Increasing international trade has made it more efficient to operate smaller political units because they can benefit from the international division of labour, Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson, RNH Academic Director, said at the Liberty Forum of ECR, European Conservatives and Reformists, in Kyiv in Ukraine 7–10 November 2019. Paradoxically, economic integration paved the way for political disintegration or at least devolution. Separate nations also wanted to establish separate states. Norway had separated from Sweden, Iceland from Denmark, Slovakia from The Czechs and Ukraine from Russia, because Norwegians were not Swedes, and the Icelanders not Danes, and the Slovakians not Czechs, and the Ukrainians not Russians. Therefore, an independent Ukraine had been both efficient and natural. The problem with smaller political units was however military security. How could Ukraine ensure her security against a powerful and aggressive neighbour in the north? The obvious answer was that Ukraine would keep a strong standing army and thus make attacks and aggression more costly.

There was however also another possible answer, Gissurarson said. It was to change Russia from the inside, not of course by force or sedition, but by example, just as Hong Kong had done towards China. Ukraine had to become a flourishing country, and there were well-known ways of achieving this: to facilitate economic growth, privatise, cut taxes, reduce the public debt, devolve power, create opportunities for creative individuals and open up the economy. This had been done in Iceland in 1991–2004, and it was because of this that the Icelandic economy was strong enough to withstand the 2008 bank collapse and recover relatively quickly. There were worries about political corruption in Ukraine, and probably they were not groundless, Gissurarson added. But corruption could be reduced by transferring power from bureaucrats and politicians to private individuals who operated their companies at their own risk. If the Ukrainians judged the circumstances such that membership of NATO or of EU were not on the agenda, they might possibly join the EEA, European Economic Area, as Iceland had done. Even if Iceland and Ukraine were different in many respects, they had in common to be on the outskirts of Europe.

MEP Anna Fotyga from Polland, former Foreign Minister, opened the conference in Kyiv and said that she had long taken interest in increased cooperation between Ukraine and other European countries. Mustafa Dzhemilev, leader of the Crimean Tatars, received the Freedom Award of ECR, and other speakers at the conference included Oleksiy Goncharenko, Member of the Ukrainian Parliament, and James Wharton, former government minister and MP in the UK and campaign manager for Boris Johnson in the Conservative Party leadership contest. Gissurarson’s participation in the conference formed a part of the joint project by RNH and ACRE, Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe, on ‘Bluegreen Capitalism’.

On 1 November Swedish magazine Svensk Tidskrift published a paper by Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson, RNH Academic Director, which is the former part of a work on Nordic pioneers of liberal thought. The paper was about Snorri Sturluson, author of Edda, Heimskringla and Egil’s Saga. According to Gissurarson, many political ideas later articulated by John Locke and other thinkers could be found in Heimskringla and Egil’s Saga: that the law was not stipulated from above, but rather developed by consensus in assemblies; that kings ruled by consent, and not the grace of God; that thus a social contract had come into being between the king and his subjects who were consequently free to renounce it, if the king violated it. These ideas were clearly formulated in two famous speeches in Heimskringla, by Swedish Lawspeaker Thorgny and by Icelandic farmer Einar from Thvera, in which Snorri really expressed his own opinion. The conclusion by Einar from Thvera had been, as kings were different, some good and others bad, that it was best to have no kings. This had been expressed so by the German chronicler Adam from Bremen that the Icelanders had no king except the law.

Gissurarson also suggested that the Icelandic sagas might have been composed in response to the aggression of the Norwegian kings in the decades after 1220. The Icelanders might have wanted to define their separateness from the Norwegians. Egil’s Saga was for example about a long-standing feud between the Norwegian royal family and Egil, his father and his grandfather. Icelandic literary critic Sigurdur Nordal had correctly pointed out that Egil had been the ‘first individual’, with his own special features and not only identified by his origin. Gissurarson’s paper provoked some comments in Sweden, with Svenska Dagbladet recommending it on its editorial page. The latter part of Gissurarson’s work is on Anders Chydenius and will be published in a week.

In the second week of November 2019, RNH Academic Director Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson gives three lectures. On 8 November in Kyiv he discusses free trade and the problem of Ukraine. He argues that international free trade makes it possible to reduce the size of political units because these smaller units can benefit from the international division of labour, as the record shows. Economic integration, somewhat paradoxically, enables political disintegration. Therefore it was not inefficient for Norway to separate from Sweden, for Iceland to separate from Denmark or for Ukraine to separate from Russia. If the Ukrainians wanted to tread carefully in dealings with their powerful neighbour in the north, then it might be a sensible alternative for them to become members of the European Economic Area, EEA, instead of joining the EU or NATO. In general, Iceland for example had benefitted from her membership of the EEA, gaining access to the European market without too many political obligations.

Hayek gives a talk on “The Muddle of the Middle” in Iceland 5 April 1980.

