in the driver´s seat

As a mother of two - one baby and one toddler -  I am always on the wheels: prams, all sorts of strollers, tricycles, what not, and most often, of course, I am using our car. 
It´s interesting how we get used to the cars - in a way it becomes our second home - a personal space which we keep clean or fill with all sorts of personal indispensable garbage, a small reflection of our home.
Last week I passed a driving test second time in my life and remembered the cars and experiences I had. 

On the photo: one of the rare Reykjavik traffic jams in Buðstaðavegur 

My relationships with an automobile started long ago: I got my first driving license in 2000 but actually started to drive my own car only seven years later.

I cannot remember now for what reason whatsoever I decided I needed a driving license in that hot summer fifteen years ago. Still a student, with no perspective of obtaining a moving vehicle of any type or condition at all, I had absolutely no necessity to start learning to drive a car. And despite all the human logic I entered a driving school in June and started the process.

If my memory does not fail me it was the only driving school in Arkhangelsk at the time (my native city in the North Western Russia). The class comprised about three dozen of men, representing all walks of live and three young women.

They made the school from the remnants of a bankrupt military or paramilitary organisation (I think it was something to do with DOSAAF ) - the transformation scheme so familiar and rather common for the wild Russian nineties. All of those so-to-say "teachers" were retired colonels and majors in their late fifties-sixties with no experience of actually what can be called teaching. They were loud and disrespectful with the male learners, awkward, uneasy and sweaty with us, pretty and young. And to make it more difficult for them it was a hot summer that year.

Anyway, every Tuesday and Thursday, six to nine, we were there - in a stuffy room with high ceilings of a stalin-time building and dark green walls ornamented with with soviet tanks pictures and posters instructing on five slunk positions of a gas-mask. The walls adorned by the occasional white crater of a dry broken paint, our studies crawled with the snail speed under the monotonous voice of the teacher.

The driving classes were, however, the fun in its essence. I am not joking. My driving instructor was a perl, a find which I have been remembering warmly with a smile for already fifteen years. He was one on those retired as well. In contrast to the classroom shabby guys, mostly political (propaganda) commissars in their past, that one had been a pilot. But... he had a peculiarity uncombinable with piloting - the thing was, let me put it mildly, he often found himself "thirsty". On some days more thirsty than on the others, sometimes even so thirsty that it took weeks to quench the thirst. Understandably, that avocation moved him out of the brave pilots´ regiment, consequently, out of  heartbreakers´ cavalry and set him into the driving instructor´s seat.

On quite some occasions I could distinctly smell his last night moral laps in the dilapidated synthetic interior. But what was interesting about him - he talked. He talked nonstop. It was only comparable to the Northern Korean radio (I could only assume) - radio with no music, no commercials - just monotonous talking. For sixty minutes he elaborated on his past, present and his versions of future, he dwelt upon politics, presidents, resurrection of Christ and chicken farms, reincarnation of frogs, of planes, of women. In a way it was amusing. In those days I learned what was a glide-slope track for the rest of my life.

His working horse, his Sleipnir and my first car was a red Lada 3. Once bright and attractive with scarlet lipstick, cheap perm in the hair, lots of makeup and rather gaudy outfit, with all her ostentatious looks aiming at attracting sailors and salesmen. That girl became old, alone and forgotten quite fast and then was picked up by my old drunkard, once a fearless pilot and a heartbreaker. If you think of that, they actually made quite a couple, those two.

Lada by large had problems with her health: coughing and rattling sounds of the engine were the least to worry about. The old broad had a hard steering with no hydraulics which I had to put all my weight to make a timely turn. At my first class I was warned that in case the brakes failed, I had to use the hand brake. The transmission lever worked every other time, which to say no more, fell off completely at the exam. Still I passed it. We passed it. Sometimes I wonder what happened with those two.

Seven years later I bought my first car, a silver Opel Corsa D, and, while expecting it from Germany, called another driving instructor to refresh driving techniques long forgotten by that time.
Sergei was a retired traffic policeman who was unofficially giving driving classes to the needy and then using his contacts in the appropriate institution to help the student to ensure he passed. It required minimum hours of driving and an immoderate gratification.

Having already had driving license I clearly bore no interest for him as a client. Of his interests I cannot say much. I remember the man had a young wife and most of the time he spent of the phone talking to her, continuously questioning her geolocation, where subsequently we would drive to prove her wrong. Apparently the woman was very bad with directions. On some days she would not pick up, and then, after finding some sad rock on the radio in quiet melancholy we would drive to the hardware shop, where he would buy planks of wood, nails, screws, roofing felt and the like. He was building a house.

