Gnarr (4 page)

Sigurjón and I liked chilling out together and cooking up mischief. Óskar Jónasson, a good friend of Sigurjón, had just started his studies as a film director and had already shot a few short films. When he was commissioned to make a TV comedy show, he brought in Sigurjón to play a small supporting role. Together we worked out a few sketches.

I had just taken the exam to be a cab driver and started a career working nights in Reykjavík. So comedy was just meant to be a nice little side job, a hobby, a source of relaxation in my leisure hours. But it suddenly developed its own momentum.

The year was 1993, and while I was gradually making a name for myself in comedy, Davíð Oddsson, then prime minister and a former mayor of Reykjavík, was chomping on his first Big Mac in the first McDonald’s on Icelandic soil.

The live hijinx in which Sigurjón and I indulged had now done the rounds, and since good comedy was in short supply, we were invited to a gig at the summer festival of the Icelandic Toyota representatives. We were even paid for it. For the same money, I’d have had to drive my cab for a whole weekend. I soon realized that I could fill a gap in the Icelandic market with a new kind of comedy. The passengers in my cab patted me on the shoulder and said, “Keep it up!”

Thanks to the summer festival we had made a name for ourselves in certain circles, and it didn’t take long before we were booked every weekend. We tried to build up the most versatile repertoire possible: a bit of stand-up, a few sketches, and musical spots in between. However, Sigurjón was also playing in his band, so it sometimes happened that he was double-booked. Then I had two choices—either kiss my act goodbye just because Sigurjón couldn’t be there, or do the act without him and pocket the full fee alone. A
no-brainer—apart from the fact that I didn’t have the guts. Just the thought of standing alone onstage made me dizzy. The sketches we did together would have to be dropped completely, and the musical numbers too—I’m about as musical as a bottle of semi-skimmed milk—so stand-up was my only choice. Standing alone on stage and telling jokes.

At first I had a pretty bumpy ride. I was inexperienced and nervous, and response from the audience was limited. Some things worked, others just didn’t. So I gradually threw out the bits that had flopped and focused on the successful numbers until I’d cobbled together a twenty-minute program. Suddenly people started listening—and started laughing. I even got used to heckling, and developed a special technique to counter it. The stage was no longer a place of horror, and in the meantime I was having a load of fun. My confidence was given an enormous boost, and suddenly I felt at home—which was in turn communicated to the audience.

I am convinced that humor will soon be recognized as a key skill for all areas of life. In my view, if you don’t have a sense of humor, then you’ve got problems. It’s a perfectly natural development. In the future it won’t be enough that you’re good at your job and get along with other people—you’ll have to be entertaining too. But, like emotional intelligence and what is often derided as “feminine intuition,” humor is still often viewed with skepticism, and the more screwed-up a
society, the more likely it will develop such prejudices. All this will change in the future. If you can’t raise a smile and never have a quip on your lips, you’ll be viewed askance and, perhaps, ignored.

Only when humor has been universally recognized as a crucial character trait will the inhabitants of this world get along. They will realize that life is too short to get mad and fight among themselves; instead they will try to wrest as much pleasure and fulfillment from life as possible. Already the word
humor
itself is starting to appear with new meanings and in new contexts: a humorous government, humorous methods, humorous finances, humor during sex, humor in art and culture. Many people will dismiss these visions of a society based on laughter, comedy, and humor as childish and absurd. But I simply see it as the logical development of human thought. In other words, if you want to be one step ahead in the future, you’re going to need humor.

With the privatization of the Icelandic banks, everything changed. What happened was not all that complicated. A handful of powerful financial moguls decided to make a present of the state-controlled banks to their rich pals—or to entrust them with the banks for a handful of loose change—in return for various favors. Suddenly the Icelandic banks, which had previously been a bit provincial and narrow-minded, seemed really cool.

And then everything went crazy. A new elite began to emerge, people who just juggled virtual money, drove Range Rovers, and spouted pseudo-business jargon over the phone. Within a few years, the banking sector had ballooned into a giant bubble, and finally the banks had accumulated loans and other assets totaling about ten times Iceland’s GDP.

The politicians stood by and did nothing; they didn’t understand this new world, and ordinary citizens started to smell a rat. The president assured us repeatedly that there was no cause for concern. It was just a load of cool guys, the Vikings of the modern era, sailing out into the world, robbing and plundering, and then returning to their home port with their ships filled to the brim with gold, women, and slaves.

Loans were easier to get than ever before. Banks threw their cheap deals around and any old Santa Claus could clomp into the next bank and take out a loan. If you wanted to buy a flat, you just signed on the dotted line and it was all yours. The slogan was: “Tell me what you want—and we’ll lend you the money. That’s our job.” Ordinary people were only too happy to fall for the idea that those wily financial Vikings knew exactly what they were doing.

But eventually time was up and we had to face the bitter truth: it had all been done on credit. And then came the great reckoning.

In 2008, almost overnight, everything collapsed. The government convened an emergency meeting and mulled over the situation deep into the night. Outside, the journalists glued their noses to the windows and tried to find out what was up, but the politicians just said “no comment.” The situation did however seem pretty serious. Then came the prime minister’s speech. He stated that the Icelandic banks were virtually bankrupt, and if appropriate measures were not taken pronto, the country was threatened with national bankruptcy. He ended by heaving his now legendary sigh: “God bless Iceland.”

Wherever two or three were gathered together, there was only one topic of conversation, and people outdid each other spinning the bleakest scenarios for the future. The unemployment rate would rise to 25 percent. A second crisis was already on the way. There
were persistent and vociferous protests from citizens who assembled with pots, pans, and wooden spoons on the square in front of the Althingi, Iceland’s national parliament, and organized one hell of a racket—the so-called “saucepan revolution”—whereupon, in January 2009, the government resolutely resigned.

