Iceland Roundup: Cream Buns, Horse & Tooth, Sugar Tax, Slow News Week, “Colonised By Immigrants”

The Reykjavík Grapevine’s Iceland Roundup brings you the top news with a healthy dash of local views. In this episode, Grapevine publisher Jón Trausti Sigurðarson is joined by Heimildin editor Aðalsteinn Kjartansson and Grapevine friend and contributor to round up the stories making headlines in recent weeks.

On the docket this week:

The past few days, with cold and still weather, saw air quality in Reykjavík plummet;

An Icelandic attorney says that people in Iceland occasionally lose their driver’s licence because they are taking ADHD medication without a prescription;

A person who bought a 13-year-old horse wanted to return it because it had an extra tooth. The case went to consumer court, where the buyer lost. The court noted that the horse seems to have lived with the extra tooth for at least a decade without issue, and therefore, it was not sufficient grounds for returning the horse;

Over the weekend, the Progressive Party, one of Iceland’s oldest political parties, elected a new chair. The winner was Lilja Alfreðsdóttir, a former MP and minister;

Jim Ratcliffe, billionaire owner of Manchester United, publicly said that the U.K. had been “colonised by immigrants”. His comment received widespread pushback in the UK, partly because he doesn’t live or pay tax in the U.K., but in Monaco. Icelanders found the comments somewhat ironic, as Jim Ratcliffe is the single biggest landowner in Iceland, after the state, municipalities, and the church, and has thus, in his own way, been “colonising” Iceland;

The past few weeks have been rough for the reputation of the Icelandic health care system and public health in general. The emergency room in Reykjavík is so full that it barely functions. On top of that, the Minister of Health is considering proposing a sugar tax to battle obesity. Lastly, a poll revealed that 83% of Icelanders want to ban energy drinks so that children cannot buy them.