My Opel became my friend, my company, my girl for the next four years. She was young, honest, hardworking, a bit fancy, compact and fast. I took care of her, she took care of me on all sorts of the roads. In the cold harsh winters she never failed me, starting from half a turn of an ignition key after spending several nights outside in -36C, under the pained watch of the neighbours when their Toyotas and Fords were being taken by the tow-tracks.

Iceland, the country of ice and fire, put me into a dark blue Skoda Octavia station. I mention the colour intentionally as then I was fully sure it was the most boring car colour. I slammed the door and felt my fancy single youth days were over. Quite fast somehow I became a mother of two. In return the car immediately impregnated itself with two baby seats. I cut my hair and filled the wardrobe with colours which hid the traces of burping and dried formula. Suddenly blue did not seem that bad anymore. Again I was in the driver´s seat but on a rather different road - quiet stable middle class life with a big family.

Thinking of that, now I believe this type of a car could have been designed specially for Iceland, an outdoor family country. When we travel with two kids to my in-laws to the North, we take a pram and a stroller, feeding chair, four bags, a suitcase, and a huge pumped gymnastic ball (an indispensable parental item). Packing all that I usually think we would have managed to put a sheep there, provided we had any.

I know I was not perfect driving my Skoda - out of the most outrageous manifestation of stupidity I backed into the pillar at the Rekstravörur - a wholesale warehouse in Reykjavik. And as painful as it was, there was absolutely no necessity to park backwards out of two main reasons: I had never done it before because I could have not been able to (proved myself right though) and I had an intention to buy two huge boxes of stuff and loads of paper towels, which, no doubt, would have been only normal to park the car with an accessible trunk. But no. I pressed gently into the pole, made a dent, broke the paint on the rear bumper and with shaking hands entered the store. It took days, no, weeks to come clean with my husband, but he is a good man.

A month ago I decided to stop my lengthy violation of the Icelandic law and change the driving license. This statement needs an elaboration: as my husband took a woman from an exotic country outside the boarders of EEA, among other disturbances, her driving license was valid only for 90 days. Apparently, something was expected to happen to those people upon the expiry. Blindness?

Anyway, I took it. It was my second driving test fifteen years after the first one. Everything was different. More to say, everything was the opposite: I took it in the shiny white brand new Mercedes Benz C220 with the 250 kilometers of milage. I don´t know whether it was the composed and calm instructor or the horror of hundred thousands of euro scratch that pushed me through it with no mistakes, but let me tell you, thanks to them finally one thing I learnt very well - parking backwards.



Copyright © 2015 by Olga Johannesson 

On the Victory Day: Iceland which helped us live

If I were to write something, anything about war what would it be? What do we, people, born and brought up as remote from war as possible know about it? Movies, photographs, stories, chronicles, memoirs can give a general picture, but hardly any real understanding, any realization of the proportions of every human's tragedy involved. 

War is not only about heroism and deaths on the battlefield, it's just as well about a life of a child born in the hot summer of 1941, it's about the whole life of a mother who lost her toddler in the bombed train, it's about every day of a wife who is waiting for her husband, of a mother who still hopes for her son to return, waiting through deaths of children and hunger. 

Year after year somehow I find more and more details about the World War II. Having moved to Iceland,  I discovered Hvalfjörður - a birthplace for at least ten Arctic convoys, seven from which ended in my native city of Arkhangelsk between 1941-1942, bringing food and supplies, giving hope and saving our lives. 

on the photo - the most famous and tragic Arctic convoy PQ-17 is being assembled in Hvalförður

It's a Victory Day in Russia today - on the 8th of May, 1941, the World War II officially ended, as Field-Marshal Keitel signed Wehrmacht capitulation papers in Berlin. Interestingly, due to the time difference, it was already the 9th of May in Moscow, since then we keep this date to remember.

World War II is a huge historical field in terms of topics, actions, direction, events, places, people, etc. Arctic convoys is one of them, undoubtedly, influential for the whole course of events. More importantly for me, as it has always been tightly connected with my native city, and now as I have found out, with my new homeland. 

