Nobody's Baby

Iceland has no Army, no Navy, no Air Force, no commercial planes, no railways, no pigs, and no national debt. It has scarcely any trees, grain or vegetables, but abundant pasturage, six sheep to every Icelander and all the fish God sends her poor but industrious and democratic Viking folk to catch.

Last week the 120,000 people of Iceland, who have never wanted any king, were completely undismayed that Adolf Hitler had bagged His Majesty Christian X, King of Denmark and separately King of Iceland. In any case, 1940 is the year long ago fixed by Icelandic-Danish treaties in which Iceland has the right to vote herself completely independent. Her famed, 1,010-year-old Althing (“World's Oldest Parliament”) long since planted abroad as Icelandic Trade Commissioners a likely corps of Vikings all ready to blossom out as diplomats when the foreign affairs of Iceland are taken out of the hands of the Danish Foreign Office. Iceland refused to join the League of Nations, chiefly because Denmark was a member, but there are no really hard feelings between Copenhagen and Reykjavik. Icelanders say handsomely of King Christian that His Majesty is “less unpopular in Iceland than any other Danish sovereign has ever been.”

Last week the fishermen & farmers of the Althing handsomely voted not to depose their King but merely that, “having regard for the fact that the situation now created makes it impossible for His Majesty the King of Iceland to execute the royal power,” it shall be vested “until further notice” in Icelandic Premier Hermann Jónasson & Cabinet.

What really interested Iceland was that in London last week the "Mother [but not oldest] of Parliaments“ was flatly promised by First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill that the Nazis will be kept out of Iceland. Last year there was every sign that A. Hitler & Co. might be ready overnight to seize this kingdom.

Icelandic waters were infested with German so-called ”fishing steamers“ whose mother ship was the 5,400-ton Nazi cruiser Emden. Queries from Reykjavik as to why the Emden constantly hung about near Iceland's capital drew from Berlin polite assurances that this was a gesture of ”honor and respect.“ Earlier, Nazi Air Minister Hermann Wilhelm Göring had the whole terrain of Iceland and Greenland minutely inspected by a corps of German so-called ”genealogists,“ ”geologists“ and ”experts in falconry.“ Reykjavik meanwhile suddenly sprouted an Icelandic Nazi Party of native stooges with German paymasters. Preparations for a coup in Iceland were believed almost complete when Nazi Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler announced that in March 1939 he proposed to land in Reykjavik with a large delegation of Germans who would conduct genealogical research all over the kingdom to establish the ”Viking ancestry“ of prominent Nazis. It was just luck for Iceland that Adolf Hitler took Bohemia-Moravia instead, and Genealogist Himmler canceled his Reykjavik appointment to rush to Prague.

Icelandic Premier Jónasson is a muscleman, annually crowned ”King of Glima“ in his younger days because for many years he kept winning the Icelandic wrestling championship in Norse games handed down through the centuries from the Vikings. In 1929 the bulging Jónasson biceps and barrel chest inflated the uniform of Chief of Police of Reykjavik. In 1934 he was elected to the Althing, that same year muscled in as Premier. Last week Hermann Jónasson just said nothing and waited with the aplomb of a Viking Joe Louis. Defended by the British Navy, and with the Allies already buying their fish, Icelanders sat prettier this week than for some years.

Icelanders are quick to urge visitors: ”Please notice we are not Eskimos.“ Over on the 838,000 square miles of Greenland some 17,000 sheepish Eskimos are bossed around for their own good by a handful of extremely paternalistic Danish officials.

Greenland is so well managed that it is the only Eskimo country in the world where the Eskimo population is not dwindling but increasing. Elsewhere Eskimos are a pathetic ”dying race,“ with nothing in common with the Icelanders.

Actually the climate of Greenland could be better described as ”icelandic“—Iceland is tempered by the Gulf Stream —and geographers have often remarked that the two countries ought to exchange names. Iceland is ”European," lying roughly 900 miles from the Continent and quite beyond the longest stretch yet given the Monroe Doctrine.

Greenland can be seen on a clear day by the eagle-eyed Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and last week Washington was busy trying to decide whether to wrap it up in the Stars & Stripes or only in the flag of the American Red Cross (see p. 13). Somebody has to help feed the more or less helpless Greenland Eskimos, on whom Denmark like a fat little dowager has spent some $100,000 yearly, whereas poor but proud Iceland is nobody's baby.