a little politics

The Saturday before last was an important day here in Iceland (and no, I'm not talking about Eurovision!). There was a national election for althingi, the parliament - they're held every four years. The governing coalition, composed of two parties on the centre/right side of Icelandic politics, had been in power for twelve years. A swing to the left was very much expected. The results were somewhat surprising I think; the largest party actually gained a few seats, while their coalition partner suffered heavy losses. The coalition was left with a majority of one, which isn't enough for a stable government, so a new coalition is expected to be formed consisting of the main party, and one of the more left-wing ones. It will be interesting to see if this changes anything in the decisions made by the government. For more details try this article on the Grapevine's website.

Myself, I just hope that they go easier on all the construction work that's been going on all over Iceland - aluminium factories, big dams etc. It doesn't even make economic sense to me - tourism is the second biggest industry in this country, but people won't be excited about coming to Iceland any more if they build over everything. When I first visited Iceland three years ago, the coach ride from Keflavik airport to Reykjavik was really something special. Now it's a string of building sites. And this is the one stretch of road that almost every visitor to Iceland is guaranteed to see!

On a more trivial note, we had an amazing day here last Saturday. Sunny, clear skies, and the temperature rose to all of 10 degrees celsius! At this point everyone gets really excited, saying finally summer is on it's way. Two days later, and it's snowing. I'm never going to understand the weather in this country.