The Blue Hand

Last Monday (before we bought the car) my husband and young son were on their way to a meeting at Neskirkja, and had just missed the bus by a few minutes.  They started walking, and as they did, Jim waved to a passing car.  The driver stopped and offered a ride which Jim accepted.  They had a pleasant conversation about the neighborhood and living and working in Reykjavik, such as strangers might have. When the driver dropped them off at the university, Jim thanked the driver, again gave his and our son's names, and asked the driver his name.  The driver replied with surprise, "You mean you don't know me?"  He then proceeded to tell Jim that he was Davið, that he was the former mayor of Reykjavík and former prime minister, and that he was internationally known.  Jim replied, "Oh, you're that Davið," (which seemed to amuse the driver) and thanked him for the ride.


If you are an Icelandic citizen, or someone who has been paying attention to Icelandic politics, you know that this was Davið Oddsson, former prime minister from the Independence Party, who was PM at the time the banks were privatized in the 1990s and was in charge of the central bank of Iceland at the time of the financial collapse.  One Icelander said to us that he is easily the most hated politician in all of Iceland (which is saying a lot as the approval rating for politicians is hovering around 10 percent).  Many see him as primarily responsible for the financial crisis (here's a London Times article from right after the crisis that makes this claim), a charge which he denies. But other Icelanders have said that at the time he was in office, he was both hated and loved and was a charismatic conservative leader.  He does indeed live in our neighborhood.  And he was on his way to his job as editor of Morgunblaðið, the conservative newspaper.  He was (controversially) appointed to that position less than a year after the financial collapse.  (At the same press conference that his editorship was announced the paper announced that it was laying off about 40 staff members).  The paper regularly criticizes the current left democratic government. 


So, Davið had offered a ride to one of the very few residents of Reykjavík who did not instantly recognize his face:

It's taken me a week to write about this very funny incident because I have been thinking about what the "takeaway" is from this story.  It is clear there are several.

This is a green Subaru

We bought a car today.  Here it is:

It is not green.  It is not a Subaru.  It's a 1999 Daewoo Nubira (The Korean GM that went bankrupt and is now owned by GM).  But of course, there's a story.

One way to buy a used car in Iceland is to go online to the website bilasolur.is.  Note:  on Icelandic websites, there is usually an indication of what other languages the site has available along the header of the site, most often just indicated by a flag.  English is always denoted by the British flag.  This car sales website has more languages than I've seen on any other Icelandic website, so it is worth looking just for that purpose.

At any rate, here's how this works:  most of the cars for sale are being placed by current owners through car dealerships.  Most of them are not actually at the dealership, and most (we have learned) are being offered for more than the owner is actually willing to accept for them.  This latter part is not different from the U.S., but in the U.S. cars sold by dealerships are generally owned by the dealership.  Buying from private parties happens through e.g. Craigslist, or if you are old enough to have bought a car before the invention of Craigslist, through the classifieds.   This Icelandic way seems nicer, and more efficient, because you can deal with the dealership to arrange to see the car.  All of the paperwork happens very quickly, thanks to the Icelandic kennitala (national ID). You might not meet the owner.

But we are glad that we met the (now previous) owner of our new vehicle.  His name is Siggi, and, it turns out, he had not owned the car for very long.  He was a really funny guy, and told us that everything that belonged to him was for sale--except his wife, he wanted to hold on to her--and that relates to the reason for the sign (keep reading, my feminist friends, don't be offended, he wasn't saying that he owned his wife).

Siggi told us fairly quickly what his actual bottom line price was (even less than the 15% difference from the asking price that we had been advised was a good way to start the bargaining process).  And he told us the story of the sign on the side of the car.  It seems he had owned a green Subaru, and his wife really liked it.  But he sold the car, and she keeps telling him that she really liked that car.  So when he bought this car, he decided to put a sign on it that says "This is a green Subaru," so that his wife would like this car.  But of course, it is not a green Subaru.  And so he sold it to us.

So now we have a car, partly to get around Reykjavik more easily when the buses aren't running, but mostly to travel around the country and see more of Iceland. When I told my brother that we bought a car from a guy named Siggi, he asked whether Siggi wore white shoes and had a great sense of humor--that would be our great uncle Siggi.  Maybe the sense of humor goes with the name.  At any rate, now we have a car.  And a story.