Iceland After the Fall

Iceland After the Fall

How is this Viking descendant credit-hooked mini state coping with the economic crisis?

Slate Magazine's Nathan Heller visits Iceland, where a financial collapse has spawned deep-set unrest in the nation of 313,000. "Iceland is, for many of us, the waist of the hourglass: the narrowest point in the flow of culture and commerce that buoys modern life, a place where the First World is winnowed and exposed," Heller writes in the first entry. During a rally in the capital, Reykjavik, a "vandal in a cheap Santa suit and gremlin mask" dumps a sack of potatoes on the steps of the parliament house--a sign that the nation is now so poor that this is the main staple of your average Icelander's diet. In the second entry, Heller encounters a group of people throwing raw meat and cheese wedges at the prime minister's office. "This, I learn, is 'rat food,' left for Geir Haarde, the prime minister.