Professor Bent Jensen in Iceland. Photo: Sigurgeir Sigurdsson.

Professor Bent Jensen, a distinguished Nordic expert on communism and author of many best-selling books in Danish, gave a lecture on Nordic Communism at a joint meeting of the University of Iceland Institute of International Affairs and Almenna bokafelagid 27 February 2012. This event was a part of a series of lectures organised in cooperation with AECR, the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists, on “Europe of the Victims: Remembering Communism”. In Iceland, as in Denmark, there has been a heated discussion on the nature and significance of the domestic communist movement. Were the leading communists agents of a foreign power or patriotic trade unionists? What was the nature of their ties with Moscow? Morgunbladid published an interview with Jensen 4 March, and the leading television host Egill Helgason discussed communism with Jensen (in Danish) on his weekly show on current affairs, transmitted 11 March. Jensen’s lecture is available here on Youtube.

From the Morgunbladid interview: The headline is “Lied for a Dream”.

Upon the publication of Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead, 28 November 2011, Dr. Tom Palmer of Cato Institute in Washington DC, gave a talk in the Icelandic House of National Culture on “21st Century Individualism”, followed by a reception hosted by Almenna bokafelagid. Palmer discussed Rand’s relevance today, in the light of the experience of capitalism and socialism, and the message in her main novels. Palmer was the keynote speaker the same night at a very successful “Freedom Dinner” at Hotel Holt where young entrepreneurs and intellectuals celebrated, under the guidance of asset manager Gisli Hauksson. Vidskiptabladid (The Journal of Commerce) published an interview with Tom Palmer 1 December 2011.

Upon the publication of The Black Book of Communism in the Icelandic translation of Hannes H. Gissurarson, Goran Lindblad, former MEP from the Swedish Moderate Party, gave a talk in Reykjavik 31 August 2009. He discussed the declarations of the European Council in 2006 and of the European Parliament in 2009, for the need to disclose and to assess the crimes of communism and to remember its victims. The European Parliament has called for 23 August (the day when the non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin was signed in 1939) to be a European remembrance day for victims of totalitarian regimes. Bjorn Bjarnason, former Minister of Justice, chaired the meeting, and Jon Baldvin Hannibalsson, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, responded to Lindblad’s talk.