The “Good Years”: Charity in Pre-Crisis Iceland

The Iceland that I encountered in my early fieldwork from 2004 to 2006 struck me as one not marked by deep economic divisions. The common narratives relegated poverty (fátækt) to a thing of the past or as something found elsewhere. Even discussions of socioeconomic class appeared to be muted, which some scholars have linked to the notions of Nordic sameness or equality (Niemi 1995; Pálsson 1989) and, in the case of Iceland, even the easy availability of credit (Durrenberger 1996). The underlying empirical data, however, did not support the contentions that Iceland lacked economic inequities. Icelandic sociologists have long pointed out the numerous deficiencies of the Icelandic social welfare system compared with those of the other Nordic nations in terms of social welfare spending as a proportion of Iceland’s GDP as well as the relatively meager and restrictive disability and seniors’ pensions (Njáls 2003; Ólafsson 1993; 1999; 2005; Ólafsson and Sigurðsson 2000; Traustadóttir et al. 2011). While Iceland’s social welfare infrastructure is strong in certain respects, in others Iceland fares poor to middling. The OECD’s report Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising singles out Iceland and a handful of other nations as negative examples of the effects of public transfers in reducing market-income inequality (OECD 2011b, 38). In terms of public social expenditures, Iceland ranks significantly under OECD averages, somewhere between the Russian Federation and Estonia, in contrast to the other Nordic nations, which all rank above the OECD average (ibid., 61).

Very little of this surprised the staff of Mæðrastyrksnefnd. Early in my research the chair of Mæðrastyrksnefnd held up her hand and ticked off on her fingers the key commonalties she found among the clients, naming in particular low education, low income, and little or no property. However, the staff, in communicating with the public, tended to emphasize the demographic categories of their clients (single mothers, disability pensioners, seniors) but left the commonalities among and between these groups unexplored. But these public media accounts differed strikingly from the conversations I was part of during coffee breaks or while we worked. I noticed that some staff struggled with their preexisting beliefs when they conducted their charitable duties. They mentioned stress and sleeplessness as typical when they first began working at Mæðrastyrksnefnd. Some also struggled with their previously held suspicions about those receiving social assistance, particularly disability pensioners and single mothers—the former in terms of the legitimacy of their claims to being disabled and the latter whether or not they lived unofficially with a partner.

While some staff members of Mæðrastyrksnefnd remained firm in their convictions about the scale of clients who took advantage of programs, the views of individuals and the organization as a whole were still open to debate. Even during my fieldwork I was able to discern some shifts in attitudes and policies that influenced how they described their work and clients in the media. By the time my research concluded, the debate over whether Mæðrastyrksnefnd should openly assist single men without children—given this organization’s focus on mothers—had more or less concluded and specific food allotments were set aside for them. Single men with children continued to be welcomed, though I learned this practice was not common as recently as the 1990s. It is not accurate to characterize charities as mired in nineteenth-century responses to poverty; they do evolve in response to changes in the larger society. But they also have a strong tendency to preserve the status quo, first in how they insinuate that socioeconomic inequalities are the result of individual moral or behavioral deficits, and, second, in treating as natural the inequalities among specific, delimited groups without reference to common structural factors among them, much less the structural economic and political arrangements that produce inequalities. In this regard such charities are not best interpreted as antipoverty organizations, since the charity discourse generally amounts to calls for more volunteers and donations rather than for change.

When charities in Iceland discussed their work in the media, they spoke of clients mostly as a decontextualized collection of groups of people, what I sarcastically referred to as the holy trinity of “single mothers, disability pensioners, and senior citizens” (einstæðar mæður, öryrkjar, og eldri borgarar). Sometimes this included the unemployed and, later, single men. My reference to the “holy trinity” contained a theological connotation that is not accidental. These descriptors (Wagner 2000) of charity clientele serve a dual function, one of which is a discursive tactic in lobbying for support, as charities cannot function without donations and volunteers. This tactic involves referring to categories that are expected to resonate positively with the general public and potential donors. This was truer in Iceland of elderly people than disability pensioners, who remain a somewhat stigmatized group (Traustadóttir et al. 2011). But there is no question that the image of an impoverished senior citizen or a young mother with a child would pull on the heartstrings of donors more than a middle-aged male substance abuser, people with mental health issues, or, to an extent, immigrants. The former prime minister of Iceland, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, when in opposition to the sitting government as an MP, was known to invoke such images in her criticism of the government’s lack of focus on poverty, as she did in a newspaper editorial from 2002: “The lines at Mæðrastyrksnefnd in reality say everything that needs to be said about poverty in Iceland. For one of the richest nations in the world it is tragic to have to see single mothers with children in their arms waiting in line for food donations” (Sigurðardóttir 2002). The substitution of “single mothers with children on their arms” would simply not work with other demographic categories, something that charities have long known.