A lot has been researched and written about Arctic convoys, but just to make a small picture:  in the period between August 1941 to May 1945 there were 78 convoys, sailing from the United Kingdom, Iceland and North America to the two most northern ports of the Soviet Union: Arkhangelsk and Murmansk. 

Let respected historians forgive me for the small possible inaccuracies, but as far as most of sources state in 1941-1942 fourteen convoys started from Iceland: ten from Hvalfjörður and four from Reykjavík. Seven out of ten coming out from Hvalfjörður ended in Arkhangelsk. The importance of them is difficult to underestimate: a complete new vein brought blood to the dying, exhausted heart of the country, reviving the huge organism for the victorious fight. The great value of the convoys was not only in terms of supplies or food, but in terms of hope - suddenly the victory seemed closer, possible, soon.

Every year Arkhangelsk becomes a meeting place for those who survived, sadly, less and less of them with every year. Every year we, children, were in the streets to look at those old dignified foreigners, who seemed strangely alike our grandfathers, walking side by side with them; every year, we, students of the language department, were volunteering with translation; every year, marveling at their courage, theirs and our grandfathers´ feat, which gave us possibility to live. We grew up with the knowledge of the convoys, but somehow to my shame Iceland literally has never ranged the ship bell in our heads.

Last year a couple of my very good friends were visiting Iceland. On the road from Borgarnes, approaching the tunnel, my friend asked about convoys. The answer of my moderately handsome husband took me by surprise as he mentioned Hvalfjörður which we were passing by at that moment. How come this peaceful, most breathtakingly beautiful place on Earth was involved in the war. How come there is a direct link between this place and my home. How come the lives of my parents, my life and the lives of my children depended on this particular part of the world. How come I didn't know...

The war, the end of which Russia celebrates today, is exceptionally multifaceted and manifold. There's hardly a person in Russia who has never been touched by it. And it still echoes to us - through the other times, through the other places.

At this moment I want to thank Icelanders who helped us live.

beautiful and peaceful Hvalfjörður almost 70 years later

source of photo



Copyright © 2013 by Olga Johannesson

Christ has risen!

On the holy day of the Orthodox Easter, Sunday, 5 May, indeed as the situation required, I thought of God. Then I thought of the seventy years of the soviet times when the Mighty Position had been secured by Vladimir Lenin with a twenty-year interim intermission of the ever more almighty, loving and punishing - Stalin.
Thinking back into the history, Russians have always had an extremely grievous and hard relationship with God, which, combined with the inherent mysticism and fatalism as parts of the national character, engraved religious traits even on the all-negating stoned stance of the atheists.  

In the Orthodox religious tradition the icons - the depictions of God and the saints - were present in every house. According to the rule they were positioned in the so-called "red corner"  ("red" in the old Russian language meaning "beautiful", "honorary" - c.f. the Red Square). The icons were supposed to be in the Eastern corner of the house, as praying, sending our thoughts and talking to God we face the appearance of the sun and, thus, symbolically greet the Advent.

In the Soviet years religion becomes quite a dangerous puppet in the hands of the master - just think what a believer may do for the God. Some clever man, unfortunately the history keeps his name a secret, offered - no, no, not just to abolish God - that would be impossible for the country where religion was so tightly intertwined with the everyday life - but to replace Him. And who comes into the picture?

The decision was exceptionally smart and worked for many decades. Even the honorary red corner was kept to fit yet another deity.

The portraits of Lenin were adorning the walls of every institution, every establishment, every official room, on a frequent occasion enforced by the bronze or gypsum busts, the honest and strong look coming from the different sizes. The Bible, the Testaments and the Gospels were banned, instead we were given the Stories of Lenin - now I cannot tell what part of truth was there, but looking back I realize how much of a hagiography or menology (the lives of the saints) it reminded of and certainly served the purpose well. There was even a children's version of the Acts with pictures - just like Noah's Arch story.

Interestingly, the religious rituals were still kept going - we baptized children, painted eggs for Easter. But the pure religious meaning of them was a bit tarnished - baptism, for example, started to bear more of a pagan belief of the holy water protecting a child from the illnesses. Still, most of the children were baptized - secretly, at home, by an isolated priest. Consequently, we even had a mummified deity (whose remains are still by the way kept uncommitted to earth in the Red Square, the spirit haunting economy and politics - so far the only obvious, undeniable, unquestionable explanation of the ongoing Russian misfortunes), a religious doctrine - a successful mold of communism and spiritism, a set of rituals - books, learnings, common meetings, portraits -"icons", in other words, even when we didn't have it, we had it all.

