Iceland's First Police Gun-related Death - My View...

Monday December 2nd, 2013, marks the day that the first person was shot and killed by Icelandic police. This blogpost discusses the incident and its effect on the Icelandic nation. Iceland's gun-related crime statistics are also looked at, in relation to the USA and the UK.

Death at the Hands of Police Marksmen... 
In the early hours of yesterday morning, police were called to a residential address in Reykjavík. Neighbours had reported that a man was holed up in an apartment. Oh and he had at least one gun. Some time later, following some exchanges of fire, the man was fatally wounded.

He became the first person to be shot and killed at the hands of the Icelandic police force. This fact, I suspect, will be almost unbelievable to anyone who did not grow up in this country.

More can be read here http://www.icelandreview.com/ and here http://www.independent.co.uk/

Shock-horror!
On hearing this news this morning, I was very surprised. Gun-related violence of any sort is extremely rare up here. Yet I was not shocked. Most of the population, though, is genuinely taken-aback and upset by this event. It is, I feel, truly a watershed moment for this nation.

There has been much discussion on social media. But the lack of details so far published by the police has not given much for us to chew on. Any unusual death in Iceland (murder, suicide, car crash etc.) is usually treated very carefully by the media, out of respect for victim's families. This is a very small community so a single death can touch many.

A Little Comparison...
I come from England, which is a world away in terms of crime of all kinds. Or is it...? One thing common to both lands is that the regular police do not carry firearms. I like this approach. I have always been disturbed by firearms. No, I'll re-phrase that. I have always been disturbed by being around police or security guards brandishing firearms. And with good reason, me thinks.

Gun-related deaths, whilst not exactly a daily occurrence in the UK, are not generally very surprising. I grew up during the era of "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland. And some high-profile incidents, such as the Michael Ryan Hungerford massacre and the Dunblane School Shooting live long in people's minds.

Iceland vs UK vs USA...
Yet gun crime in Britain and Iceland is nothing compared to the USA. Following today's Reykjavík shooting, this very poignant article from NPR was written, detailing the vast differences in the approach of Iceland and America. It also gives some very interesting comparative figures. I checked out the corresponding figures for the UK, which raised my eyebrows.

For 2009:
Gun-related deaths: Iceland 4; UK 150; USA 31,347
Annual gun-related deaths per 100,000 people: Iceland 1.25; UK 0.24; USA 10.22
Firearms ownership per 100 people: Iceland 30.3; UK 6.7; USA 101.5

It should be noted that 2009 is the most recent year available for Iceland's figures. This was in fact an unusually bad year for the country. Most years there is a maximum of 1 gun-related death, meaning that Iceland's average annual gun-related deaths per 100,000 people is around 0.3. 

These figures reveal the huge chasm that exists between America and the two countries that I know best. The USA's gun-homicide figures seem almost unimaginable to me.

The gun ownership numbers for Iceland and USA are discussed well in the NPR piece. Iceland has a much higher ownership per 100 people than the UK, but there are similar strict limits and controls. Iceland has a stronger hunting culture, meaning far more people own weapons, proportionally.

The Future...
It is maybe this simple fact that leads to Iceland's potential for further unhappy gun-related incidents. There are many firearms in public ownership. Sure, they are well controlled and the owners are required to attend training seminars. Yet, the potential is there...

I am not, though, for one moment suggesting that there is potential for a US-style homicide rate to develop up here. 30 gun-related deaths per year would be devastating for this society. By comparison, there were only 9 deaths on Iceland's roads in 2012...

No Time to Panic...?
In this last week, there have been other worrying stories, such as http://grapevine.is/Hate-Crime-At-Mosque-Site and http://www.icenews.is/iceland-hooked-on-anti-depressants/  discussing Iceland's new top ranking for those taking anti-depressants. Iceland's population is changing. Thousand's of immigrants are now living here, which is leading to inevitable tensions. Drug taking has increased in recent years and violent crime, of course, follows in its wake.

While I believe this is no time for panic, I do feel that in ten years time, incidents similar to today's will not cause nearly as much shock and soul-searching for the Icelandic people. But this land will still be one of the least dangerous places on this earth. Unless there is a really huge volcanic eruption...

Jón Gnarr for Prime Minister

Jón Gnarr for Prime Minister

Reykjavík's current mayor, Jón Gnarr, has grown in to, unarguably, one of this nation's most influential politicians. His Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jón-Gnarr/244993732224805?fref=ts now has more than 76,000 likes.

76,000 likes - for the mayor of one city on an island of only 325,000 people! How could this be?

What makes his rise in popularity so remarkable is his background - comedian, comic actor and punk. Yes, he was a very well-known and respected performer before his crossover in to the political arena. Yet, it could have backfired so spectacularly. 