The historian Carter Lindberg (1993) notes that in the Judeo-Christian tradition classic categories of the worthy poor, such as widows, orphans, and the sick or lame, were delineated in the Scriptures. The unworthy poor were those who were considered capable of but unwilling to work (Lindberg 1993, 20). Early charity was largely a theological exercise, whereby the poor served as the recipients of alms given by the elites, the giving of which was intended to alleviate the theological dangers associated with the accumulation of wealth. These early charitable practices had nothing to do with altering the socioeconomic order, which was largely perceived to be intended and divinely determined. The historian Robert Jütte (1994) notes that the reasons for the reemerging importance of distinguishing the poor into typologies of degree and causation ranged from the need for labor during periods of depopulation due to famine and disease, to the later need for social order in emerging urban centers and to limit demand on public relief. By the sixteenth century, after a prodigious output of pamphlets, tracts, and decrees dedicated to identifying these subcategories of the poor in an effort to limit begging and demands upon public and charitable relief, “the distinction between the worthy and unworthy poor became a commonplace concept through which contemporaries organized their view of the social order” (Jütte 1994, 12). Iceland did not share this specific historical timeline of mainland European charity, as organized charities of this kind developed in Iceland only in the late nineteenth century. But these categories of the worthy poor appear to have still been a factor in the local politics of charity, welfare, and poverty. My perusal of early newspaper accounts and internal documents from Mæðrastyrksnefnd revealed that prospective aid recipients were often portrayed by their supporters as the unfortunate victims of happenstance, often combined with references to their earlier contributions as “hard workers.” These discourses reflected the worthy poor ideology elsewhere and have remained a significant component of charitable discourses through to the present day.

Charity serves to meet a multitude of interests, and therefore it is important to consider broader historical factors as well as issues specific to Iceland, Mæðrastyrksnefnd, and other similar charities in particular. The categorization of the clientele into the typical descriptors of the worthy poor has historical antecedents in terms of theology and disciplinary power as well as strategic importance when soliciting support. The specific emphasis on women is in keeping with Mæðrastyrksnefnd’s history. There is also some empirical truth to describing their clients using this set of categories. For example, disability pensioners in the contemporary context made up the bulk of Mæðrastyrksnefnd’s clientele, and it would be odd to ignore this factor. But there were also some half-truths and outright distortions contained within charitable public discourses. Senior citizens, for example, figured prominently in the discourse of charities. Yet during my fieldwork senior pensioners never accounted for more than 3 to 4 percent of the overall clientele at Mæðrastyrksnefnd. There were statistically more students and low-income workers who sought assistance from this charity; yet these groups were often downplayed or ignored in media accounts. I interpret the emphasis on seniors, despite their lack of numbers as clients, as linked with the tactics of soliciting for donations. I quickly learned that I could not treat the press releases of charities as scholarly but needed to analyze them as a discourse and focus on their effects rather than be concerned about the truth value of their statements.

My research focused on the firsthand practices of charity as they unfolded around me, both as an observer and direct participant. But for the events during and after the crisis of 2008, I have instead decided to focus more extensively on the discursive production of charity in the media. Charity served as an important focal point through which inequalities and the changing nature of Icelandic society were portrayed, discussed, and interpreted. It is important to consider the impact of this discourse in a historical, cumulative framework rather than as isolated examples of media accounts. Since they began in the late nineteenth century, Mæðrastyrksnefnd and other charities have become part of the normative and somewhat unquestioned urban landscape of Reykjavík—one expects to encounter their work from time to time. When I analyzed six years of reporting on Mæðrastyrksnefnd, I was surprised to see certain patterns emerge and persist; nowhere were these patterns more apparent than the seasonal attention on charity, most notably during the Christmas holiday season.

