Iceland Collapse: Riots, Suicide, and Soup Kitchens in Churches

Last week - the worst riots in Iceland since it became a founding member of Nato in 1949.

Rocks were hurled at police and the Althing. Its windows were smashed and the building set alight. Over 130 protesters received treatment after police used tear gas to disperse the crowd.

On Friday morning, human rights
campaigner and protest organiser Hordur Torfason told a chilling anecdote to illustrate the desperation many Icelanders are feeling. He had received a phone call from a man who said that four generations of his family had lost everything. “He wanted me to help them build a gallows in front of the parliament building,” says Torfason. “I asked him if this was to have some symbolic significance. ‘No,’ came the answer. ‘A member of my family wants to hang himself in public.’”

“I said I would help them but not in this way,” says Torfason. “But he killed himself two days ago.”

Red Cross employees and volunteers are working overtime to prepare for depression and desperation.

The relief agency has expanded and is setting up support groups and activities for the unemployed.

“One of the effects of long-term unemployment is depression,” says the agency’s Thor Gislason.

More people are attending church, he says, not just for spiritual succour, but because food is sometimes provided for a nominal charge.

Soup kitchens, emblematic of Eastern bloc poverty, might be going too far. “We believe people will be too ashamed to stand in line publicly for food,” says Gislason, “so we will organise activities and volunteer work where food is involved instead.”

Fortunately, nobody is starving or freezing on the street. But Iceland is clearly on the brink of either a major change or some kind of collapse. Its situation should serve as a warning to other countries sunk by the financial crisis. No place is immune to this kind of upheaval.