I won't go in to the whole history of Reykjavík's politics here. Suffice to say that , for a number of years before Jón's electoral victory, the various political shenanigans could best be described as "banana republic". The average life of a mayor was about 100 days (as in "survival in the office of mayor", not actual death. Life is sometimes brutal up here, but not in that way…).

Then along came Jón Gnarr and "The Best Party", sick to death with all of the in-fighting, back-stabbing and greed. "Google it" for full details. It was surely one of the world's most spectacular and unlikely political victories. A bunch of comedians, artists and actors won the election and took the reins of the biggest municipality in Iceland.

The Best Party's election campaign was, in common with all such endeavours, full of ludicrous promises. My favorite of all of these was that they would provide a polar bear for Reykjavík's petting zoo. But their most important campaign promise was that they would break all of their campaign promises. And they did.

Genius. The voters loved it. What did they have to lose? The previous few administrations were pure pantomime anyway, so how could these guys be worse?

And it has worked. Primarily because the Best Party have improved communication, across the board. They encourage everybody to work together. Despite rising to power in an age of cutbacks and pessimism, the city feels noticeably improved - somehow cleaner, more organized, more "livable".  

Jón Gnarr's recent announcement that he has decided not to run for re-election, has caused a lot of anguish and sadness up here. Especially given the almost farcical state of Iceland's current national government.

Iceland's current national coalition government came to power on the back of several campaign promises that have proved impossible to keep. Many of us realized this. Yet even more Icelanders didn't and were taken for a ride. The saddest fact in all of this was that our current political leaders were being totally serious. They promised everyone free money. The majority of the electorate lapped it up. Now we pay the consequences.

Anyway, I digress somewhat from my original subject for this article. Jón Gnarr recently wrote a rather thought-provoking post (shown below). It raised a good deal of interest and well illustrates his qualities as both a person and visionary…

There has always been a strange kind of nationalism lurking here in Iceland. It is mostly grounded on a combination of ignorance and arrogance and it feels like xenophobia is growing and many people using terms like "Icelandic national culture." and "Pure Icelandic" something. 

Fact is Iceland is Europe's youngest country, geologically speaking, and was also the last European country to be settled by man only 1000 years ago, when Norse settlers migrated here with Irish slaves. There is no "purity" in our history, genetically or culturally. Nothing was invented here. (Fermenting fish is an Asian tradition). All our customs and traditions originate from Europe. 

The only thing you can say is truly Icelandic is the nature and the Icelandic Sagas. Nature and art. That's Iceland. Anything else is nonsense. No land is an island, not even Iceland.

Jón Gnarr, Facebook, November 2013.

In this short statement, he encapsulates all of the main dilemmas associated with the rise of nationalism. Certainly in Europe, the rise of such xenophobia is one of the biggest problems facing us in this generation. 

Forget all of the financial crises, austerity and unemployment. Politicians now rising to power all over the region are tapping in to the latent nationalistic traits of significant proportions of their electorates. I am frequently shocked by articles in the media, basically assigning blame for all of a country's problems on immigrants.

The ending of World War 2 was the catalyst for a sea change in attitudes throughout Europe (and the world). Europeans realized that they had to work together to avoid another hideous future war. The European Union was established. Countries that had until recently, been considered enemies, began cooperating in unprecedented ways. 

Everyone alive today has benefitted directly from this situation. And yet, nationalism and fascism are rising fast.

This particularly grates with me, due to my immigrant status. I even have to listen to Icelanders drone on about this issue, using precisely the same offensive, inflammatory language, that Jón Gnarr alludes to. 

Some even complain to me about these "bloody immigrants"!! Just because I look like a troll, doesn't make me Icelandic. Underneath it all, I am no different to a Lithuanian, a Filipino or a Nigerian who has come here looking for a new life.

Since the 2008 crisis, the policy of "fuck the foreigner" has been a well supported, growing phenomenon (within a certain, very influential sector of society). Basically, the current, growing discourse is that "we want foreign currency and cheap foreign labour" and yet, there seems little inclination to accept the associated cultural and ethnic influence that is inevitably associated with such economic intercourse.

As Jón Gnarr said, there is no purity in the original Icelandic stock. Yes, this country is very special due to the fact that it is possible to trace your ancestors all the way back more than a 1000 years to the first settlers. Yet, little was recorded of the thousands of slaves that were forced to settle in Iceland.

When Icelanders talk of their family tree, they only talk of their connection to the high-born nordic settlers. They, I am certain, rarely consider the fact that more than 60 percent of those original female settlers were Celts. This truth probably goes a long way to explaining the very high proportion of artists, authors and musicians found in Iceland.

Hardly anything Celtic is visible today, in the language, place names or culture. Yet it lives in the DNA. It is inescapable. 

I am a part of the second, great Icelandic immigration. Bloody foreigners now make up more than 8 percent of the population. Multiculturalism is an inescapable fact for this land.

So, Jón Gnarr, please help Iceland. Your country needs You!

Please run for Prime Minister at the next election.