The End of Iceland's Innocence: The Image of Iceland in the Foreign Media during the Financial Crisis

Returning to Traditions—Fishing, Morality and Anti-Consumerism

– 191 – RETURNING TO TRADITION FISHING, MORALITY AND ANTI-CONSUMERISM ‘A great weight has been lifted now the money and the desires are gone. We can get back to being who we are.’ The Sunday Times, December 14, 20081 It’s a familiar story: a crisis triggers a return to conservatism, which then acts as a counter-discourse. In the case of Iceland, this return was celebrated as an end to the erosion of traditional values, as frugality and fishing were once again respected as symbols of a resilience unshaken by world events. Foreign newspapers were full of testimonials from Icelanders, from humble folk to the Prime Minister, all expressing a desire to revert to the past, or at least to a time before the banks embarked on wild expansion abroad, to a lost era considered to be more innocent. As the Australian reported: ‘the Prime Minister has spoken dramatically of returning to Iceland’s fishing and farming roots, rebuilding by simple hard work what may have been lost’.2 This attempt at redemption is aimed at wiping out the traces of the crisis and returning to a more harmonious existence. Iceland Review, which a few months earlier had been singing the praises of Icelandic entrepreneurship, now joined in this discourse, stating: ‘We will have to revert to the old and established values of equality, justice and fairness in trade and commerce. We need to believe that big is not always beautiful.’3 A sombre time of reflection on what it means to be an 1 An Icelander, quoted by A.A. Gill, ‘Iceland: frozen assets’, Sunday Times, December 14, 2008. 2 Australian, ‘Iceland’s economic collapse could herald a new round of large-scale acquisitions ’, October 9, 2008 (italics added). 3 Bjarni Brynjólfsson, ‘The pots and pans revolution’, Iceland Review, vol. 47, no. 1, 2009. – 192 – Icelander, Matthew Hart looked at what remained after the crisis: ‘a people united by a history of survival and a cherished culture’.4 For historians, such pious thinking is reminiscent of the romanticism of the 19th century—another time marked by a new national consciousness. Journalists, ever pragmatic, see it first and foremost as a way of accepting the inevitable: the crisis has forced people to redefine their identity and scale down their ambitions. As Jill Lawless reported in the Detroit News, ‘Icelanders are cutting back on spending and returning to tradition’.5 Roger Boyes made a connection between this return to tradition and the nation’s insularity: ‘Icelanders are returning to their sense of being islanders rather than global players who can throw weight around European capitals. Icelanders, when they return to their roots, know they must accept geographical limitations.’6 As Iceland’s fallback value, fishing plays a role of near-mythical proportions in the discourse exhorting a return to tradition and ancestral values. An analysis of this discourse shows that fishing is regarded in two ways: as an industry and as an activity integrally related to Icelandic identity. The preservation of fish stocks and the productivity of Icelandic fishermen have often been held up as exemplary by foreigners .7 However, fishing has also been referred to with a barb of nastiness and derision. In an article for the International Herald Tribune, Roger Cohen claimed that ‘Iceland, de-banked, has gone back to fishing (if there are any fish left)’.8 A British investor, quoted by the Finan­ cial Times, warned that ‘the Icelandics had better get their fishing rods 4 Matthew Hart, ‘Iceland’s next saga: The wounded tiger’s tale’, Globe and Mail, November 15, 2008, p. F-4. 5 Jill Lawless, ‘Crisis gives Iceland gift of frugality’, Detroit News, December 25, 2008. 6 Roger Boyes, ‘Skating on thin ice’, Australian, October 10, 2008. 7 See, for example, Gérard Lemarquis, ‘L’Islande affronte la baisse des quotas de cabillaud . La bonne gestion des réserves de poisson a transformé les pêcheurs en rentiers… au point d’abandonner le métier’, Économie, Le Monde, January 15, 2008, p. 5. 8 Roger Cohen, ‘Cohen: history and the really weird’, International Herald Tribune, October 12, 2008. – 193 – out. They’ve got a lot of cod to catch to make up for what we’ve lost’.9 Economists cite fishing and other resources as one of the values the nation can rely on, for lack of a productive financial system: ‘Icelanders are now talking about falling back on the...