Nowadays, the busts are on the dump, the pictures faded in the cellars. With the life so cruel and grim, fiercely grinding people by its millstones, people are seeking for the alleviation and looking for God once again...

In Russia on the holy day of Easter we greet each other with the traditional words: "Christ has risen!" and for many He has finally risen indeed.




Copyright © 2013 by Olga Johannesson

One girl, one island

"The greatest is best seen from the distance" - once and quite rightly a famous Russian poet said. Last week my very good friend from quite distanced Russia was visiting Iceland for the first time in her life. Being quite an experienced traveler and having seen most of Europe and beyond, she shared her thoughts and impressions about Iceland before and after. 

...most of all I was impressed by the nature - unique, virgin, untouched and severe. I have seen Gullfoss, Geysir, all the touristic routes, I was hiking in the mountains, but the most beautifully striking place for me became Reykjanesviti. I never thought there are places so completely remote and secluded in this world, where one simply unites with the nature.

...in Russia we deprive ourselves of many things, including a simple smile. Icelanders struck me as very friendly nation, in a narrow street a complete strangers will greet you.

...people take pride that they are Icelanders. The country itself has a rather limited history compared to Russia or other big European nations; it had less than a million of population in all its history, and, nonetheless, Icelanders take pride in the smallest detail, which could easily have been left unnoticed. People take pride in the place they were born.

...the thing which struck me most was that this is a society which is fundamentally different not only from Russians, but more or less from the Europeans in general. This is a small society, everyone knows each other, the telephone book is organized by the first names, and they treat each other as one big family, where everyone is a relative - and they actually are. Even the language, as we know, reflecting the realities of life, devised a word, which defines male relatives frændi and female relatives frænka, not to go into detail of cousins, nephews, nieces, uncles and so on - it is just one family.

...I have to mention the language and the concept of Linguistic Purism in Iceland. Many countries have the policy of preserving their language, but in Iceland they have special list of the Icelandic names, which you can name a child, anything else has to be approved by a special linguistic committee. Once again, they value their heritage and identity.

...and everyone speaks English. France, for example, has the policy of protecting the language as well, they also create French equivalents for the new words. At that people learn and speak English very reluctantly. Icelanders are not afraid to go beyond - to enter globalization and keep their national identity.

...I was also surprised by rather high social standards of living in Iceland. Maybe because we have a stereotype of  well-off Norway and hardly expect anything of a small nation in the North Atlantic.

...feminism is obviously not a bad issue, especially in Iceland. In Russia a man considers it beyond his self-esteem to help the woman with cooking and with a baby. Probably it is not even the fault of men, as women themselves consider proper to work, make career, and take care of the family, children, cooking and a husband. A man has to work and make money, a woman stays at home. It was very surprising to see otherwise.

...the same as the baby in the family: in Russia when a child is born a mother falls out of life for 2-3 years completely: no parties, no friends, no travel. Here life just goes on and the quality of life doesn't change much.

...the concept of Icelandic family with many marriages, all kinds of spouses, kids from all sides is another point of astonishment - it is so far out of the Russian culture. We are more traditional - of course infidelity happens and rather often these days, but men very rarely leave families. The ones which do keep hardly any contact with their children.

...Reykjavik struck me as having rather plain architecture - simple and unsophisticated. Reykjavik can not be compared with French, Italian or most of European cities, where "every stone breathes history", or even with St. Petersburg, where every house is an architectural masterpiece. Here houses are simple, plain, primitive and functional. But it goes together with the nature: severe, minimalistic, plain.

...my perception of the museums is defined by the Russian museums - you have to spend days in the Tretyakov Gallery, weeks in the Hermitage. Once again we are so proud we have so much to show, that we drown foreigners in our culture. Here, the National Museum of Iceland is fascinating in combination of simplicity, functionality, importance and interest it arises and the questions it answers. The paradox is - there's no La Gioconda in Þjóðminjsafn, but still it is the one of most interesting museums I have ever visited.     

...Russians know very little about Iceland. Of course it depends on the education but in general many people hardly make any difference between Iceland, Ireland or Greenland. Of course, they realise these are completely different countries, but in conceptual understanding "it is all somewhere there". The stereotypes include: volcano in 2010, snow and Bjork - her last name is not possible to pronounce even by people with the linguistic education. The older generation know Reykjavik as the meeting place of Gorbachev and Reagan.

