Last week I mentioned that the lighting of the Imagine Peace Tower was happening on October 9th, and I had tickets to take the ferry over to Viðey Island to attend in person. But the weather in Iceland had other plans. Starting the day before, the kind of winds that can only originate at sea hit Reykjavík, with gusts up to 56 MPH at the time I checked my weather app. The windchill dropped the temperature by 27°F and while it was calmer the following day the organizers still decided to cancel the lighting ceremony out of caution. I’m told it’s just typical autumn weather; it was mid-50s and calm soon after. But it gives me a better sense of why plans in Iceland need to be flexible when strong gale winds can whip up quickly.
I did get a chance to attend a related event, the Imagine Forum, an annual conference put on by the Höfði Peace Center, which had a theme this year of “Protecting Rights – Defending Peace.” The day-long event brought some powerful voices to Iceland, from areas of the world most grappling with peace and human rights.
The Iranian actress and activist Nazanin Boniadi talked about the severe restrictions that women in Iran face, and her work to establish international recognition and law around the term gender apartheid. Her stories of repression were paired with examples of women pushing back, risking and often facing horrific consequences. She emphasized the intergenerational aspect of hope in this fight, of how women in Iran can learn from their grandmothers, in photos and stories, about a time when they had more freedom than they do today.
Varsen Aghabekian, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and expatriates of the State of Palestine, spoke as the ceasefire in Gaza was agreed to and the world holds its breadth in hope that this could be the moment the genocide stops. It felt important to hear directly from her about the need for accountability, and the importance of a two-state solution, but I was left with the same intractable feelings about how that will be possible in the face of extremist attitudes.
The final speaker I want to highlight is the one that has stuck with me most, Vladimir Kara-Murza — a Russian opposition politician, historian and former political prisoner. In 2023 he was sentenced to a Siberian prison colony for his political views, and freed the following year as part of the largest prisoner exchange between the US and Russia since the end of the Cold War. He told stories of Putin’s rise to power that frighteningly mirror what Trump is doing in the US today, in particular his consolidation and control of the media. He also emphasized that we should not believe there is universal support for the Ukrainian invasion amongst Russian citizens. He told the story of a man jailed for five years for simply responded to an opinion poll and saying he was against the war. When the consequences for resistance are so extreme, there is no reliable data about public opinion.
These three speakers were representing terrible environments for human rights and peace, and yet it was striking how much each of them embodied feelings of hope. After his talk, Vladimir Kara-Murza was on a panel with Rósa Magnúsdóttir, Professor of History at the University of Iceland, and they both used their historical expertise to frame today against the arc of history. Asked about how he remains hopeful Kara-Murza told a story from the previous week, where he had flown into Frankfurt and then drove to Strasbourg for an event. He reflected on how that region of Alsace was soaked in the blood of history, after so many wars fought between Germany and France over the territory. Yet today you would never suspect it, with no border crossing, a single currency — it’s hard to even tell which country you’re in.
It’s hard to zoom out like this, when each day the grip of authoritarianism only seems tighten, and it’s easier to imagine tomorrow based on the trajectory of today than the cycles of the distant past. But as these speakers showed, the worse it gets the more important it is to remember that it doesn’t have to be this way. The grandmothers in Iran remember a different life, the collapse of oppressive regimes accelerates quickly when it occurs, and despite the tyrant’s attempts to hide it their actions are not popular. What I took away is the need for hope, and persistence, and perhaps hardest of all patience.
If you’re interested, a recording of the entire Imagine Peace Forum 2025 is available on Vimeo.
Next week is an major event I’ve been looking forward to since before moving to Iceland, and integral to my studies of the Arctic while I’m here. The Arctic Circle is the largest gathering of politicians, academics, business leaders and others focused on a wide range of Arctic-related topics. They’re expecting 3000+ attendees from over 70 countries, with lots of ministerial level speakers.
I’m not only attending, but will be a delegation volunteer, which means I’ll be on-call to support whichever delegation I get assigned, helping with whatever needs come up throughout the 3-day event. I don’t yet know which delegation that will be; I find out tomorrow. This means I’ll have full backstage access to the conference, and this week I attended an orientation that involved touring the Harpa conference center. I’m a little worried about providing concierge services to a foreign delegation when I’ve only just learned the ropes myself, but it should be an interesting learning experience.
Last night I saw Hania Rani perform at Fríkirkjan, the Lutheran church built in 1903 in downtown Reykjavík. Almost a year ago I saw her for the first time at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis and was blown away. Similar to that concert, she was surrounded by numerous keyboards, including a grand piano, which she treated almost as a single instrument, swapping between them or playing them at the same time. The experience was fantastic, and the music a bit different than before as she was performing under her pseudonym Chilling Bambino, which is more synthesizer focused.
Hania is Polish, and this performance was sponsored by the Polish Embassy. Immigrants from Poland make up the largest group of foreign-born inhabitants in Iceland, totaling 32% of the immigrant population in 2024.
Noted & Done
- Attended the opening event for Sequences: Real-Time Art Festival at the Marshall House.
- Finished reading The Rebellious Ally: Iceland, the United States, and the Politics of Empire 1945-2006 by Valur Ingimundarson. This must be the most comprehensive English-language text on Iceland’s deeply intertwined history with the United States. I found it fascinating and if you’re at all interested in Iceland, American history, WWII, or the Cold War then I highly recommend it. It is not easy to find in print, but luckily the full book is available as a PDF download.
- Related to the reflections above, on history as an avenue for hope, I don’t know why it took me so long to discover Heather Cox Richardson. She’s a professor of American history at Boston College and runs a widely read daily newsletter on politics. I’ve been finding her YouTube channel insightful.