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Iceland Becomes You: Four Former Refugees Relay Their Stories
Biljana Boloban Nationality: Serbian Age: 21 Year of arrival: 2001 Biljana arrived in Iceland with her mother, father, and younger sister, who was five at the time. The family were refugees even in her earliest memories, she says. Thus, coming to Iceland—where…
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Anti-Refugee Folks: No Thanks, We Don’t Need Your “Warnings”
You may have noticed Iceland’s been making international headlines lately when it comes to refugees, and with good reason. Shortly after we reported that a grassroots movement had started here to pressure the government to bring in more refugees, the story spread…
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Never Underestimate The Obvious
To answer a question posed in this column little over a month ago: yes, it seems that we did detain a man for carrying HIV. Racist histrionics The man referred to, late July, in headlines such as “Suspected Of Infecting Women With…
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Did We Just Detain A Man For Carrying HIV? —Debates On Monday #24
“Man under arrest, suspected of infecting women with HIV” ran Vísir’s first headline on this story, early Thursday. “Suspected of infecting women with HIV” headlined RÚV a little later. “A foreign male is suspected …” their item began. Vísir’s second headline, published…
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Leoncie Claims Gay Rights Association Is Behind Death Threats
That’s a bold headline. Well, in fact, it’s a bold claim. This 20 minute interview with Leoncie put me in a weird position: there was no way to extract any quote without the complete context of the interview. On April 27, Leoncie…
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Young Social Dems Launch #OccupySaga
In response to repeated statements of intolerance from radio station Útvarp Saga, the Young Social Democrats have proposed a day for everyone to call in. Útvarp Saga – in particular, their flagship show Línan laus (“The line is open”) – made headlines…
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A Letter On Icelandic Racism, That Doesn’t Bloody Exist.
Dear Grapevine, Those few articles on Icelandic racism posted on this website recently have greatly annoyed me. Let me explain myself. I am Dutch. “Ohhh, she’s white, she doesn’t know what racism is.” Oh please. I’m Dutch Caribbean: an Antillean. I have…
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Icelandic People Are Not Racist, But…
You probably know that when a sentence begins, “I am not a racist, but…” the second part of that sentence is usually destined to be pretty racist (which is the polar opposite of when people say, “Well, I am no scientist, but…”…
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Progressive Wants “All Muslims Out” Of Iceland
A municipal representative for the Progressive Party believes Iceland’s Muslims are “rapists and perpetrators of violence”. When reached by the media to elaborate, he refused to comment. Stundin reports that Rafn Einarsson, a representative for the Progressive Party on the Breiðholt neighbourhood…
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Red Cross Campaign Encourages People To “Be Nice” To Immigrants
The Red Cross in Iceland has started a campaign called “Vertu Næs” (“Be Nice”), which encourages Icelanders to “respect people in the country irrespective of origin”. “There are about 320,000 inhabitants in Iceland and 10% of them, around 30,000 individuals, are of…
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Progressive Campaign Manager: Refugee “Slave Owner And Pimp”
The campaign manager for the Progressive Party in Reykjavík has declared Nigerian asylum seeker Tony Omos to be a “slave owner and pimp”. This is also not the first time he has spoken openly against ethnic minorities in Iceland. Stundin reports that…
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WHOEVER KEEPS TREATING IMMIGRANTS LIKE SHIT, YOU NEED TO STOP THAT
Every now and again, we’ll get letters from immigrants to Iceland. A lot of the time, those letters will relay stories of horrible treatment those immigrants have received at the hand of unscrupulous locals. After years of receiving such missives, it has…
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Until Friday, Icelandair’s Hotel Marina Served “Apartheid” Cocktail
Hotel Reykjavík Marina, owned by Icelandair, has apologised for the name of its “Apartheid” cocktail, after the online medium Africa Is A Country tweeted about it, submitting a photograph as evidence: The Apartheid cocktail, on sale at the Marina Hotel, Reykjavik (owner:…
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Police Officer Wants Limits On Immigrants’ Right To Privacy
Police officer Birgir Örn Guðjónsson, colloquially known as Biggi the cop, wrote an article, published in Fréttablaðið/Vísir on Thursday, under a title which may be loosely translated as “The Forbidden Article”. Birgir shares an anecdote about a man “of foreign origin” who,…
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Former PM Regrets 1968 Racist Remarks
Former Prime Minister Geir H. Haarde says that regrets and feels ashamed by racist remarks he made in a school paper at the age of 17. Geir’s article, “Maladies in our Society” resurfaced earlier this year. Its final paragraphs consist of explicitly…
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Minister Promises Law Against Racial Discrimination
Welfare Minister Eygló Harðardóttir has announced that, come next fall, the Ministry intends to propose legislation against racial discrimination. This was reported by RÚV. According to RÚV, ‘the notion of equal rights’ will thereby be ‘extended, making it also apply to race…
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Racist Textbook Pulled After Vocab Lesson Posted On Facebook
A primary school textbook teaching racist terminology has been pulled from classes at the Varmárskóli school in Mosfellsbær after father Jón Geir Jóhannsson posted a photograph of his daughter’s nightly vocab lesson on Facebook, Vísir reports. “It’s self-evident that this was a mistake—we…
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Are Icelanders Racist?
I never intended to actually write this piece. It started off as a joke, in a bar, after a bizarre incident with an extremely drunk Icelander. My group—a Brit, an Australian and two Americans—was sitting in the corner, minding our own business,…
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Seeking Foreigners
Once upon a time, the Reykjavík Grapevine was packed with Germans, Dutchmen, Finns, Canadians, and the occasional American crank, all joining together to voice our curiosities about Iceland and to try to create a community of foreigners interested in sticking around for…