In the United States the seasonal approach to charity was said to have collapsed in the 1920s as the result of the Great Depression, which required a more “rational” approach to poor support (Waits 1993, 174). It would seem that Iceland is unaware of these developments, as Christmas is, and has always been, the busiest time for charities. One possibility raised in a workshop was that in some countries there is an upsurge in charitable donations at the end of the year as the result of the structure of taxation legislation. However, this would not apply in Iceland. Staff insisted that they do not issue receipts and that tax concessions are not made for charitable donations in Iceland. Further, this heighted attention during the holidays also applies to the kinds of donations made, such as wrapped gifts left in collections at local malls or bags dropped off at Mæðrastyrksnefnd, and are for the most part done anonymously. I also made a specific point of asking the seasonal volunteers—none of whom I saw the rest of the year—and almost all wanted to do something to help those in need during this time of the year.

During the Christmas allocation there were days when we served triple the usual numbers of clients. Spread out over eight days in December of 2004, for example, we assisted 1,155 clients. If one included the members of their immediate families, according to their application forms, this assistance supported 3,233 individuals. This was an enormous logistical undertaking for a group of generally middle-aged and elderly staff members, in addition to one very tired Canadian anthropologist. Other charities do much of the same work at Christmas, so starting from 2005 Mæðrastyrksnefnd joined forces with an organization with links to the national Lutheran Church and the Icelandic Red Cross and have since worked together. Yet from the perspective of charitable discourse production, little else has changed. Beginning in late October to early November in any given recent year, newspaper accounts and advertisements concerning charities begin to appear, alerting those who may need the assistance and to gather support from companies and the public. A large Christmas tree is erected in two area shopping malls to serve as collection points for gifts for needy children. The gifts are then redistributed via local charities like Mæðrastyrksnefnd. In recent years, the wife of Iceland’s president has been on hand in a ceremony to light one of these trees. Local artists, musicians, crafts people, and schoolchildren perform activities throughout the city to collect goods and money for charities during this time—all of which abruptly ceases come January. So what effect did the 2008 crisis have on these efforts?

The Crisis Emerges: 2007–2009

The year 2007 began and ended very much like the other years I spent at Mæðrastyrksnefnd. The discursive output included, among other expected components, references to the increasing numbers of clients, usually framed as there being “more need than ever before.” I was somewhat skeptical of this, as it had become a common feature of their discourse. However, the basic claim that their client base was growing each year was empirically true. I could discern certain patterns to this. January of 2007 began typically with a few thank-you notes in the newspapers.¹ Afterward there was a quite dramatic and noticeable silence throughout the rest of the year, aside from a few brief mentions about Mæðrastyrksnefnd’s operating hours and the occasional piece. Newspaper accounts began to emerge with force once again in November in the lead-up to Christmas. In one such account, on the front page of the widely read national newspaper Morgunblaðið, the chair of Mæðrastyrksnefnd articulated her concerns about the increasing numbers of clients and described them as consisting primarily of disability and senior pensioners. The article concludes with a reference to the union of three major charities for the upcoming Christmas allocation. The media accounts over November and December of 2007 focused on announcements about when and where the holiday allocation would be held; Dorrit Moussaieff, wife of Iceland’s president, was depicted in two stories lighting the Christmas tree in a local shopping mall. There were also numerous stories about donations of cash or material goods from the business and financial sector, along with the obligatory photo ops of officials shaking hands with charity staff or presenting goods or oversized novelty checks. Included as well were stories about schoolchildren who raised money or goods for charity, artists who donated the proceeds from a concert or exhibition, or homemakers who knit woolen mittens to donate. All of these stories were predictable. There were usually a few deviations from this pattern. The director of the domestic assistance branch of a charity with links to the Lutheran Church could be counted on for her sophisticated insights, and she did not fail in an article where she discussed the psychosocial effects of poverty. But generally 2007 was normal and predictable. I expected that 2008 would repeat the pattern.

