Goodbye McDonald’s, preconceptions

All the McDonald’s are gone. Hooray! If you’d told me a few months ago that McDonald’s would come to exist in Iceland no longer, I would’ve guessed that this enlightened, healthy democracy had decided to evict the much-berated establishment.

In fact, McDonald’s chose to leave, after the economic crash, rather than charging the highest prices of any McDonald’s in the world (that honour now belongs to Norway). With the diminished purchasing power of the Icelandic Kronur, and Icelanders in general, it simply didn’t make economic sense for the chain to operate here. Not that any Icelanders I’ve spoken with are too broken up about it. Perhaps their cheery reaction is a thinly veiled attempt to hide their resulting feelings of inferiority. After all, can you really call yourself a developed nation without a single McDonald’s restaurant?

But I prefer to think of the turn of events as following a familiar pattern, which characterizes much of Iceland’s contemporary situation: their unique position often facilitates accidental achievements, which are all too eagerly touted as a result of the nation’s strength of character (and sometimes even the pure Icelandic heritage).

Some examples:

As much as Icelanders like to gloat about their ecological harmony (and I’ll admit I was initially taken in), the fact is that they tend not to care much about the environment. Icelanders drive big cars–maybe not as big as in the US, but that’s a pretty tough standard to beat–and Reykjavik’s public buses are mostly scoffed at by locals. Reykjavik itself is sprawly, with only 200,000 residents occupying an area roughly the size of Paris. That being said, the nation has one of the smallest carbon footprints per capita of any developed nation, thanks mostly to their abundant geothermal energy. Even then, much of it (along with the island’s abundant hydro power capacity) is tapped for massive aluminum production. I went to the city, Stykkisholmur, which apparently has the best recycling program (according to the City of Reykjavik) in Iceland–Reykjavik’s program is pretty poor.

In a city of 1000, this is what I found. Not too shabby. The town itself is pretty beautiful:

Except, of course, for the large trash dump we happened upon just outside of the city, literally spilling over a cliff face and into the sea below.

In terms of the strength of Iceland’s democratic institutions, it could be related to the fact that just about every Icelander at the very least knows someone in common with some important government official. Not that it’s always a good thing: the close-knit relationship between the government and certain business interests certainly played a role in the country’s economic woes. A documentary, Decoding Iceland, even dug up a primary school picture of the former Prime Minister acting in a play about corruption and greed with the CEO of Decode Genetics, which was given an exclusive government contract to the genetics of Iceland’s citizens.

And it will certainly be interesting to see how the relationship evolves between Icelanders and the foreign laborers they recruited when times were good. Many Icelanders seem concerned, to say the least, about the impact of immigration on Icelandic culture and society.

Not to mention the country’s economic “success.” The banking industry, what little remains, has revealed itself to have been built on shaky ground. Besides that, Iceland’s largest industries are fishing, aluminum production (enabled by cheap power), and tourism.

None of this is to say that Iceland has no reason to be proud of it’s achievements! The nation has a rich history, including the Icelandic Sagas, which are some of the greatest literary feats of the era (roughly the 1100′s) and still quite enjoyable to read. They can boast the first modern democracy (although we wouldn’t approve of many of its practices). And they produce enormous cultural output to this day, especially for such a small population, from world-renowned musical artists to Nobel Prize winning writers to impressive sculptors (whose works populate every corner of the country):

And the island’s natural beauty is nothing to scoff at. Snaefellsjokull is a glacier only a couple hours from Reykjavik, visible from the city on clear days:

And at least this will never happen in Iceland:

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