Welmer

Or so says a May 18 Guardian Observer article I came across today. Written by John Carlin, the piece extols the virtues of divorce, illegitimacy and the “patchwork families” that Carlin claims characterize Icelandic society. He goes so far as to write “Iceland could not be less like Africa on the surface,” and describes the tiny island nation as a “melting pot” without hangups that is “open to the world in all its diversity.”

Where does one start with this? It seems Carlin is getting much of his information from a young Reykjavik politician who got knocked up by a German while in school in Stuttgart, left him before the kid was born, then hooked up with her ex boyfriend back in Iceland and had another kid. Naturally, smitten by this fertile young woman who poses provocatively for his article’s photos, he takes her word for it when she says “patchwork families are the norm here.”

As for diversity, Iceland is 95% ethnic Icelandic. The remaining 5% is mainly European, and there are very few racial minorities. What kind of melting pot is that?

Carlin claims Iceland has the highest divorce rate in Europe. In fact, Iceland has the lowest divorce rate in Scandinavia, and it doesn’t even come close to the US rate.

This guy is writing for a large newspaper, yet he can’t even get his facts straight. Not only that, his prose is laughably bad, including such gems as “straight from the earth’s volcanic bowels” and “eyes that have the concentrated energy of a laser beam.” Shouldn’t he be writing pulp fantasy novels? I’ve been discussing the decline of newspapers with a friend of mine for some time, and I’ve made the point that although the Internet has contributed, a lot of the blame rests on the newspapers themselves for hiring dopey writers like Carlin.

The writer’s conclusion, that Iceland owes its happiness to its African nature, is so far off base that it’s a fair question as to whether he was sober for one minute of his visit — or for that matter when he wrote the piece. This article, as bad as it is, is worthy of comment for being a stark example of how shabby print journalism has become.