While the old people are scathing the county for cheap groceries (prices are up by as much as 73 percent!) and the young people are congratulating themselves on their “revolution” (you know my thoughts on that), something happened.

The country got a new leader.

She’s three years older than my mom. One helluva socialist. And she’s in a civil union with another lady. I’ll let you guess which tidbit about Iceland’s next prime minister, Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir, made headlines in the foreign press.

“Iceland to Appoint First Openly Gay Prime Minister.” This is the big news apparently. The funny thing is—and I’m not exaggerating—no one in Iceland raised an eyebrow. That should be the headline: “Homosexuality of Iceland’s PM a Non-issue.”

Normally Iceland jumps at the chance to be a record-holder in anything at all. I think it might be part of the small-country complex. If you visit Iceland and talk to a local there is a good chance you will be bombarded by facts and statistics in a sort of desperate, “look-how-modern-and-advanced-we-are-just-like-a-big-boy-country” way.

“Did you know Iceland has won more Miss World crowns than any other country?” is a common one. Or “Did you know Iceland was the first country to recognize the independence of Lithuania?” Or my favorite, “Did you know that Iceland was actually the country that discovered America?”

This has become such a common occurrence that Thule beer actually made a series of commercials on the need of Icelanders to impress with facts, including Miss World, Lithuanian independence and the discovery of America.

So why wouldn’t the nation be much more conspicuous about their ground-breaking appointment of the planet’s first gay prime minister? My theory is that there has been a real shift in the national mentality since the crisis hit in October. For the first time in a long time, Icelanders are not expending as much energy on how they appear to other countries.

There is little will to impress the tourists when your mortgage has blown though the roof (and believe me, mine has). And who could possibly brag at a time when the country’s unemployment may break ten percent in the spring?

From these depths, this desperate nation is hardly wondering about what the new prime minister does in her bedroom. They want to know what she is going to do to rescue them. Because the last administration certainly didn’t do much.

So who is Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir? As the MP who has sat longest in parliament (over three decades) and four terms as minister of social affairs, for many people in Iceland she represents an older set of values. She embodies a return to a time when Iceland was not subject to such excess…

And by that I mean a time when Icelanders ate cod boiled in water instead of mahi-mahi sautéed in olive oil. When people plowed through the snow in barebones Ladas instead of tricked-out Range Rovers. When Iceland was an island of labor and little means instead of luxury and excess.

In fact, Jóhanna became known as the minister who drove her own banger of a Mitsubishi to work, declining the limousine and driver each minister is provided.

Although she holds no more than the equivalent of a high school diploma, that’s not to say she isn’t worldly. Before working in a box factory for seven years, she was a flight attendant with one of Iceland’s international airlines. But it is precisely this nine-to-five history that endears her to a nation that is facing the very real prospect of switching their white collars for blue.

She is a staunch and uncompromising socialist and known as an advocate for women’s rights, a welfare state and support for the elderly and disabled. In a government where compassion hasn’t recently always been seen as a virtue, she is clearly a woman who believes in extending a hand to the downtrodden.

But will she be able to pick up this entire nation again? Stay tuned.

Jonas Moody – jonas@icelandreview.com