...Icelanders are very active. There's a lot to do: hiking, swimming, horse-riding, music, skiing, even dancing tango. One of the paradoxes for me was that skating rinks are indoor, swimming pools are outdoor. This is shocking to me, but when I mentioned this to Icelanders, they were completely surprised, explaining that it would be too cold to skate outside.

...Icelanders take life easy and it is shown in everything. Hiking in the mountains may be quite a dangerous thing but people just go. Children are not over-treated with medicine, massages and over-care and running naked in frost and wind in the outdoor swimming-pools. Museums are not overloaded with information, but simply showing the life itself. And I can go on with many examples.

...to me Iceland is a country where Scandinavian minimalism and functionality genuinely combine with breathtaking severe beauty of the nature, easy-going and warm attitudes of Icelanders and all these make it truly unique land, a small polished piece of lava - a beautiful gem of the North Atlantic.

My dear friend went back to Russia leaving me alone with the thoughts of gratitude for this unique opportunity of being able to live in both countries, share both cultures, enjoy both worlds the difference of which is so sharply defined by the distance.



Copyright © 2013 by Olga Johannesson

And then he asked "Why?"

And then he asked "Why? Why do people long for the old times? Wasn't it just for the better that these turbulent 90s brought freedoms of all sorts, democracy, goods to the shops, money to the wallet, free thinking, free press, new economy, private enterprises, private property, travel, the hoards of brokers, shoppers, marketologists, merchandisers, business advisers, analysts and agents with endless possibilities and what not...?" 
A shining fluorescent neon word "globalization" sparked above yet another "window to Europe" instantaneously finishing the decades of GULAGs, Stalin, oppression and stagnation. So, why haven't we just been jumping in the highest exaltation possible on this new glistening trampoline of freedoms since?

Then I started to feel that I owe an explanation.

source of the photo
My (moderately handsome) husband, having read the previous post and being a product of a completely different system, asked me this seemingly simple and logical question. The Western World for the decades of the Cold War and beyond was showing a dull, hungry and uneventful world of the Soviet State, where all of us were wearing ear-flapped grey hats with a red star on the forehead, marching in lines in the grey empty streets, eating cold potatoes with its grey skin - a sort of James Bond- or Schwarzenegger- movies with ludicrous and stupid military Russians and non-existing realia.

On the other side we were shown "the decaying capitalism", where poor decent people were dying in the streets under the cold and impersonal lights of advertisements.

Most interestingly, it worked. We were sympathizing chained Afro-Americans, exploited by the fat ugly millionaires in "that rotting America", so that even we - children - pioneers - were collecting our lunch money to send to them. And no one was stupid, no one was to blame: the propaganda worked well yet again.

History is a fickle mistress, who willingly changes its stories by the wish of the client: time, age, geography, events, attitudes, relationships, anything. I realize that, but having lived there I have the right to tell my story.

I was born in 1979 in the depth of the soviet stagnation (this story of a Russian girl could easily be mine, as well as of millions of other soviet children). These were the last years of Brezhnev and the General Secretaries started to fall like leaves on a windy day, being too old to rule for more than a couple of years, until Gorbachev started in 1985 and finished the Great Soviet Epoch as the first and the last President of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Understand me right - I do not thoughtlessly applaud to the good old days, but I certainly miss them. The life itself was simple, uncomplicated, non-criminal, non-chaotic, with no hatred, no fuss and stress, no unpredictability. In short, it was a strictly organized society built by a majority of simple uncomplicated honest people who worked all their lives.

Yes, we were deprived of the freedom of expression - everything had to be approved by special committees. Instead, we had free education, which was one of the best in the world, free kindergartens, free swimming pools, free after-school activities.
We were (relatively) deprived of the freedom of speech - we couldn't praise the life abroad or criticize Soviet routines. Still my father had self-made copies - the so-called samizdat - of the famous soviet exiles: Brodsky, Solzhenitsyn, Dovlatov.
We were short of the products in the shops. But the quality of what we had was impeccable - no chemistry in the food, no toxins in the plastic. Apples and oranges were always there with tangerines and bananas always for the New Year´s Eve, sometimes even with Pepsi.
We couldn't travel abroad. But the local flights were so cheap, my mother was taking planes from our city to Moscow going shoe shopping; we were regularly flying to the Black Sea resorts; people were coming to see us from Vladivostok. The countryside with villages and farming industry was flourishing.

