Icelanders, according to polls, are becoming more skeptical about EU membership. I hear more people romanticize about a return to the good old days.

A friend of mine even complained that when she spoke about wanting to join the EU, an acquaintance of hers told her that if she wanted the EU so much she should just move to Europe. How rude is that?

A recent poll carried out by the Research Center of Bifröst University for the TV channel Stöd 2 found that 54 percent of Icelanders now oppose membership while only 29 percent are in favor, with 17 percent uncertain.

It looks bleak on the surface but I do think that people, rather than quitting on the EU altogether, are either afraid or trying to remain cool-headed until accession talks begin.

I think a lot of this fear with Icelandic people stems from the fact that the boundaries, extent of power and the actual aim of the EU remain badly publicized.

Misinformation is rampant, euromyths pass like Chinese whispers (my personal favorite: “If we join the EU we won’t be able to eat skata or skate fish on December 23”), and when it comes under attack by the media or politicians, the EU doesn’t really clarify, counter or publicize as well as it might to dispel these faux rumors.

People just don’t know what they are getting and that’s when the speculation starts. 

Meanwhile everyone is stressed about fish but my mind keeps wandering to the need for economic and political shelter which seems too intangible for people to really grasp its importance.

When I say economic shelter, what I mean is that if a small state, like Iceland, gets in trouble, a larger nation or group of nations helps them out. After the US set up their military base in Keflavík they became our economic shelter.

They granted us large aid packages when we landed in trouble and the US was glad to give it because Iceland was strategically placed during the cold war and thus a good location for a US base. 

In this way the US also acted as Iceland’s political shelter; it’s easy to pick a fight on a country with 300,000 people but with the US on our side nobody would, for example, dare to fly into our airspace unannounced (something which the Russians have done 24 times since the US army left the base in 2006.)

Once it became clear that Iceland was no longer needed, after all the Cold War was over, the US left Iceland and backed off. They stopped giving us money, but the Icelandic government assumed that it still held some sway with the guys in Washington.

Then when our banking system collapsed no one was ready to bail us out. No one. The US who we were used to turning to in times of financial difficulty, who had given us so much aid in the past said: “Sorry. We have our own problems,” and just like that our economic and political shelter was gone.

Sure they ensured that they would come to our rescue if something cataclysmic happened but none of this was legally documented; there was no legal framework that confirmed that they had to do the slightest thing for us.

When we asked the EU for help they said no too but they also had a legal obligation to remain loyal to their two member states, the UK and the Netherlands because of Icesave. After all, the EU is about protecting their interests.

When a member state gets in trouble at least someone saves their butts… why? Because the EU has a legal obligation to do so, there is a legal obligation for them to help and so they did when the economy of several European nations started to falter.

Right now Iceland doesn’t have anyone to turn to really, except maybe other Nordic states, but they cannot provide the amount of resources we need.

Sure, it’s bad everywhere and, sure, the EU isn’t the only answer but only one country in the whole world suffered a complete collapse of their entire banking system (that’s us, by the way). And although the EU might not be the only choice, we don’t have a lot of other names on our dance card and certainly not one with such good benefits. 

Nanna Árnadóttir – nannaa@hotmail.co.uk