Editorial Note:

The following note, quoted in its entirety, was posted to an
Icelandic blog recently.  What lesson is there in the statement?

 
Member   posted 06-01-2004 08:53 AM            
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I can imagine sleeping with the enemy must have been horrible to
other people but in Iceland we had a friendly occupation, first by
the British, then by the Americans. The girls who liked these soldiers
company were also very much looked down on. They weren't sleeping with
the enemy so they weren't traitors but people would look at them and
whisper. Their situation was plainly called "ástandiđ" which means
"the situation". Many of them got pregnant by their soldier boyfriends,
some of them actually married the soldiers and went away with them.
I don't know if the children that stayed were looked down on but they
were known as "ástandsbörn" or "situation children".

In later years, girls who like the company of the soldiers at the base
have been called names like "kanamella" which means "yankee whore".
This is most common in the town which services the base. Some girls
find the soldiers interesting and will sneak through the fence to go
to parties on base while the other townspeople don't approve.

There used to be a curfew on soldiers but no more. Them going to local
clubs often results in fighting. The locals accuse the soldiers of
being troublemakers. The soldiers accuse the locals of attacking them.
The worst incident resulted in a young Icelandic man being stabbed
5 times, almost losing his life to two soldiers. The army did not
handle the situation well at all and did not cooperate with the
Icelandic government but one of the culprits was caught.