Isolationism Isn't Patriotism

I’m becoming less tolerant of xenophobia and isolationism than I’ve been in the past. Doesn’t mean that I believe that every culture under the sun is equal. I’m actually quite proud of my Nordic cultural roots. There’s something to be said for societies that seem to have managed to find a way to make their kids the smartest in the world. To have governments with some of the lowest debt ratios in the world (and no it’s not my own). To create societies that guarantee everyone access to basic (and quite extensive in some cases) health care, education and social services. To create societies with some of the best living standards in the world according to the UN. It really irritates the right wing nutters in the US that for some strange reason the Nordic countries seem to manage to offer both generally high levels of wealth creation and some of the best social welfare structures in the world. I’m quite proud of this fact and I think there’s a lot here that others could learn from.

One reason why I’m so proud of my background is because I’ve actually had an opportunity to contrast it with other places. Yesterday I was listening to a program on the BBC. Jeremy Hardy Speaks To the Nation. The subject was what it means to be British. Again and again I found myself nodding in agreement with Jeremy. One of the things he mentioned. Was the fact that Britain might actually have been ruled by the Scandinavians instead of being invaded by the Normans (which shouldn’t be confused with the Norwegians, but actually come from Normandy). One of the great things about Britain. One of the things I like the most about Britain. Is how multi cultural it is. They’ve actually managed to be fairly successful in creating a multi cultural society. I really love this fact. Like Jeremy put it: “I can honestly say that I can be the only white person on a bus and not even notice. Conversely, if I’m on the bus and everybody is white, I’m thinking; blimey there really are a lot of Polish people in the country”.


Just because Iceland managed to be isolated, have a fairly homogenous culture and a language that hardly changed for hundreds of years. Isn’t in my view any reason why we should fight to keep it that way. After all, the more isolated we were, the poorer Iceland was. Our most prosperous period. Is the modern period. We’ve never had it so good in our entire history. Does anyone really want to go back to a situation that saw Iceland being isolated from the rest of the world? Does anyone really think that it makes sense to only export stuff and not import anything? Anyone want to live just on “pure” Icelandic products? Anyone seriously want to argue that too many people in Iceland?

I’ve been lucky enough to live abroad for more than a couple of weeks on vacation. That’s when I really started to appreciate people with varied backgrounds. Because I’m not trying to argue that you don’t have stupid and ignorant people evenly spread out around the world. I think on the whole you do. But what I really could appreciate was the fact that there were spices beyond just salt and pepper. That you could do something else with fish than boil it and serve it with potatoes and butter. That cheese didn’t just come in one size and a single flavour. I was exposed to various cultures and I survived it just fine. I actually realized that Iceland was poorer for not being exposed to these influences.

I still remember one incidence. We have lots of really nice swimming pools here and I was babysitting my sisters oldest. He loved the water and this was the best fun you could offer him. I’m not sure exactly how old he was. Somewhere between knowing how to talk and not having started elementary school. And we were chilling along with a number of other people in one of the small hot pots when this dark skinned guy came into it. My cousin was really surprised and I think this was probably the first time he had seen someone who wasn’t a white caucasian. Because he came to me and asked: “How come he didn’t take a shower and get clean”? Which I thought was extremely funny.

I’m going to make the words of Jeremy Hardy my own this time around “I’m actually very fond of our land and it’s people. But I believe that patriotism like religion and flatulence should be private”. Your idea of what makes your home country great could be quite different from mine. Doesn’t mean that your brand of patriotism is any less genuine than mine. So show me the same respect. I just don’t accept that those who want to keep Iceland isolated, have any claim to a superior brand of patriotism.