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REINFELDT

Reinfeldt: ‘Iceland must honour its commitments’

Sweden's Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt has reminded crisis-stricken Iceland that the Swedish portion of a large Nordic country loan is conditional on Reykjavik concluding a compensation deal for the Icesave bank collapse.

Reinfeldt: 'Iceland must honour its commitments'
Icelanders demonstrate in London, March 2009

“For us it has been important, and I think it will be for all parties, that (Iceland) does in fact honour its international commitments,” Reinfeldt told the TT news agency on Monday.

Iceland’s Nordic neighbours Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway agreed last year to €1.8 billion euros ($2.5 billion) in loans to the North Atlantic island nation to help it emerge from its deep economic crisis.

The loans were meant to bolster a promised $2.1 billion (€1.5 billion) bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

So far, Iceland has pocketed about one fifth of the Nordic loans and half of the IMF money, but the remaining payments have been delayed as Reykjavik attempts to reach a compensation deal with Britain and the Netherlands over the collapse of the online Icesave bank in October 2008.

In a referendum on Saturday, more than 93 percent of Icelandic voters rejected a deal to repay Britain and the Netherlands €3.9 billion ($5.3 billion) to compensate for money they paid to 340,000 of their citizens hit by Icesave.

Iceland’s left-wing government has expressed its commitment to negotiate a new, more advantageous deal soon.

Reinfeldt said he understood Icelanders’ frustration at being burdened with paying for the failures of a private bank and said the financial crisis had exposed weaknesses in the global financial system.

“We cannot have a situation where financial actors put any profits into their pockets while poor growth and large debts are sent to the taxpayers. And that is of course what went wrong on Iceland.”

Reinfeldt insisted nonetheless that “Iceland (must) honour its international commitments.”

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HISTORY

Denmark and Iceland clash over priceless medieval manuscripts

They recount tales of Viking raids, Norse history, kings and gods: a priceless collection of medieval manuscripts, bequeathed by an Icelandic scholar to the University of Copenhagen in the 18th century, that Iceland now wants back.

Denmark and Iceland clash over priceless medieval manuscripts
An Icelandic medieval manuscript of the Arnamagnaean Collection at the University of Copenhagen. Photo: Suzanne Reitz/AFP/Ritzau Scanpix

The UN cultural organisation UNESCO has called them “the single most important collection of early Scandinavian manuscripts in existence”, with the earliest one dating from the 12th century.

Some of the texts — known as the Arnamagnaean Collection — have already been returned to Reykjavik, but 1,400 documents are still locked away in Copenhagen.

The jewel of the collection is an almost complete early 15th century copy of “Heimskringla” — the best known of the Old Norse kings' sagas, originally written in the 13th century by Icelandic poet and historian Snorri Sturluson.

Unlike many Icelandic mediaeval manuscripts, which have few decorative flourishes, this version of the Heimskringla is richly illustrated with intricate red lettering on each page.

The Arnamagnaean Collection is named after scholar Arni Magnusson, a historian and literature and language expert who was born in Iceland but died in 1730 in Copenhagen, where he left his 3,000 or so manuscripts.

Each time a document from the collection is borrowed from the university, it is insured for up to five million kroner (670,000 euros).

Keen to ensure good relations with its former colony, Denmark granted Iceland's recurring request to return part of the collection in the 1960s. A treaty signed in 1965 divvied up the goods.

In line with that agreement, more than half of the manuscripts were turned over to Iceland between 1971 and 1997.

The division of documents between the two nations had for years been uncontroversial, but Iceland's Culture and Education Minister Lilja Alfredsdottir now wants more of the collection given back.

She has raised the profile of the issue and linked it to the construction of a new institute dedicated to Magnusson, which will hold an exhibition of mediaeval documents.

“We think it's important that the manuscripts be located in Iceland to a greater extent,” Alfredsdottir told AFP.

Matthew Driscoll, the professor in charge of the collection at the University of Copenhagen, is opposed to the idea, arguing that the remaining manuscripts are part of Denmark's cultural heritage.

The two nations have an intertwined history, Iceland having been under Danish rule from the 1600s until it declared independence in 1944.

Driscoll says the University of Copenhagen has cooperated closely with Reykjavik, digitising all of the works and making them available to researchers.

“These are not things that have been acquired illegally or stolen… Arni owned those manuscripts himself, he was given them or he bought them, and then he left them in a completely legal way to the University of Copenhagen,” Driscoll said.

And even in Iceland, there are mixed opinions about whether the texts should be returned.

Haraldur Bernhardsson, a professor of medieval studies at the University of Iceland, said he fully agreed with the need to make cultural heritage visible for future generations.

But he added: “I think we can do that in collaboration with the Arnamagnaean Collection in Copenhagen.”

Keeping all the Icelandic works in Reykjavik would actually limit the number of scholars and academics who study them, some academics say.

“If you really wanted to request Icelandic manuscripts from abroad, you should perhaps prioritise manuscripts that are not currently being studied, which is obviously not the case with the Arni Magnusson collection,” said Bernhardsson.

READ ALSO: Danish parliament speaker shunned by Icelandic MPs

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