I popped into town now and again to have a look at the spectacle, but didn’t feel any need to mingle with the demonstrators. Waves of anger and aggression spread. Clashes with the police were reported almost every day, as when angry mobs broke into public buildings to disrupt streamed live sessions. Then parliamentary elections were called for April 2009 and a new government elected. It was the first purely left-wing government in the history of the Republic. Our expectations of the new rulers were high, but—not least because of the strict requirements of the International Monetary Fund, which had offered a financial package—their room for maneuvering was extremely limited.

Meanwhile Davíð Oddsson settled into the executive chair at the Icelandic Central Bank, and the protesting citizenry swiftly joined him there. The people demanded his immediate resignation—he was Davíð Oddsson, the human face of the crisis! I myself was well pleased to see that the ramshackle ruling party finally being dumped. Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn, the Independence Party, once a solid, dependable party that relied on common sense rather than lip service, had
degenerated into a rotten, corrupt clique. Its ministers refused on principle to admit to their own mistakes, wriggled out of every tight squeeze, and flipped the bird to everyone else.

After prolonged civil protests and a legislative change by the Althingi, even Davíð Oddsson had to pack his bags. The Swedish daily
Dagens Nyheter
then named him as the “lousiest central bank governor of all time.” In
Time
magazine, he was ranked among the twenty-five key people to blame for the international economic crisis. After his sacking from the central bank, Davíð moved seamlessly into the executive suite of
Morgunblaðið
—Iceland’s oldest daily newspaper and loyal mouthpiece for the conservatives—whence he now regularly has his say in editorials and columns, detailing what a silly and completely incompetent mayor I am. To date, he has not admitted to a single mistake, let alone apologized to anyone, and he remains as convinced as ever that neither he nor his party bear any share of the blame for the economic misery.

Since then, many people have been racking their brains over what actually went wrong. How exactly did the financial crisis happen? When I look at the people involved in the banking collapse, all those officials, politicians, journalists, and business leaders, I wonder what they all have in common? They have different social backgrounds, different hobbies, and different life-styles. Some are on the left, others on the right. At first glance it’s impossible to make out any pattern. If there
is one common denominator, however, it’s the Icelandic universities. Those people were mostly educated in Icelandic universities and colleges. And strangely enough, many of those who sat in the control tower of the Icelandic economy before the crash have resurfaced as university lecturers again. Most of them come from backgrounds in the social sciences, and so have studied economics or business administration, law or political science—and practically nothing else. We call them experts. Before these people enrolled at university, they went to high school, where they were often already politically active in party youth organizations or a debating societies.

Representatives from the business and political worlds have come before the public and acknowledged their complicity in the banking crisis. However, I do not know of anyone in science and research apologizing for anything, or even noting that the universities had played a part—as the eggs from which the crisis was hatched, and the breeding grounds in which the financial Vikings were trained.

In some ways, the Icelandic educational system seems beyond criticism. Many people think it’s close to perfect. It’s not that I want to mark down our educational system as a completely useless and failed institution. But at school, creative thinking is not valued. Less than 10 percent of modules demand any degree of creativity. Most lessons are spent cramming students with knowledge that they have never specifically requested.
Yet this is what’s being sold to them as a prerequisite for any success in life.

If we want a real democracy, we need to sow the seeds for it in our primary schools. In a truly democratically organized school system, parents and pupils could decide together what they want to learn. They’d at least have a certain say in the matter. In short, students need to be trained to be something more than experts. Yet we’ve never yet seen anything of the kind implemented anywhere. The only way to change the school system in the long term seems to me to start it all over from scratch and under different circumstances. Of course, it’s doubtful that this is going to happen in any conceivable future.

In 2009, I worked in an advertising agency as a creative director. But in times of recession and far-reaching austerity measures, people everywhere were being sacked; others found themselves suffering from cuts to their salaries. Even in the television industry things were getting increasingly tight. So I left my job in an agreement with the agency and without much regret. My future was hazy, and I was in a state of total limbo. And it was precisely to get out of this haze that I made the decision to go into politics.

First of all, the financial crisis led to a rapid decline in purchasing power. Prices soared and wages plummeted. I had to service a loan from the year 2000 and was also paying off a car, with credit that I’d received in foreign currency. With the fall of the Icelandic króna these loans grew immeasurably, so the car was suddenly worth as much as a small apartment.

In those weeks and months, politics was virtually the only topic of conversation. The politicians had failed. They were idiots and assholes. Even though everyone was glad the Independents had finally been got rid of, the Left did not prove to be much better. So the elections hadn’t changed much, just the faces
in power. What was missing was something really new. Something different from our well-worn, dull-as-ditchwater party politics. What was missing were new words, new concepts, new values, and young, fresh faces. It was high time that the politicians left their hackneyed phrases behind and moved on from the rigid, outdated right-left pattern of thought.

So what do you do when you have to choose between two options, both of which are equally bad? You invent a third.

I’m often asked how I actually came to found the Best Party. The answer is that I simply came up with the idea. An idea is born when two other ideas have sex with each other, and a third comes into being. Though in this case we should perhaps describe it rather as group sex, as to begin with there were a whole bunch of ideas in play that eventually gave rise to this new one. Either way, once it was out in the world there was no turning back. It was just too brilliant.

Here’s how it happened.

At that time, the International Monetary Fund held the financial reins in its hands, and industry insiders were sure that the first thing it would cut would be the cultural budget. All grants and scholarships for artists and creatives would be radically reduced, and there were even rumors of plans to close down the Icelandic State Theatre. Being a TV star or actor was not exactly a promising career in Iceland at this time.