned at all.

The country went on blasting until it didn’t and came crashing down, in the 2008 financial collapse locally known as Hrunið. Politicians’ highest priority was not to be held accountable for any of it. As Central Bank Governor, Davíð Oddsson turned out to have had as little to do with it as anyone else. Not everyone accepted that and Davíð was ousted from his Central Bank chair, one of three key demands of demonstrators in Iceland’s first riot since 1949. In 2009, Davíð was hired as chief editor of Morgunblaðið, Iceland’s oldest, largest and now only daily printed newspaper, where he made a late career of blaming others for Iceland’s woes.

The Ruins

At this moment, we face a situation without precedent in this republic’s brief history, if not most of modern-day Europe’s: politics without the Left. In the most concrete terms, Iceland’s legislative assembly is now without a single member of any leftist party. The Social Democrats are there, for sure, leading the current coalition government. Whatever their impact will be, however, they would not describe their project as socialist, let alone radical. Moderate, centrist, right-leaning in economic matters, they aim to serve as a stabilising force. The Left is absent. Gone. The last election saw the Left Greens obliterated, as well as the more reluctantly leftist Pirate Party. The more recently formed Socialist Party did not reach enough voters to enter Alþingi either. In other words, the ruling coalition and its opposition are safely confined within what used to be the premises of the Right and on some issues the far Right: they are all pro-market, pro-NATO, anti-asylum, etc.

Even before that, however, during the Left-Left administration following the 2008 crisis, as well as during Katrín Jakobsdóttir’s subsequent Left-Right administrations, no policy presented any serious ideological rift with those of Davíð’s years. In fact, many of those who hold tight to their resentment of his person will now find themselves in accordance with most, if not all, of the actual issues he stood for. This is not only true of Iceland’s participation in warfare, as noted above. Davíð’s Independence Party may have laid the ideological groundwork, but it never went so far as actually privatising Iceland’s health care system.

In the last few years, however, through different administrations starving the system to the brink of collapse then calling private clinics to the rescue, a well-established method of piecemeal privatisation seems to be on every political party’s agenda. They all sound worried about it. They don’t, however, change course. Sometimes it sounds as if they blame Davíð for policies they are in fact implementing.

The Scandal

Exempting those currently without representation, it seems we are all Davíð now. We can interpret this in one of two ways: Either Davíð’s legacy, his lasting impact, is all-encompassing and this is now Davíð’s country. Or, alternately, the person who seemed to embody all that power and cause all those changes was, as a more analytically capable friend of mine proposed, never their prime motor.

“Didn’t he just catch the winds that were blowing out there anyway, stealing the gust of the sixties from the Left? Wasn’t Davíð, in fact, more Clinton and Blair than Thatcher? Wasn’t that what made the Left so resentful of him, especially the Social Democrats? They all looked at him and thought: That should be me, up there?” It was a late-night phone call, I had to hurry to bring this piece together, but he went on to say: “I just can’t see any ideological disagreement there. If you look through the debates from those years, they’re all so personal. There was his mafia-style, of course, rumours of his black book, where he kept score of people and so on. But in terms of ideology …”

He challenged me to find an ideologically substantial dispute between Davíð and his opponents. I challenged him back to find a major issue on which any member of Alþingi now would disagree with Davíð back then.

Would Iceland’s supermarkets, without Davíð, have fewer sorts of chocolate on offer? In the absence, not only of a biography but also of a thorough politico-historical analysis of that era, this is hard to tell. I do appreciate the current variety. I would appreciate being able to afford a dentist visit as well. For years, Davíð Oddsson seemed to say: “Capitalism, that’s me.” Many of us gladly accepted that offer. To anthropomorphise neoliberalism. Inequalities. Warfare. The world’s ailments. To project our woes on a person. So we hated him. Davíð, however, is gone, and I still haven’t seen a dentist. The question of Davíð’s legacy remains open.