On 13 November in Vienna, Professor Gissurarson discusses the Mengerian roots of Hayek’s conservative liberalism. Both Menger and Hayek conceived of the economy as a process rather than an equilibrium, and this process takes place in time and is subject to risk and uncertainty. Menger regarded the main task of the social sciences to try and explain how social phenomena such as the law, money, language and the market could arise out of human activities without being designed by any one human being. Hayek agrees, but his real question is how the productive and rich civilisation of the West could arise despite the inevitable ignorance of one and every human being. His answer, briefly, was that in a free economy people could utilise the knowledge of each other and in the process also create new knowledge, by trial and error. Hayek visited Iceland in 1980, gave two lectures and made quite an impact.

On 15 November in Poitiers, Gissurarson discusses the 1941 publication in Iceland of Jan Valtin’s controversial book, Out of the Night. One-half of the book was published then, by the social democratic book club. The Icelandic communists conducted a fierce campaign against the book in which Valtin—whose real name was Richard Krebs—described his work as a Comintern agent, especially in the early 1930s. Stalinist author Halldor Laxness (later a Nobel Prize winner) and economist Benjamin Eiriksson, a renegade communist and veteran of the Comintern training camps in Moscow, hotly debated the book, and Gissurarson—who wrote the biographies in Icelandic of both men—reveals a dark secret about Stalinist persecution that they both knew, and almost nobody else. The Icelandic communists managed to stop the publication of the second part of Valtin’s book by the social democratic book, club. Instead, some anti-communists published it in 1944. The Icelandic book club reprinted the book in 2015 with a foreword and notes by Professor Gissurarson. Recent research has shown that many of the statements made by Valtin and dismissed as pure fiction indeed had a factual basis, such as his revelation that Icelandic seamen acted as secret couriers for the Comintern.

Professor Gissurarson’s participation in the two former conferences forms a part of the joint project by RNH and ACRE, the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe, on ‘Bluegreen Capitalism’, whereas his participation in the third conferences forms a part in another joint project of RNH and ACRE on ‘Europe of the Victims’.

Polish historian Dr.  Łukasz Kamiński was re-elected President of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience at its annual meeting 3–6 November 2019, at the Tirana International Hotel in Tirana, the capital of Albania. RNH is a member of the Platform whose goal it is to keep alive the memory of the victims of totalitarianism, Nazism and communism, by organising conferences and seminars, by publishing relevant works and by other activities. Recently the European Parliament passed a resolution in support of the Platform. Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson attended the meeting on behalf of RNH, and the annual meeting was efficiently organised by Dr. Jonila Godole, Director of the IDMC, Institute of Democracy, Media and Culture in Albania.

Monday 4 November, an excursion was made to the town of Shkodra near the borders with Montenegro. This was the centre of the opposition to the communist terror of 1944–1991. Enver Hoxha’s totalitarian regime went so far as to stipulate atheism in its constitution and to destroy all mosques and churches by dynamite or to transform them into cinemas, gyms or warehouses. In Shkodra an exhibition on ‘Totalitarianism in Europe’ was opened, while leading members of the Platform gave interviews to the media. In the afternoon, there was a lunch of reflection at the famous restaurant Mrizi i Zanave near the village of Fishta.

Tuesday 5 November, the Council of Members had its meeting, discussing the annual report for 2018 and planned activities in 2019 and 2020. The statutes were changed somewhat in order to facilitate the Platform’s activities and the number of governing board members was increased from five to seven. In the afternoon, a round-table discussion took place about memory politics in Albania and Europe, after which the ‘House of Leaves’ was visited. This was originally a maternity ward, but in the War Gestapo was based there. After the 1944 communist takeover, it became the headquarters of the communist secret service, and now it is a museum about communist terror, with surveillance equipment, hidden cameras and tools of torture. Around 34 thousand people were imprisoned in Albania under the communists, and around six thousand lost their lives because of them. In the evening, attendees had dinner at the restaurant Millennium Gourmet Restaurant.

Wednesday 6 November, a seminar took place about the cooperation of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung and institutes promoting democracy in Albania, in particular the IDMC. Then, some leading members of the Platform, including Professor Gissurarson, had a meeting with the Committee of Foreign Affairs in the Albanian Parliament. In a lively discussion on the reckoning with totalitarianism, Ralf Gjona, Vice-Chairman of the Committee, gave a spirited talk. RNH participation in the activities of the Platform form a part in its joint project with ACRE, the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe, on ‘Europe of the Victims’.

RNH was a sponsor of a conference organised by Students for Liberty Iceland in Kopavogur 6 September 2019. In an interview with Morgunbladid 12 September, the keynote speaker, ACRE General Secretary and Tory MEP Daniel Hannan, discussed the impending exit of Great Britain from the European Union, for which he had fought in the national referendum on the issue. He said that the EU was trying to keep Great Britain inside by offering unacceptable terms for an exit. “Just imagine if Iceland sought a free trade deal with the EU, but that the EU insisted on two conditions: that you had to cancel all your free trade deals with other countries because the EU would supervise them, and that from now on the EU would be in full control of Kopavogur,” Hannan commented, referring to the conflice over Northern Ireland. “I am however proud of being the first British politician who publicly supported Iceland in the Icesave dispute. I was always convinced that the depositors would be fully reimbursed, and I was upset at the British authorities for mistreating a loyal friend and ally by invoking the Anti-Terrorist Act,” Hannan also said.