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Page last updated at 10:31 GMT, Wednesday, 15 October 2008 11:31 UK

Icelandic bloggers: Shame on Britain

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Icelanders feel they are being unfairly blamed for the financial crisis

Nowhere has the reaction to the hostilities been more forthcoming than in the blogosphere. Here are translations of a selection of recent postings by Icelandic bloggers.


History has taught us that the Brits have always had to show small and poor nations dominance and arrogance. I thought this was in the past after the fall of the Empire and also because of better relations between nations. That does not seem to be the case.

This behaviour shows us just one thing: They suffer from severe minority complexes.


Gordon Brown has caused Icelanders unmeasureable damage. When a man with not more intelligence than he has is chosen to lead, you can't expect a good thing. When everyone points out the wrong he has done us all he does is stand up and say "sorry".


Never before have Icelanders encountered such behaviour as that of Gordon Brown's [last] week. His lack of judgement is basically a threat to world peace if such circumstances would arise.

It is astonishingly irresponsible of the British nation to have such a man as prime minister.

In an attempt to increase his own popularity at home he saw no problem in bankrupting Iceland. He also managed to do just that with our biggest bank, Kaupthing, without any justice.

Never before has one man caused the Icelandic nation such damage as Gordon Brown.


I am flabbergasted over how the Brits have misused the terrorism legislation to bring down a whole nation because of bank businesses.

The shut-down of Kaupthing in the UK was an economic act of terrorism and I want to encourage the government [of Iceland] to start looking into filing a compensation claim against them for the misuse. It is possible they will then get to taste their own medicine.


In just a few days all the good in the relations between the two nations in three decades disappeared, and a cold international argument has flared up. Now they are not fighting over cod fishing rights. Some are calling this the cod head [common term for idiots in Icelandic] war, to try to find the funny side to this, but I think this is is a question of Iceland not rolling over.


Now Iceland should call back their ambassador from the UK and let the world know what kind of abuse of power and deliberate misreading of their own emergency law the mighty power has used against this small nation.

This is shameful and will be an eternal shame from Britain in the history books. God help us if more follow their lead.

It would be best if British authorities were derided in the United Nations for their despicable act.


If you look at the front pages of the British papers... then decades of promotion and PR on Icelandic products and Iceland as tourist destination has been flushed down the toilet. And to make things worse, the Icelandic government has done little or nothing to protect our interests in the foreign media.

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