I could go on with this list, but there's something which most of the Russians share today - a longing for the stability and safety - the most basic needs of a human.

Of course, it wasn't the best state in the world, as it was ringing in every song we were singing, but it was certainly the state where its people shared kindness, compassion, honesty, hard work and eternal humane values, most of which are conveniently forgotten now.

So we didn't have a freedom of speech... but we were happy and, therefore, free.







links with photos about the soviet times which you may find interesting to see:
http://offline.by/o-nashem-detstve-v-sovetskom-soyuze/
http://offline.by/interesnoe-puteshestvie-v-istoriyu-sovetskogo-soyuza/
http://offline.by/razval-sovetskogo-soyuza/
http://offline.by/deti-sssr/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHW0zL9dSMM


Copyright © 2013 by Olga Johannesson

Magnificent. Depressing. Ugly. Most Beautiful - all rolled into one

Yesterday a two-minute reference to the social situation in Greenland in a Danish popular series pushed me into thinking about the present-day Russia.

In the above-mentioned episode a Danish Prime Minister was visiting Greenland following a US-influenced internal conflict. After some emotional conversations Greenlandic Premier took the representative of a dominion oppressor to face the evidence of the indelible political wrongs accumulated by centuries by meeting Greenlanders. On the background of the benumbed and frosted graveyard stubbed by numerous white impersonal crosses on the most breathtaking landscape of snowy and mountainous Greenland, the following conversation evolved:

"Our biggest problem that we are going to die out as people. The birth rate is dropping. Our young people leave Greenland. But the worst thing is skyrocketing suicide rate - all the young men are killing themselves."

"What have you done about it?"

"We have tried almost everything: suicide hotlines, psychologists, anti-depressants, but it's just getting worse. 20% of Greenlandic youths have tried to commit suicide. It's a tragic world record." 

"Why is this, do you think?" 

"Suicide have always been a part of our culture. People threw themselves off a mountain, which was called "the place where you fall down". But they were old people who had become a burden to their families. Back then a suicide was an act of pride. Maybe our young commit suicide because they take pride in nothing. Why do Greenlanders drink? Why our children are abused? People have forgotten who they are." 

Right there, thunderstruck by these words my mind instantaneously beamed out a parallel to the realities of my life:

In Russia, the turbulent 90s swept away seventy years of stability and unyielding routines with the last decades of pure stagnation. If we think of the country and political decisions in terms of its people, one can easily imagine what a personal catastrophe of enormous proportions almost everyone was undergoing: my grandmother, my parents, we, children at that time, who could not understand why mother was taking heart drops and father was lying in bed for days.

Now my grandmother warmly remembers the hardest years of her life, which include no less than famine, war and the death of children. My parents, as well as the whole generation at the time being in their forties, have never really adapted and recovered in their new life. As a child I spent all my free time outside, running and playing in the streets of a big city, nowadays very few parents will let their children or even teenagers out alone after six.

The birth and death rates have just broke even in 2012 after plummeting down for years, the average life expectancy is 67 years: 76 for women and 63 for men. Almost world's lowest population growth. Almost all of my students left to the capitals or abroad after their graduation. "But the worst is the skyrocketing suicide rate - the young people are killing themselves" - just to rephrase the Greenlandic fictional character's grave words. I am not mentioning alcoholism, drugs and abuse just to keep a live analogy.

The change as rapid and fast could not fail to provoke fatal repercussions, damaging the whole generation, which could not withstand its magnitude and force, irreversibly changing the future of once a great country. Therefore, we are where we are: old values have been washed away, the new valor impositus and freedoms have grown as mutants. Hence, drugs, drinking, abuse, mortality, suicides, in other words: "we take pride in nothing, we have forgotten who we are".

As I was watching the episode on, the hope glimpsed for a short moment:

"I have a plan for my country. If I am to succeed, we must give our people back their self-respect. I want suicide rate to drop. Let Greenlanders have a say in the major issues." 

"Political security matters and foreign affairs?"

"But you cannot let us, can you?"... 
...

When the Danish PM returned home, she talked to her husband:

"How was Greenland?" 

"It was magnificent. It was depressing  Ugly. I think it's the most beautiful place I have ever seen. All rolled into one." 

And within that brief moment I realised - that's exactly how I feel about my country: Magnificent. Depressing. Ugly. Most Beautiful - all rolled into one.