Analyses
In Geir's own account, the words were intended to be a 'friendly farewell' ('vinaleg kveðja') rather than a prayer, but the words were widely understood as a sinister indication of the desperate straits in which Iceland found itself. As analysed byOn Monday 6 October 2008 Prime Minister Geir Haarde addressed the nation on television. Apart from the traditional annual New Year’s Eve address, this is something our PM never does. We were all watching, gathered round TV sets and computer screens in our workplace, in cafés and at home on that misty afternoon. It was not just that this sophisticated and usually perfectly composed man seemed shaken but that he concluded his unique address by asking God to bless Iceland. This is when we knew we were in serious trouble. Iceland is quite secular. Unlike American politicians, Icelandic politicians never refer to God in public – at least not without cracking a joke.One account of an everyday person's response to the speech, collected by Alda Sigmundsdóttir, runs:
I remember the day Geir Haarde gave his God Bless Iceland speech and a woman came in the shop and she was so afraid. I didn’t even know he was going to make the speech, so I hadn’t heard it. I remember my heart started racing and I just thought: My God, what is happening? It felt a bit like the terrorist attacks on New York, when everyone just stood there, so powerless, unable to comprehend the scope of it.Another account by Katrín, a school teacher living in Reykjavik, recalled:
I was teaching then. I was at school with my pupils and I got a message on my phone: “Turn on the TV.” And we were all watching it, and the kids kept asking, “What does it mean, Katrín, what does it mean?” and I was like, shit, how bad is it? This speech, you know, this one made by Haarde, “God bless Iceland” it was unprecedented, so for all of us it was really, really serious. And it wasn’t like, you know, “I saw it coming.” I didn’t know that this would happen.The week following the speech saw a statistically significant rise in the number of women admitted to Iceland's cardiac emergency department, which researchers have argued correlated with the news of Iceland's economic collapse.
Influence in popular culture
A radio play of the same name by Símon Birgisson and Malte Scholz was broadcast by Útvarpsleikhúsið in September 2009 and an eponymous documentary film by Helgi Felixson premiered on the first anniversary of the speech. A music track entitled ''Guð blessi Ísland'' concludes the Crash-themed concept album ''Helvítis fokking funk'' by the Samúel Jón Samúelsson Big Band. Geir's phrase is discussed in Ragnheiður Gestsdóttir's novel ''See also
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