Today is not exactly an ordinary Monday at the office. Iceland are playing against England in the last 16 of Euro 2016. I don’t know about England, but this is probably the biggest sports event in the history of Iceland.
The excitement is almost unbearable. I am among those Icelanders who are still at home, guarding the island while the others are in Nice. We elected a new president, by the way, last Saturday, but nobody talks much about that. His name is Guðni Jóhannesson. He will be fine. Back to football.
Icelanders cannot stop smiling these days. Some of us haven’t smiled since before the crash of 2008. I can sense both happiness and disbelief in the air. Is this really happening? Have we found ourselves in a parallel universe? The match itself will be agonizing. Like most of my compatriots I will watch it with friends and family. I will end up jumping and shouting to my children’s astonishment. Our sports commentator, Gummi Ben – our own Big Ben – will lose his voice again.
Many Icelanders feel a strong connection with the English. We like your style. We cried during the last episode of Downton Abbey. And like you, we are also hopelessly divided over EU membership, to say the least. The two nations have had their disputes, like the cod war – an extremely important war, of course, which Iceland won.
We were fortunately occupied by the British in the second world war. My mother grew up among British soldiers in a school turned into a military camp in the northwest of Iceland. She learned how to sing Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree. They learned how to eat a fermented shark.
Then there is football. Icelanders have been obsessed with English football for decades. English footballers are household names. I can hardly describe the effect that Bryan Robson and the rest of the Manchester United team had upon my childhood. I repeatedly asked my parents for a United shirt, but they didn’t get it. They got me a Tottenham shirt. Then West Ham. I was disappointed. I decided to support those teams a little bit out of politeness. How British of me.
I feel like we will be playing against our big brother today. We know everything about this brother. To the English team, however, we will be the sibling they didn’t know existed. A total surprise. Who is this small kid?
Yes, we are small. Our success might sound similar to the success of the Jamaican national bobsleigh team on the 1988 Winter Olympics. How could Icelanders, those 330,000 souls living on this weather-beaten lava rock way up in the north, reach so far? How could this happen?
First of all, the Icelandic women’s national football team has already managed to go this far, not once but twice. It was becoming painfully obvious to the men that they had to do something.
Furthermore, I might point out that Icelanders are quite used to fighting against the odds. Icelanders have had to fight for survival for centuries, not in wars but in a battle with nature; the fierce snowstorm, the thundering avalanche, the exploding volcano and the mighty ocean. So bring it on, Wayne Rooney.
What is small, really? That is an important question. Big things come out of tiny things. Great achievements start at a kitchen table. I believe that the success of the Icelandic football team has an important meaning. Nothing is impossible. Since Leicester could win the Premier League and the Icelandic team could reach the knockout stages, or even further, imagine what mankind could do with the right mindset against the odds. Eliminate poverty? Provide a home to all the refugees? Save the Earth? Football is inspiring.
Of course Icelanders are the roaring Vikings who will break for nothing, wildlings from north of the wall, and all that. There is more depth, however, to be found underneath the cliche. The Icelandic national anthem is all about tininess. It is all about realising our vulnerability in the grand scheme of things. The closing lines of our anthem, roughly translated, is about “an eternal tiny flower with a shivering tear that prays to its God, and then dies”. Now, you may ask: how is that going to inspire someone to win a football match?
Well, you see. Be humble. Be brave. It’s not just Iceland that is small. Everybody is small. Nobody is anything on his or her own, isolated. Life is full of challenges. By working together, driven by passion and belief in each other, we can overcome the greatest obstacles. That is the story of the Icelandic football team. Together we can conquer the storm.