Eupraxsophy

First - and arguably foremost - there is virtually no difference among upper, middle and lower classes in Iceland. And with that, tension between economic classes is non-existent, a rare occurrence for any country.

Björgvin SigurðssonSocial Democratic Alliance

A study of the Icelandic class system done by a University of Missouri master’s student found only 1.1% of participants identified themselves as upper class, while 1.5% saw themselves as lower class.

The remaining 97% identified themselves as upper-middle class, lower-middle class, or working class.

On one of three visits to Althing, the Icelandic parliament, I met Bjorgvin Sigurdsson, former chairman of the parliamentary group of the Social Democratic Alliance. In his eyes - as well as those of many Icelanders I spoke with - equality was the biggest reason for the nation’s relative lack of crime.

“Here you can have the tycoon’s children go to school with everyone else,” Sigurdsson says, adding that the country’s social welfare and education systems promoted an egalitarian culture.

Crimes in Iceland - when they occur - usually do not involve firearms, though Icelanders own plenty of guns.

GunPolicy.org estimates there are approximately 90,000 guns in the country - in a country with just over 300,000 people.

The country ranks 15th in the world in terms of legal per capita gun ownership. However, acquiring a gun is not an easy process -steps to gun ownership include a medical examination and a written test.

Police are unarmed, too. The only officers permitted to carry firearms are on a special force called the Viking Squad, and they are seldom called out.

In addition, there are, comparatively speaking, few hard drugs in Iceland.

According to a 2012 UNODC report, use among 15-64-year-olds in Iceland of cocaine was 0.9%, of ecstasy 0.5%, and of amphetamines 0.7%.

There is also a tradition in Iceland of pre-empting crime issues before they arise, or stopping issues at the nascent stages before they can get worse.

Right now, police are cracking down on organised crime while members of the Icelandic parliament, Althingi, are considering laws that will aid in dismantling these networks.

When drugs seemed to be a burgeoning issue in the country, the parliament established a separate drug police and drug court. That was in 1973.

In the first 10 years of the court, roughly 90% of all cases were settled with a fine.

Icelanders have been resilient and stoic in the face of disasters like volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and the 2008 financial collapse that hit this tiny country hard. “The stoicism is important to deal with the randomness of nature and the recent financial crash,” Iceland embassy counselor Erlingur Erlingsson told me in Washington, D.C.

Beyond stoicism, though, Iceland ranks as the third happiest country in the world — just behind Denmark and Costa Rica, according to the World Database of Happiness through 2009.

So when Ben Stiller said that it’s a good thing the sun never goes down “when the people are so good-looking,” he was not the only one to appreciate Iceland’s charms. This is a country where 73 percent of the people said they were content, compared with only 50 percent of Western Europeans and 33 percent of North Americans. It is “also happier than those who are doing better financially,” according to The Reykjavik Grapevine. When life expectancy is combined with happiness measures, it emerges second in “happy life-years.”

How do Icelandic people find the mental and physical resilience, in the face of winter darkness, volcanic eruptions, and financial disaster, to be among the first in global measures of happiness?

Click the link to find out! The reasons are quite informative. 

Dr. Tarrin Wills from the University of Aberdeen says that the Icelandic Sagas contain detailed descriptions of individuals most people would choose to avoid, according to The Press Association. 

According to the Dr. Wills’ study, the sagas focus on aspects of physical appearance, such as a wide forehead and face, bushy beard, broad shoulders and receding hairline, which are now known to be associated with high levels of testosterone and aggression. Dr. Wills says the descriptions of wild and violent Vikings returning from raids served as warnings of to the rest of society. 

The study, published in the journal Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, states that typical causes of conflict among Vikings included stealing neighbors’ land, arguing about horses and creating insulting poems. 

“This was a particular problem in Iceland because Icelanders, like the rest of Scandinavia, had a very sophisticated legal system but no central government, no way of enforcing the law,” Wills writes. 

“Iceland at the time of the Vikings was akin to the Wild West - an open territory with lots of young men where each person was trying to acquire enough land for himself, a wife and family. As a result it was extremely competitive and often violent,” he continues. 

Dr. Wills says Icelanders may have been the first to use criminal profiling. “I’ve yet to encounter any similar kind of descriptions in the early literature that I’ve read. And they certainly had what seems to be an evidence-based approach that was very close to our modern scientific knowledge of the relationship between physiology and behaviour.” 

