Hannes H. Gissurarson interviews Olafur Bjornsson for radio 12 November 1978.

The old and venerable magazine Andvari each year publishes a short biography of a leading Icelander. In 2016, RNH Academic Director Hannes H. Gissurarson writes a 63 pages article about the leading free market economist Professor Olafur Bjornsson. It starts with Bjornsson’s forefathers and his studies at Akureyri Grammar School and Copenhagen University where Bjornsson was an outstanding student. Professor Gissurarson mentions Bjornsson’s interest in radical political ideas while in Copenhagen and his participation in Kyndill, an association of radical Icelandic students in Copenhagen. After reading works by von Mises and Hayek, Bjornsson turned away from socialism. He became convinced that the most efficient way of ordering economic production was by devolution of power and free international trade. Under central economic planning the knowledge and skills of individual participants in the market process were not fully utilised.

When Bjornsson returned to Iceland in 1938, he therefore became one of the strongest critics of the extensive economic controls in Iceland which had been adopted in the World Depression. In 1944, he also translated an extract of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, which led to a heated debate in Icelandic newspapers, the communist newspaper calling Hayek “the international freak” and Bjornsson “the national freak”. Bjornsson taught economics at the High School of Commerce and later at the Faculty of Business Administration and Economics at the University of Iceland from early 1940 until his retirement at 70 in 1982. He published many books, including a monumental work on the Icelandic economy. In 1956–1971, Bjornsson was a member of parliament for the Independence Party and contributed much to the great reduction of the economic controls in two steps, in 1950 and 1960. In 1978, he published a political tract, Libertarianism and Totalitariarism, which had great impact on the young generation in Iceland. Bjornsson passed away in 1999, leaving a wife and three sons. Gissurarson’s biography forms a part of the joint RNH-ACRE project on “Europe, Iceland, and the Future of Capitalism”.

Aatami Kuortti

On 25 December 2016 a quarter of a century had passed since the Soviet Union broke down. This was the day when Mikhail Gorbachev relinquished his office, and the next day, the red flag with the hammer and sickle was lowered for the last time on the Kremlin. On this occasion the Public Book Club, AB, republished a very interesting source on the late Soviet Union, the book Service, Servitude, Escape by Aatami Kuortti. It was first brought out by the Christian Literary Society in the spring of 1938 in a translation by Rev. Gunnar Johannesson. The author was a Finnish-speaking Lutheran pastor from Ingria, the territory between Estonia and Finland. Rev. Kuortti served three parishes in Ingria between 1927 and 1930. He was arrested for refusing to provide the Soviet secret police with information about his parishioneers, and sent for ten years to a slave camp in Karelia.

After a few months in the slave camp Kuortti managed to escape, and he walked day and night in the direction of the Finnish border. He was once caught, but managed to escape from the secret service, and after a trip of twelve days and nights through the forests and lakes in Karelia he reached Finland. He wrote an account of life under Soviet rule, his imprisonment in the slave camp and his escape in a simple and unpretentious manner, but all the more moving therefore. His book was published in Finnish in 1934, in Swedish in 1935 and in Danish in 1937. It was the first full-length book published in Iceland by a prisoner in the Soviet Gulag. Incidentally, in the autumn of 1938 two books on the Soviet Union were published in Iceland, Kuortti’s book and the Russian Adventure (Gerska aefintyrid) by Halldor Kiljan Laxness. The authors were contemporaries: Kuortti was born in 1903, a year later than Laxness, and he passed away in 1997, a year earlier than the Icelandic writer. It is interesting to compare the two books and the different approaches of their authors to their subject-matter in the light of experience.

