These are letters from readers of Dear Isafold, my advice column at eyjan.is (The Island), which is one of the most popular websites in Iceland. Send questions to isafold@eyjan.is.

Dear Isa

This week marks the one year anniversary of the beginning of the end of Iceland's economic prosperity.

After World War II, Iceland may have been the poorest country in Western Europe. Centuries of abuse -- physical and economic -- by our colonial overlords (Norway, then Denmark) had weakened our...

Any doubts as to whether Iceland's elite has declared war on its people were dispelled this weekend.

First, on Friday Björgólfur Guðmundsson filed for bankruptcy. Guðmundsson made several hundred million dollars in St. Petersburg in an astonishingly short time after being convicted of fraud in Iceland. He returned...

The sheer audacity of the criminals who ruined Iceland's economy is impressive, in a perverse manner. The nerve with which they methodically bankrupted their country, while enriching themselves à la Madoff, can only issue from hearts so devoid of morality as to sincerely believe their own lies.

However, the political,...

The big debate in Iceland these days is whether the legislature should approve an agreement with Great Britain and the Netherlands requiring the Icelandic government to repay losses incurred by the citizens of those countries resulting from the failure of Landsbanki's IceSave accounts. The stakes are high, and various commentators...

"...Icelanders are primo, thievish; secundo, liars; tertio, arrogant; quarto, lice-ridden; quinto, drunkards; sexton, debauchers; septimo, cowards..."

"The Iceland Bell,"
by Halldór Kiljan Laxness

No, it is not the opening paragraph of the IceSave contracts between Iceland, Great Britain, and the Netherlands, but it might as well be....

Iceland's national anthem is pretty much unsingable, just like the American one, as Michael Kinsley recently pointed out in the Washington Post. Unless you have had a few years worth of voice lessons, it really is impossible to sing, not even after alcoholic fortification.

The Icelandic anthem, "Ó...

"Is there a real will to deal with the problems here?"

We tend to think of revolutions as single linear events, resolved in a straightforward...

Ólafur Þór Hauksson may be the most important person in Iceland today. Toiling day after day with his growing team of investigators, Hauksson is responsible for investigating and prosecuting the events that led up to the spectacular collapse of Iceland's banking sector in 2008. The restoration of the financial world's...

The Social Democratic Alliance and the Left-Green Party formally announced the creation of Iceland's first left wing majority government in its history. After two weeks of extensive negotiations, the interim coalition created after popular protests forced the resignation of the conservative Independence Party-led government in January announced that it would...

For a party that has no money and has existed as a political force for less than two months, the outcome of the Icelandic election is nothing less than miraculous: Four of the Icelandic parliament's 63 seats went to the Citizens' Movement, created following January's uprising - the Pot and...

Rahm Emmanuel, President Obama's chief-of-staff, famously noted that "you never want a serious crisis to go to waste." The dangers are falling back into old patterns and repeating the mistakes that brought the crisis on in the first place, or destroying everything simply because it was associated with the past,...

By now, I imagine every sentient being on the planet has seen the YouTube video of Susan Boyle singing on Britain's Got Talent. This singularly surprising performance has generated more internet commentary than any television program I can remember.

Our fascination with Miss Boyle's virtuosity, despite her very ordinary appearance,...

When Iceland's ruling coalition dissolved in January in response to a spontaneous popular revolt against the politicians who had permitted our country's financial system to collapse, it was widely assumed that the new elections would usher in an era of genuine change.

Unfortunately, in Iceland, as elsewhere, we're numbed by...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreed to lend Iceland the funds it needed to support its rapidly falling currency and to permit international money transfers to return to normal after Iceland's financial collapse in October 2008. The quid pro quo was that Iceland would adopt the IMF's recovery program and...

In Iceland, as in America, the same financial "experts" who destroyed our economy remain in charge of the banks they ruined, by and large. Just as the AIG traders who created the credit default swaps that threaten the global economy's stability have not only remained at their posts, but been...

Iceland's efforts to this point - hiring a rural sheriff to investigate some of the most complex financial arrange- ments ever concocted, and supplying him with four assistants, who are barred from looking into bank accounts of the government-owned banks because of bank secrecy - have been a "joke." ...

"Milton [Friedman] is the embodiment of the truth that ideas have consequences."

Donald Rumsfeld, in a speech at Milton Friedman's 90th birthday party in 2002, held by the Bush White House to honor Friedman's legacy.

In autumn 1984, the Icelandic Libertarian Association arranged for American economist Milton Friedman to...

The Iceland of my youth was not a rich country. When I was growing up, our diet mostly consisted of fish, lamb, potatoes, and the few crops that could be grown near the Arctic Circle. "Exotic" foods like fresh apples and oranges were reserved for Christmas - "The deli-síjus apples...

"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. " Pete Townshend, "Won't Get Fooled Again."

Iceland's hopes for a new beginning were dealt a blow today when its Minister of Fisheries, Steingrímur J. Sigfússon, the leader of the Green Party, announced that he would not repeal his deposed predecessor's...