Christian II, King of Denmark and Iceland, tried to sell Iceland to King Henry VIII and the Dutch cities in 1509. An envoy was sent out to make an offer. He was to get at least 30,000 florins (florijns in Dutch) from the Dutch and at least 100,000 from the British.

The Danish king was short of cash and needed foreign loans to fill his empty treasury. He was therefore ready to sell the rights to exploit Iceland to another country for a period of time. This was not to be infinite but in the form of a bond.

To cut the story short the Dutch cities were not interested except Amsterdam which had some trade with Iceland.

England, on the other hand, was considerably dependent on Icelandic trade and had been skirmishing with the Danish officials stationed here. The British fishing fleet was quite large and the cod it brought home fed a lot of mouths across England.

That is the reason Christian II wanted more cash for the bond if England was to buy it. The Danish monarch considered the chance that if he sold those rights to England he would never get it back. It would on the other hand be much easier to retrieve Iceland, even with force, from the Dutch cities.

The skirmish between the Danes and English in Iceland continued for some years and blood was shed on both sides.

Notably, the Icelanders welcomed trade with the English. The Danish were irritated by this because they felt they should have undisputed rights to monopolize Icelandic trade.

At the time when the deal was offered, the English seemed to have the upper hand, so King Henry was not ready to pay anything for Iceland. The young king pondered over the possibility of getting it for free.

As the years passed the Danes finally got the upper hand and managed to monopolize the trade completely, which threw the Icelandic nation into complete misery for more than three centuries.

Icelandic cod is the main ingredient of the British national dish, fish and chips. Fish has been brought to the United Kingdom from Icelandic waters for centuries and it still is, in spite of a series of disputes with the British, known as the Cod Wars, when we claimed rights over our fishing waters.

During World War II Iceland lost many men whilst fishing and shipping cod to Britain. Thousands of people in the Humberside district in England still work on processing, selling and distributing fresh Icelandic fish. Although we’ve had serious disputes in the past, Iceland has considered Britain a great friend and an ally.

Gordon Brown ruined the trust between the two nations when he used anti-terrorist laws to freeze Icelandic assets in the UK at a time when Iceland was being hit by the worst crisis in the history of our republic. During the Icesave dispute Brown’s government has continued to bully us to pay debts we took no part in creating.

London was the top shopping destination for the average Icelander when we became more affluent and could afford to travel.

I’m quite certain that Icelanders have spent more money in London over the years than three accumulated Icesave debts, creating jobs and prosperity in that great city.

That is the reason why I don’t understand the attempts of the British and Dutch governments to force the Icelandic public to pay debts which we did not create at all.

Most of the funds accumulated by the Icesave accounts by the crazy bankers at Landsbanki were used to fuel businesses and acquisitions in the UK and the Netherlands. The bank paid taxes in these two countries.

Lansbanki bank should also have been monitored properly by the authorities in these countries when it offered higher interest rates than all other banks.

I’ve always argued that the remaining assets of the crashed Landsbanki should be used to pay the Icesave account holders as far as they can cover the amounts. That would simply be fair. It has been claimed by our government that these assets will cover up to 90 percent of the Icesave debt.

But forcing the Icelandic nation to pay interests that means almost GBP 17,000 (USD 26,000, EUR 19,000) for every Icelandic citizen is utter nonsense.

It means that we have to pay annually, in hard foreign currency, the amount it takes to run our healthcare system—at a time when our economy is in shambles.

The Icelandic public will simply say no to the insidious claim to guarantee the Icesave debts in the national referendum held on Saturday.

The message will be this: We are not going to bail out the feckless banks and their owners, a group of perhaps 50 Icelanders, who thought they could snap up the world in a few years.

Bjarni Brynjólfsson – bjarni@icelandreview.com