Kuortti’s book is the 8th one in a series of republications by AB of works on totalitarianism. This series forms a part of the joint RNH-ACRE project on “Europe of the Victims”. Previous books are Articles on Communism by Bertrand Russell, Women in Stalin’s Prison Camps by Elinor Lipper and Aino Kuusinen, Out of the Night by Jan Valtin (Richard Krebs), the Secret Speech on Stalin by Nikita Khruschev (with Lenin’s Testament), El campesino by Valentín González and Julián Gorkin, Baltic Eclipse by Ants Oras and Estonia: A Study in Imperialism by Andres Küng. Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson writes an introduction and notes in all the books in the series.

Zver giving her lecture. Chair: Education Minister Illugi Gunnarsson. Photo: Olafur Engilbertsson.

On 19 December 1991, Iceland became the first Western country to recognise independent Slovenia which had formally seceded from Yugoslavia on 25 June. Previously, newly liberated countries like Ukraine and Lithuania had recognised the new state. On the 25th anniversary of Iceland’s recognition of Slovenia, 19 December 2016, RNH Academic Director Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson published an article in Morgunbladid, reflecting on small states and nations. He agreed with the definition by Ernest Renan of a nation: a collective united by its will to be a nation. On this definition, both Icelanders and Slovenians could be regarded as nations. Professor Gissurarson also pointed out that economic integration facilitated the formation of small states, because they could benefit from the international division of labour and free trade. The larger the markets were, the smaller the political units could be.

Slovenian historian Dr. Andreja Zver gave a lecture at an RNH event in Iceland 16 September 2013 on the Slovenian experience of 20th century totalitarianism, as the country had been controlled by fascists, nazis and communists one after another. Still, mass graves from totalitarian times are being discovered in the country. Zver is married to one of the best-known politicians of Slovenia, former Education Minister Milan Zver, an MEP. Professor Gissurarson’s article forms a part of the joint RNH-ACRE project on “Europe of the Victims”.

RNH Academic Director, Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson, was the speaker at a luncheon meeting by-invitation-only of the Adam Smith Institute in London Monday 28 November 216, discussing the most efficient system in the fisheries. As the United Kingdom is now leaving the EU, it has to decide on a new fisheries policy in place of the CFP, Common Fisheries Policy. The guests included both members of parliament, former government ministers and two Icelanders, Icelandic Ambassador Thordur Aegir Oskarsson and Gunnlaugur S. Gunnlaugsson, Chairman of the Board of Isfelagid, one of the largest Icelandic fishing firms. Prof. Gissurarson gave a brief summary of the main arguments in his recent book, The Icelandic Fisheries: Sustainable and Profitable, published by the University of Iceland Press in late 2015 and also available online. Prof. Gissurarson also gave an account on the recent debate in Iceland on auctions: in August 2016, RNH held, with the Faculty of Economics at the University of Iceland and others, a conference on auctions and other types of allocating rights where two distinguished experts gave papers, Professors Gary Libecap and Ragnar Arnason.

Monday evening Prof. Gissurarson attended, with some others, a dinner at the House of Lords given by Dr. Matt Ridley, the 4th Viscount Ridley and author of best-selling books on genetics and evolution. The Public Book Club, in cooperation with RNH, published Ridley’s Rational Optimist in 2014. Ridley is a frequent visitor to Iceland, fishing salmon in the rivers and giving lectures. Tuesday 29 November, Prof. Gissurarson met with the UK Fisheries Minister George Eustice and his officials to discuss the Icelandic lessons from the system of individual transferable quotas. Gissurarson said that the problem with the Icelandic system was not technical or administrative: It was that others resented the profit which was being formed there. But if the system was to be fully efficient, then the quotas had to be fully transferable and permanent. Then the quota holders would try to maximise the long-term profitability of the resource.

On Facebook, Prof. Gissurarson commented on his meeting with the Minister: “We did not only discuss the serious matters at hand, but also some history. I told the Minister that the first English fishing vessel had appeared in the Icelandic waters in 1412, that the Danish king had thrice tried to sell Iceland to King Henry VIII, that in early 19th century Sir Joseph Banks had saved the Icelanders from famine, and that in Iceland in the summer of 1941 Winston Churchill had used the V-signal for first time in public (sailing out of Reykjavik harbour). I did not disguise my firm opinion that Iceland, a small country up in the far North, should be an ally of the UK: while there was a great difference in their size and power, both countries were in the North Atlantic, and not on the European continent.”

