Eiríkur Rögn­valds­son, for­mer pro­fessor of Icelandic grammar at the Uni­versity of Iceland, shares an anonymous email on his Facebook page, that he received after he def­ended the Icelandic „Fjall­kona“, which would directly translate to the Icelandic Mountain Woman. It is a role acted out by a woman each year on June 17th, Iceland’s national independence day.  This year’s mountain woman was Sylwia Zajkowska, a woman of Polish descent. She was the first woman of other than Icelandic descent to deli­ver the mountain woman’s speech, which she did in her native Polish accent. This app­eared to off­end some people.

Röngvalds­son was surely not among those who took offense. He discussed the matter in the radio show Sprengi­sandur at Bylgjan radio station a few days ago. Eiríkur said he was ple­a­sed with Sylwia’s speech. He also encouraged Icelanders to be pati­ent with for­eigners who speak imperfect Icelandic or Icelandic with a strong accent.

„We simply have to decide; are we going to make it easier for these people to master Icelandic and show patience while they are learn­ing the langu­age or are we going to be inflex­ible in our dem­ands for some kind of perfect Icelandic langu­age, perfect pronunciation, perfect inflections, and so on?“ said Rögn­valds­son in the interview.

Anonymous, hateful letter

This stance led him to receiving a chilling letter. „This morn­ing I was interviewed in the show Sprengi­sandur at Bylgjan, following my writing from the other day about a for­eign accent from the „Mountain Woman“. I guess what I said in the interview is the rea­son I received the following anonymous email ear­lier. Truth­fully, I found it rather uncomfortable and scary, “ says Röngvalds­son in his post.

He publ­is­hed the letter in its entirety. The indi­vi­dual hold­ing the pen seems to harbor hate for Polish people. „People do not want this large import of for­eigners and that is why people hate that a Polish per­son should be chosen, and it does not make matt­ers better that she does not know Icelandic. Leftist people like yourself live in LA LA land. You have no idea what’s going on in people’s heads. The hatred will only grow and people like yourself are responsi­ble. Import­ing people from other cultures on a large scale is dangerous for democracy. Not langu­ages. Her incompetence is not the main rea­son why people express themselves in a negative way on the matter. A lot of people hate and or despise Polish people,“ says the correspondent.

The man who shot at the Polish man recently knew that he was shooting at a for­eigner and even that he was shooting at a Polish per­son. Maybe the „Mountain Woman“ scene was the motivation for that. His last straw. The non­sense that often comes from commentators in the media is sometimes quite unique. Then you incite this hatred even more by say­ing that there will be even more for­eigners coming into the country and obviously mak­ing yourself a man who wants multiculturalism, per­haps because of some strange incentive, and or maybe based sol­ely on some strange ideo­logy that we will all be so very happy as differ­ent people with differ­ent ideas about life.“

Finally, the man complains about the alleged racism of Polish people. „That it’s okay to import people to the country on a large scale, who have a lot of prejudice aga­inst homos­exu­als and people of other races. I’m talking about Muslims, Poles and Ukra­ini­ans, for example. Their prejudices are great. Talk to ten Poles and at least five of them will be prejudiced. Talk to ten Muslim beli­evers and at least five of them will express hatred towards the West and compliance with Sharia law. You people at the Uni­versity see the world through some filter that is not at all based on facts. Rather wishful think­ing. The academic community is no smarter than that. It is based more on ideo­logy rather than facts.“

This article was orig­inally publ­is­hed in Icelandic by Hjálmar Frið­riks­son.