While this is old news, it didn’t get as much coverage as it should have. By my understanding, the role that women play in the sex industry is a matter of contention among feminists, with some believing it is inherently oppressive and exploitative, others supporting it so long as women are empowered within that framework, and still others (like myself) falling somewhere in the middle. In any case, here’s the story:

Iceland is fast becoming a world-leader in feminism. A country with a tiny population of 320,000, it is on the brink of achieving what many considered to be impossible: closing down its sex industry.

While activists in Britain battle on in an attempt to regulate lapdance clubs – the number of which has been growing at an alarming rate during the last decade – Iceland has passed a law that will result in every strip club in the country being shut down. And forget hiring a topless waitress in an attempt to get around the bar: the law, which was passed with no votes against and only two abstentions, will make it illegal for any business to profit from the nudity of its employees.

Even more impressive: the Nordic state is the first country in the world to ban stripping and lapdancing for feminist, rather than religious, reasons. Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir, the politician who first proposed the ban, firmly told the national press on Wednesday: “It is not acceptable that women or people in general are a product to be sold.” When I asked her if she thinks Iceland has become the greatest feminist country in the world, she replied: “It is certainly up there. Mainly as a result of the feminist groups putting pressure on parliamentarians. These women work 24 hours a day, seven days a week with their campaigns and it eventually filters down to all of society.”

The news is a real boost to feminists around the world, showing us that when an entire country unites behind an idea anything can happen. And it is bound to give a shot in the arm to the feminist campaign in the UK against an industry that is both a cause and a consequence of gaping inequality between men and women.

According to Icelandic police, 100 foreign women travel to the country annually to work in strip clubs. It is unclear whether the women are trafficked, but feminists say it is telling that as the stripping industry has grown, the number of Icelandic women wishing to work in it has not. Supporters of the bill say that some of the clubs are a front for prostitution – and that many of the women work there because of drug abuse and poverty rather than free choice. I have visited a strip club in Reykjavik and observed the women. None of them looked happy in their work.

So how has Iceland managed it? To start with, it has a strong women’s movement and a high number of female politicans. Almost half the parliamentarians are female and it was ranked fourth out of 130 countries on the international gender gap index (behind Norway, Finland and Sweden). All four of these Scandinavian countries have, to some degree, criminalised the purchase of sex (legislation that the UK will adopt on 1 April). “Once you break past the glass ceiling and have more than one third of female politicians,” says Halldórsdóttir, “something changes. Feminist energy seems to permeate everything.”

Johanna Sigurðardottir is Iceland’s first female and the world’s first openly lesbian head of state. Guðrún Jónsdóttir of Stígamót, an organisation based in Reykjavik that campaigns against sexual violence, says she has enjoyed the support of Sigurðardottir for their campaigns against rape and domestic violence: “Johanna is a great feminist in that she challenges the men in her party and refuses to let them oppress her.”

Then there is the fact that feminists in Iceland appear to be entirely united in opposition to prostitution, unlike the UK where heated debates rage over whether prostitution and lapdancing are empowering or degrading to women. There is also public support: the ban on commercial sexual activity is not only supported by feminists but also much of the population. A 2007 poll found that 82% of women and 57% of men support the criminalisation of paying for sex – either in brothels or lapdance clubs – and fewer than 10% of Icelanders were opposed.

Jónsdóttir says the ban could mean the death of the sex industry. “Last year we passed a law against the purchase of sex, recently introduced an action plan on trafficking of women, and now we have shut down the strip clubs. The Nordic countries are leading the way on women’s equality, recognising women as equal citizens rather than commodities for sale.”

Strip club owners are, not surprisingly, furious about the new law. One gave an interview to a local newspaper in which he likened Iceland’s approach to that of a country such as Saudi Arabia, where it is not permitted to see any part of a woman’s body in public. “I have reached the age where I’m not sure whether I want to bother with this hassle any more,” he said.

Janice Raymond, a director of Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, hopes that all sex industry profiteers feel the same way, and believes the new law will pave the way for governments in other countries to follow suit. “What a victory, not only for the Icelanders but for everyone worldwide who repudiates the sexual exploitation of women,” she says.

Jónsdóttir is confident that the law will create a change in attitudes towards women. “I guess the men of Iceland will just have to get used to the idea that women are not for sale.”

Iceland is one of the most enchanting and underrated countries in the world. I can’t wait to visit.