Poor misguided fools

We Icelanders like to say that we are the best in the world. The strongest men, the most beautiful women, the most awe inspiring nature and the best water. This has become our mantra, something we comfort ourselves with when the inferiority complex grabs hold of our little souls, the small nation reassuring itself that we are big players. So far ahead in the world, even owning big foreign companies, getting so unspeakably rich. Ah, bless. It's cute. Only it's not. It's dangerous.

Nothing sums up our ignorance more than recent events. A few weeks ago, an old children's book was republished in Iceland. The book is Ten Little Nigger Boys. An astonishing 88% of Icelanders don't have a problem with this. The arguments are all over the media, the blog sites, the office canteens. Sensible people point out that the book represents pure racism, predjudice and plain cruelty. This is now the best selling book in this country. The people that think republishing the book is all right argue that it is a part of our cultural history, because we all read it when we were kids, we sang the song in school, and oh, it's illustrated by one of our dearest artists, who shows all the little boys looking the same, naked except for little pants, low forheads, big red lips, feet like those of some animal. Those people argue that they read the book when they were kids, but "that didn't make me racist". (Funnily enough, the people that express this view seem to be completely ignorant of Icelandic grammar, spelling and in general have great difficulties expressing themselves eloquently.)

Icelanders need to take a good hard look at themselves. Are we really that much better than everyone else? Can we still be pretty on the outside if we let the ugliness get to our inside?

The first christmas play I was in in school was Ten Little Nigger Boys. There I stood, proud on stage, singing the song, I was nigger number nine, playing dead at the exact right moment. Back then, teachers saw this fit for entertainment, that it somehow could be linked to the message of christ. I dread to think that the message will be spread to young impressionable minds yet again this christmas.