January 2008 began typically with the usual assortment of thank-you pieces, including one that was identical to the one from January of 2007.² Perhaps the only unusual thing in the early part of 2008 was a number of reports in February that there were actually fewer (8.5 percent decrease) requests for assistance during the 2007 Christmas allocation than in 2006, though the clients were still referred to primarily as disability pensioners and single mothers. But by late summer of 2008 it was clear that things were becoming unsettled. I listened like many others with growing trepidation and shock to Prime Minister Geir Haarde’s infamous October 6 speech about the imminent collapse of the financial sector.

From the beginning of October 2008 onward, stories—often in prominent and noticeable places in the newspaper—about the increasing number of people seeking help at charities like Mæðrastyrksnefnd were quite common. “Families” or “households” became the preferred category of reference rather than pensioners and social assistance recipients, along with a focus on more young people and the recently unemployed as the result of the crisis. One such article reflected on the staff’s observation of the increasing presence of newly unemployed white-collar workers now among their clientele, as well as foreign men who had lost work in construction as building projects ground to a halt. More striking was the shift to the interpretation of these donations in light of the crisis, framed in a quasi-nationalistic sense of collectivism. For example, when a manager was asked by a reporter about the donation her company made to Mæðrastyrksnefnd, she commented: “It is in this spirit, as has been recently in Iceland, to stand together and show solidarity.” There was also a shift in tone of urgency, as well as an indication that they were dealing with unusual events and not the normative clientele of the past. The typical advertisements used by Mæðrastyrksnefnd in earlier Christmas drives began to appear again in the late autumn of 2008. However, an extra phrase was inserted: “often there was need, but now is necessity” (oft var þörf en nú er nauðsyn).

The role of charities in the crisis took on a national scale. Rather than referring to clients as seniors and other pensioners, one newspaper report commented that 2.1 percent of the nation depended upon charitable assistance to survive. Charity was now playing a role that served a nation in crisis rather than just those simply “less fortunate.” Local charities in Reykjavík began to take on an international role as well. During the Christmas allocation of 2008 a story ran on the front page of Morgunblaðið of a donation to Mæðrastyrksnefnd on behalf of a collection taken up by the Icelandic diaspora in the Canadian town of Gimli, Manitoba, to the sum of Can$15,000. It struck me as sadly ironic to see the descendants of Icelanders who emigrated to Canada to escape poverty in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries collecting money to help Iceland, when only a few short years ago the so-called útrásarvíkingar or “outvasion Vikings” were bragging about their economic conquests abroad.

Despite these noticeable differences in framing, other components of these discursive practices remained stubbornly intact. Aside from the spate of charity-related stories in October 2008 due to the emergence of the crisis, the usual buildup of media reporting increased over November and December and tailed off yet again in January 2009. There were a handful of stories in February but a noticeable silence until the following November. The Christmas season of 2008 saw yet again Iceland’s “first lady” lighting the charity Christmas tree in a local shopping mall, and I was able to gather the usual collection of stories and photographs of business leaders and other organizations posing with the staff of Mæðrastyrksnefnd and displaying novelty checks, plaques, or other props to signify their donation.

The Post-Crisis Context: 2010–2012

The media production of charities in 2010 confirmed that the seasonal media coverage of charities in Iceland was more or less untouched by the crisis. There were, however, some important developments. The year 2010 marked a rather dark phase in the politics of charity in Reykjavík. The growing presence of immigrants at Mæðrastyrksnefnd was something that was hotly debated behind the scenes during my fieldwork but rarely went public. Some of the staff, favoring a more material or socio-structural interpretation, recognized the important role that immigrants fulfilled and were aware of the kinds of exploitative, low-paying jobs they occupied. Thus, they saw them as legitimately seeking assistance. Others were more concerned about the potential sociocultural disruption they perceived immigrants posed in a nation not used to high levels of immigration. Opinions were divided, and I felt myself conflicted when I was asked to analyze the number of “foreigners” who sought assistance at Mæðrastyrksnefnd (see Rice 2007a).

