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On This Day In Oil & Gas: June 17th 1944, Þingvellir, Bláskógabyggð, Kingdom of Iceland, 1:30pm

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June 17th 1944, Þingvellir, Bláskógabyggð, Kingdom of Iceland, 1:30pm –
A country at war. A bloodless occupation that began four years ago with the landing of an initial force of 746 ill-equipped and barely-trained British marines has now swelled to equal the size of the indigenous male population.

In the five years that World War II would ravage the globe, hundreds of children would be born out of relationships with the occupying soldiers in a phenomenon that would come to be known as “Ástandið” or “the condition”.

When British and North American troops arrived in this land of fire and ice, they were struck not only by a landscape fashioned in fairytale, but also the unusual customs of the last place on Earth to be colonised by man. Babies are frequently left outside to snooze in the sub-zero winter months, one of the country’s favourite dishes is putrefied shark, men are frequently spotted knitting in their leisure time, and the majority of the population believes in the existence of elves. This is a far-cry from Birmingham, England, or Birmingham, Alabama.

Straddling the virulent seas of the North Atlantic and the Arctic Oceans, this volcanic island has alternately been a possession of Norway and Denmark for almost 700 years. Last month, the Icelandic people went to the polls hoping to make foreign ownership of their homeland a footnote in history. From May 20th-23rd, a little more than 74,000 eligible voters cast their lots to unanimously call for the formation of an independent state.

On this day that would have been the 133rd birthday of Iceland’s foremost independence campaigner, Jón Sigurðsson, “The Republican Celebration” would be held at the site of Europe’s first ever democratic assembly, the Alþingi, to mark the passage of Iceland from monarchal chattel to constitutional republic.

A financial meltdown in 2008 entrained several years of economic decline in the country which saw an unprecedentedly-swift fiscal recovery. In 2016, the island nation is now also on the verge of a new era of energy development with the possibility of significant commercial oil and gas yields on the Icelandic Continental Shelf. All the more reason to wish the people of Iceland “Gleðilega hátíð” on this most auspicious of days!

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