Story Of A Refugee: Icelander, Now On "U" Campus, Opposed To Military Occupation Of His Country

The Story Of A Refugee:

Icelander, Now on 'U' Campus, Opposed To Military Occupation of His Country

Thorarinn Reykdal, a native Icelander and the first student from that tweed ever to attend the University in the fourth foreign student of a number interviewed concerning their native countries. His arroust presents a pleasure of problems in Iceland in which Americans as a whole are relatively unfamiliar.

By Harold Stewart

Iceland's lone representative in the University of Michigan covering a period of 100 years. Thorarinn Reykdal, isn't at all happy when he thinks of British and American soldiers building military bases in his homeland. This naval architecture student who enrolled in the University for the first time this fall, admitted that opposing British entry into Iceland its comparable to biting the hand that feed Icelanders but that value freedom more than wealth.

"Iceland had a taste of freedom on declaring its independence following Denmark's capture by the Germans," Reykdal offered as explanation for what he considered general antipathy of Icelanders toward the British. "Now that freedom is gone," he said, "despite the fact that we are allowed to keep our new republican form of government."

Tells of Problems

"When the British and Canadians suddenly sent 80,000 men into Iceland" Reykdal asserted, "many, social and financial problems resulted. My home is only six miles from the capitol city of Reykjavik where as if overnight 50,000 British and Canadian soldiers joined the population, which totaled only 40,000 Icelanders. This condition has been aggravated to an enev greater degree by many American soldiers who entered the island after I left this summer."

"can you blame us for not wanting the British to come in" Reykdal asked "making us liable to bombings by the Germans? of course we hate the Nazis and want to see the Allies win, but we would rather keep the war on the content. We maintain no army of our won and don't care to have soldiers on our soil. 

"Icelanders scoff at the thought that Germany will invade Iceland, but nevertheless they don't care to have their ports bombed. Neither do they go out of their way to help the allies"

Even before the British first began occupying Iceland, according to Reykdal, Icelanders asked the United States for protection without avail, and now that the United States has also entered the country, Reykdal asserted. Icelanders more than ever insist that the British should get out, "They may have been a necessary evil at first, he sad, "but now they should evacuate"

Say British Slow Pay

"Another reason why Icelanders aren't overly friendly to the British is because they sometimes buy fish from us and take a long time paying for it" Formerly British merchants bought the greater part of their fish from Norway," he explained, but now that Norway is under the German thumb they buy almost exclusively from Iceland without the help of either the British or Americans. He said that they admire the people of this country, are lukewarm to Canadians, generally despise Germans, but are so bitter toward the Russians that they even aided Finland when that "country was waging its desperate struggle fro freedom."

The blond, quiet Icelander, whose ancestors migrated to the island approximately 1,100 years ago along with the other Swedes, Norwegians, and Irish, is here to study naval architecture and little else. Football holds no interest for him with patriotic loyalty, he denied that American colleges and universities are superior to this in his own country. "There are only more of them here," he said, "and those at home just don't happen to teach what I want"