Sjáiði til - ég starfa í þessum svokallaða “ferðaiðnaði”. Sit á skrifstofu nokkurri og fæ nú daglega vefpóst sem inniheldur álíka skilaboð og þessi hér:
I was planning on visiting Iceland next year but because you have resumed whale hunting I most certainly will not be spending any of my money coming to your country or on any products from your country.
Hopefully you wiil see sense and bring inlfuence to bear on your government to outlaw once and for all the horrific senseless slaughter of whales.
Eins og sjá má eru þetta einungis nokkrar línur hriflaðar saman af einhverjum Jóni utan úr heimi. Þegar ég fékk mín fyrstu skilaboð í þessum dúr gladdi það mitt litla hjarta því þetta braut svo sannarlega upp alla vinnuvikuna mína. Ég gat loks fengið að svara svona beiðni.
Það má segja að ég hafi verið aðeins of kaldhæðinn og leiðingjarn í því svari mínu enda þurrkaði ég út fyrir hvaða fyrirtæki ég starfa.
En það var ekki búið, það komu fleiri skilaboð.
Ég fór þar með að henda saman bréfi sem ég vistaði á skjáborðið hjá mér sem ég vippa einfaldlega upp við hvert tækifæri og sendi á þá sem kvarta og kveina yfir þessum blessuðu veiðum okkar.
Ég vil deila því með ykkur, það er svohljóðandi:
Dear Mr. / Mrs. (nafn hér),
I was at great dismay that we, a localized tourist company in Iceland, received an email regarding this issue. I do realize that some people think of this as a mistake on our part, and I agree – but if you are willing to ignore Iceland for that decisions alone I sincerely hope that you have sufficient arguments to back it up which seem to be lacking in all of these emails I receive.
Now to be honest I would’ve thought that most people that are concerned with animal rights should have a decently matured mind – at least conscious of it’s society, however wrong that may be. Taking note that we are living in the times that we do – I would’ve imagined people to be both more open-minded and have respect to the decisions of others without shunning their country and herritage because of the fact that they don’t share the same oppinion as some government that reigns in said country - ours.
I find it very harsh that people can think this is justifiable. It shows great disrespect to us as individuals (now in all disregard to our whaling) – and doesn’t show any will of understanding other than your own ideas. For example, I dissapprove the invasion into Iraq and Afghanistan by the US government, and later with the support of the UK, I find it unforgivable that they assume that they have to enforce their own ideals onto other countries because they think that it’s right, just because they want to appear as if it works for them. That, however, does not stop me from visiting the US or UK which I have done numerous times. I do not put any connection from a country’s nature – it’s inhabitants – and it’s government. Those are all different and shall remain so for times to come. Sometimes I suspect many people respect life of a single whale more than the life of a human being. At least they seem to be more likely to cause vandalism – protest and ridicule than those who oppose warfare or plain murder.
As a country - we have one of the lowest murder rates in the world, along with Japan (ironically for this subject), and we do not have an army. Our police-officers are not allowed to carry firearms except for the special-forces team, which is rarely used. Those points should suffice to show that we respect human life a bit more than the next avarege-joe country, yet somehow that’s not even considered when people blatantly declare that we should be ashamed for killing whales – if you feel that is wrong – then you should be able to argue that the killing of all wild-life animals is wrong, and I don’t see that happening in the near future.
Remember that the power of decision here in Iceland lies in the hands of just a handful of people, like in many other countries – I, for instance, agree that whaling is unjustifiable for us because we lose alot more than we could possibly gain from it. And that’s a fact. We get very bad publicity in other countries and many tourists decide not to visit Iceland for that reason alone, or at least say they won’t, which we could never confirm one way or the other. However, to be so narrow-minded that you let our whaling-decision influence whether you could visit Iceland or not is simply beyond my grasp of understanding.
I understand your opinion though – and I respect it as well – but it appears ours are not the same. I don’t wipe out the option of coming to your country, experience it’s nature and society because of a decision that wasn’t even made by you as an individual. I would estimate that around 95% of Iceland’s population didn’t have a call for that decision and most of them, like myself, don’t even see why or how we made it.
You have to realise that we recently stopped our 60 year “co-operation” with the US air-force that we were rarely on the receiving-end of any favours – this has probably caused a minor inferiority-complex in our government offices and may be just the reason we made this ill-thought decision. Some people could define this situation as “Standing up to the Big Brother”, because he's not around anymore to punish us. But that’s completely theoretical. You can assume that this mindset within our government is most likely temporary and will phase out soon.
Please reconsider your stance against our people – instead of the whales and our government's inability to weigh out pro's and con's.
Best regards,
Óðinn Davíðsson Löve
Ég veit að þetta er langt en þetta vill ég að fólk sjái þegar það er með einhverjar staðhæfingar varðandi þessi “morð”- auðvitað á maður rétt á því að mótmæla skoðunum annarra, en þetta er bara svo miklu flóknara en það. Hér er ákvörðun eins eða tveggja manna að hafa stórvægileg áhrif á iðnað heillar þjóðar þar sem mögulegi gróðinn er svo langt frá því að slá á tapið sem virðist ætla að verða af þessu.
En, hvað veit ég -
Óðinn
Hugi notar vefkökur til að bæta notendaupplifun á vefsíðunni og greina umferð um hana.
Einnig hefur Hugi uppfært persónuverndarstefnu sína. 