Participants in the conference. Göran Lindblad, President of the Platform, in the centre. RNH Academic Director Hannes H. Gissurarson 4th from right in first row. On each side of Lindblad are two visitors to Iceland, Pawel Ukielski from Poland and Sandra Vokk from Estonia.

At its annual gathering this year hosted by the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance in the Club of the Cabinet of Ministers in Kyiv, 24­‐26 November 2016, the Platform of European Memory and Conscience discussed the removal of communist symbols and monuments (decommunisation) in Ukraine and elsewhere. Beside visits to Maidan, the St. Sophia cathedral and several museums, representatives of the Platform had meetings with Hanna Hopko, Chairwoman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Mykola Knyazhytsky, Chairman of the Committee on Culture of the Parliament, and Yevhen Nyshchuk, Minister of Culture. The Institute for Democracy, Media & Culture (Albania), the Traces of Memory association (Czech Republic), the Nation’s Memory Institute (Slovakia), the Witold Pilecki Center for Totalitarian Studies (Poland) and the Foundation to Preserve the History of Maidan (Ukraine) were elected new Members of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience. On 26 November, the Platform participated in the official Holodomor commemoration, by special invitation of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, and lit candles for the victims of the great famine organised by Stalin in 1932–1933.

At the meeting, RNH Academic Director Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson gave an update on the joint RNH-ACRE project of “Europe of the Victims”: In 2015, three works against totalitarianism were republished, by Bertrand Russell, by Elinor Lipper and Aino Kuusinen and by Richard Krebs. In 2016, five works were republished in the same series, by Nikita Khruschev, by Valentín González and Julián Gorkin, by Ants Oras, by Andres Küng and by Aatami Kuortti.

Wednesday 2 November, on his INN programme, former government minister Bjorn Bjarnason discussed the results of the 29 October Icelandic parliamentary elections with Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson, RNH Academic Director. They also discussed possible coalition governments and the forthcoming US presidential elections. Professor Gissurarson said that the voters had sent two unequivocal messages to the politicians: They wanted Independence Party leader Bjarni Benediktsson as Prime Minister and they were against a left-wing government. The most interesting news from the elections was, according to Professor Gissurarson, that the traditional Icelandic Left (consisting of the Social Democrats and the left socialist People’s Alliance, since 1998 known respectively as the Social Democratic Union and the Left Greens) had never been smaller. The Icelandic Left had historically enjoyed the support of about 30–35% of the voters. Its support had risen to 44% in 1978 and to no less than 51% in 2009, after the bank collapse. Now it was only around 21%.

It was clear, Professor Gissurarson added, that the Pirate Party had lost the election campaign. Ordinary people had not been comfortable with them. However, in this as in all election campaigns people tended to overestimate the capacity of government to improve matters. Neither economic growth nor happiness could be created or planned for by government; those were the achievements of individuals, with hard work, initiative and prudence. We should, Professor Gissurarson submitted, say to the state what Diogenes said to Alexander the Great when the Emperor hovered over the hermit and asked whether he could do anything for him. Diogenes replied: “Yes, you can move away from the sun.” Gissurarson said that Hillary Clinton was the least worst of the two main presidential candidates in the US, whereas Donald Trump was against free trade. Instead of building walls like Trump, we should build bridges. Moreover, Trump did not seem to have a pleasant personality. He did not, for example, show respect to women. Professor Gissurarson said that he was a liberal feminist in the same sense as John Stuart Mill: men and women should be equal before the law, and they should enjoy equal respect and dignity.

Bj0rnBjarna 02NOV16 from inntv on Vimeo.