Other organizations did not moderate their public discourses or practices as much.³ In March 2010 there was an increased attention to charity as the result of a number of stories on how one charity—Fjölskylduhjálp Íslands (Iceland’s Family Help)—decided to queue its clients based on nationality: Icelanders in one queue and foreigners, mainly unemployed Polish construction workers, in another. In the paper Fréttablaðið this news made the front page, alongside a photo of a volcanic eruption. The manager of this charity argued that these foreigners, citing Poles specifically, are often young, healthy men with a different “line culture” in terms of being aggressive and not queuing properly. The manager contrasted these young Poles with older Icelanders who “toiled their whole lives” and with “young mothers with babes in one hand while holding another” leaving in frustration without being assisted. The social welfare services of Reykjavík were furious at this queuing by nationality and many of the general public appeared to be appalled as well, based upon media accounts, blogs, forums, and general discussions.

What struck me about this, and which was ignored in the media outburst, was the age-old reliance upon the traditional categories of the worthy poor—the normative poor—who “rightly” belong as the clients of charity. These Polish migrants, regardless of how they did or did not act in the queues, were nevertheless perceived as the structural victims of the recent economic crisis. I found it staggering that despite the crisis, nothing had really changed. The presence of Poles and other migrants was interpreted through the lens of the labor market and other structural economic factors, yet the plights of native Icelandic seniors, single mothers, and disabled people did not warrant similar analytical treatment.

My analysis of the media accounts in 2011 and 2012 revealed the pattern once again: minor attention during Easter, the rise in charity-related stories in November, a crescendo in attention and activity in December, and silence again in January. Mæðrastyrksnefnd reverted to describing their clients much as they had pre-crisis. One article was entitled, “Large families and disability pensioners seek assistance” (Stórar fjölskyldur og öryrkjar leita aðstoðar), noting that there was a noticeable decrease in the number of Poles seeking assistance. Another during the Christmas allocation referred to the clientele as large families, seniors, and “more Icelanders than before.” Much the same held for Easter of 2012; charity officials said the bulk of their clientele were families, disability pensioners, and, quite fittingly at Mæðrastyrksnefnd, an increase in the number of young single mothers. From the perspective of 2012, excluding the brief discursive shifts over 2008–2009, it would appear as if nothing of note had happened.

Conclusion

The concept of crisis, as well as continuity, in the context of charity needs to be unpacked and analyzed. The notion of crisis as a temporary deviation from the normal order is not a sufficient framework for the analysis of long-term, structural poverty. Such a framework implies that a crisis is only legitimately perceived as such if it impacts those who normally do not require financial or material assistance. I argue at length elsewhere (Rice 2007a; 2007b; 2009) that the material assistance offered by such charities is never sufficient to do more than soften the sharp edges of poverty. The ways charities solicit for donations and explain their work direct the well-intentioned efforts of the public into activities that preserve the status quo. In addition, the accompanying charitable discourse normalizes rather than analyzes the inequalities they purport to address. Such material assistance is necessary given the reality of structural inequality, but it needs to be coupled with an entirely different form of discourse if the reduction of structural inequities is the intended goal. At times I held grave doubts that change was the goal. However, the possibility of a different discourse and a different way of providing charity is not idle fantasy, as the early history of Mæðrastyrksnefnd demonstrated; it is possible as this discourse displays as much capacity for fluidity as it does for rigidity. Whether charities can do so is another matter. The corporations and businesses that are so keen on assisting charities are, in my interpretation, part of the problem of the larger socioeconomic order in which charities and their clientele are embedded. Directly criticizing the financial and business sector, municipalities, and the state, which provide the bulk of the operating funds to charities, is not in the best interest of charities.

While I was disappointed to see the return of the status quo, there still remain glimmers of hope. In the spring of 2012 Mæðrastyrksnefnd promoted a drive to develop an educational fund to assist women. Such an activity recalled for me the early, radical days of Mæðrastyrksnefnd when it actively supported marginalized people with the tools they needed to address the structural socioeconomic barriers they faced, rather than solely doling out food and clothes. This was widely reported on television, radio, all major newspapers, and in various publicly visible drives and events.⁴ And best of all, this had nothing to do with Christmas. That year I gladly bought a bouquet for Mother’s Day that Mæðrastyrksnefnd sold in a home and garden store, the proceeds of which went directly to this educational fund. I felt relieved that I could support an organization and people that played such a central role in my life in Iceland before, during, and after the crisis without the grave misgivings about charity that I had struggled with for the last decade.