"I was sitting on a floor pillow in an otherwise empty flat planning my Ikea purchases, like a proper Nordic person, when I got a phone call from my mother. This was back before she retired as a reporter and she was telling me that her sources in the Icelandic banks were all acting as if they were about to crash, so she told me to transfer all of my savings out of Icelandic if I could."
"I was working remotely for an Icelandic company and a combination of currency controls, exchange rate collapse, and other legal limitations meant that I was largely without income for the following months, mostly living on those savings. Savings that I'd basically destroyed myself for over the previous two years, working a full-time sideline job in addition to my main job as a web developer."
I lived in the UK, moved back to Iceland during the banking bubble, then returned to the UK near its end. I was planning Ikea purchases when my mother, a reporter, warned that her bank sources acted as if they were about to crash and told me to transfer my savings out. I transferred funds; about an hour later the banks froze withdrawals and transfers and I lost most of the money. Currency controls, exchange-rate collapse, and legal limits left me largely without income and living on depleted savings. The bubble dominated daily life and was suffused with toxic nationalism and claims of Icelandic financial superiority.
Read at Baldurbjarnason
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