Where is HOME?

27th of October 2021

Where is home?

Good morning, everyone.

Yesterday I was in a situation!

Some people did not agree with me where HOME is?

I seriously don´t care what other people think about me but this I found interesting and I have often thought about it when people have been living abroad from the country they were borne and they always call the birth place HOME.

In my mind HOME is where I live.

I live in Portugal and have been here for almost 11 years. From China I arrived here and even though I left China with a heavy heart and was disappointed not to spend the rest of my life there, I was welcomed to my new land, my little beautiful land, Portugal. Portugal is my HOME.

Many years ago, I was with a group of Icelandic people in Oxford. The group was asked one morning about Iceland.

Many of them spoke at the same time: THE MOST BEAUTIFUL COINTRIE IN THE WORLD.

I was ashamed. There we sat in the most beautiful place I had ever visited and the arrogant at that time my country men, told the wonderful people that lived in this place that it was nothing compared to Iceland!

This is nothing new.

IF you look at the trend, the Icelandic, many of them, tend to think they are the best in everything.

They are the best and most beautiful, they are the best in sports, they are the best in corruption which of course no one talks about. The country is the most beautiful in the world, the water is the cleanest and I can go on and on.

I TOTALLY DISAGREE.

I live in a very beautiful country; my little land is amazing and just taking a turn to the left or the right from the national highway you are bound to find a new adventure and new beautiful place.

The corruption in Iceland is something the nation can be proud of, for sure.

The richest ones, the tiny percentage is shovelling the land and the goods into their own pockets and don’t give a dam about the poorer ones. They simply don´t care.

Last month there was an election in Iceland. The government is now, almost a month later still talking about how to work together the next 4 years!   The prime minister appears on pictures and TV smiling and happy. The country is in turmoil. The currency is going to hell. The poor are getting worse situation every day, the rich ones are getting richer every day.

To make it all again the best in the world, the election was rigged and now the authorities are busy finding a way to hide everything and pretend that nothing happened!

The corruption is disgusting and nothing different from the countries that the nation calls the primitive ones!

Why am I talking about this?

Why don´t I just leave it alone and enjoy my little land?

The reason is that I get my pension from this land, I worked for 40 years in Iceland and paid my taxes there and saved for my pension years according to the Icelandic law.

What happens in Iceland affects my daily life here in Portugal. My pension gets less and less every month because of the horrible currency of the Icelandic krona.

If I did not get my pension from Iceland, I would never look at anything from there, I would not follow the corruption or care abut anything in the land. I do have some friends in the land but that is all. I have friends all around the world and some of them are closer than the old friends in Iceland.

Yes, I am angry about the situation.

Yes, I am frustrated and I really wish I did not have to tell people when they ask me where I am from, that I am Icelandic.

Yes, I am Portuguese, and I am proud of that. Not by birth, but by choice.

Will anything change for the better in Iceland?

No, as long as the nation votes again and again for those that keep them in slavery nothing will change.

Icelandic people don´t rise up and protest. They just shake their shoulders and say they can’t do anything.

What a shame. In one of the richest countries in the world the rich are swallowing everything and the poor are getting poorer every minute.

Would you expect that in the country there are thousands of people who have not food on their plates the last week of the month?

Would you believe that those people, some of them, are homeless?

No, you would not believe me when you see the smiling prime minister telling the world how wonderful everything is in Iceland!

I am ashamed.

I am angry.

I am disappointed.

And much more but the truth is that I am not supposed to be talking about this. I should keep my mouth shut if I can’t talk about the wonderful!!!!

I dared to say the day before yesterday that the Icelandic were not my country men and some scolded me and told me this was beneath my dignity!

The arrogance is endless, don´t tell the truth, hide behind the pink clout, don´t give a damn about those who have to flee the land to be able to survive, just like the poorest people from other continents!

Those Icelanders who move to other countries when they become certain age have to leave their children, grandchildren, friends and the land they grew up in. For many this is really difficult but it is the only way to survive and the only way not to be half starving the last week of the month.

Hulda Björnsdóttir