Iceland Roundup: Snowpocalypse, Sheep Numbers On The Decline, Corruption, Housing & Prince Andrew

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 Sindri Eldon to round up the stories making headlines in recent weeks.

On the docket this week:

Tuesday saw a record snowfall in Reykjavík — for October, that is — breaking a record from 1921, with 27 centimetres of snow in a single day. The all-time record for snowfall in one day, however, is from February 26, 2017, with 51 centimetres. The snowfall caused massive traffic disruptions in Reykjavík, both because of the sheer volume of snow and because not all drivers had switched to winter tyres;

The National Police Commissioner, Sigríður Björk Guðjónsdóttir, finds herself in potentially job-ending circumstances, after RÚV revealed she had been buying services from a single company over the past five years, for 160 million ISK (roughly 2.7 million ISK a month). Sigríður Björk began purchasing services from this company the month she took office in March 2020. The company in question, Intra, is a one-person operation whose sole employee is Þórunn Óðinsdóttir. The tasks she carried out for the National Police Commissioner ranged from buying office furniture to introducing “lean management” to the police offices, and even helping move the Commissioner’s office between locations. Following a letter Sigríður Björk received from the Ministry of Finance last summer regarding so-called “fake contractors,” Þórunn was hired full-time by the police, as she may have fallen under the criteria of a “fake contractor,” having worked almost exclusively for the police in recent years, and already having a police email account and access to the computer systems;

Last week the government announced its proposals to “fix” the housing market. These include building 4,000 apartments in a new suburb of Reykjavík, deregulating building regulations, and providing funding to non-profit housing companies. The government also plans to tax empty building plots, limit Airbnb availability, and increase taxes on rent and the sale of significant amounts of state-owned real estate;

The Icelandic sheep population has dropped by 100,000 in the past ten years, leaving “only” 350,000 sheep in Iceland. This also means there are now fewer sheep than people in Iceland, something that has never happened before in the country’s history. The sheep population peaked at 891,000 in 1978, with four sheep per person;

Iceland has the somewhat idiosyncratic policy of giving foreign royals Icelandic names. This means that King Charles III is Karl III in Icelandic, and the former King of Spain, Juan Carlos, is Jóhann Karl, while the names of popes are always Icelandicised. With former Prince Andrew having been stripped of his titles by his brother, King Charles (or Karl), and having been called Andrés in Icelandic for 65 years, a problem arose: should Andrés continue to be called Andrés now that he is no longer a royal? In an interview with a language specialist, RÚV explored the issue and subsequently decided that Andrés prins will henceforth be known as Andrew Windsor Mountbatten.