What the ocean vomits up onto the beach: Icelandic national culture, foreign lowbrow culture and the reception of "undesirable" cultural influences

Abstract

A central theme in Icelandic public discourse is centred around the necessity to wage a ceaseless war on behalf of Icelandic culture against undesirable traits deemed resolute on taking roots in Icelandic society with unforeseen consequences. Frequently, such cultural changes are perceived and denoted as external to Icelandic society, deriving from foreign lowbrow culture. „A small nation's quest for independence is eternal“, claimed the noted public intellectual and later influential politician Gylfi Þ. Gíslason in 1942, referring to Iceland's need to be on constant guard in safekeeping its cultural identity and rejecting the contaminating impacts of foreign popular culture. The paper draws on examples from the twentieth century of how foreign cultural influences have been received and defined as undesirable or polluting. It explores how self-proclaimed guardians of culture perceived pervading threats to the cultural state of the nation. The objective is to gain an understanding of how the idea of 'the foreign' shaped public discourse and how public intellectuals assessed the danger of what they understood as culturally alien to the Icelandic people.