Application for Icelandic Citizenship: An Evaluation of Merit?

Translation: Jean-Rémi Chareyre

Foreign nationals who have been living in Iceland for seven years or more have a right to apply for Icelandic citizenship, thus becoming “fully legitimate” Icelanders (the minimum being reduced to four years if the applicant is married to an Icelandic citizen). So says the Icelandic law and so it has long remained. A change was, however, made to other conditions for acquiring citizenship in 2009, after which applicants were required to pass an Icelandic language test in order to obtain their citizenship.

This is what led the author of this article to find himself in the headquarters of Mímir Símenntun on a winter morning of November 2016, with the intention of passing the aforementioned exam. Mímir is a night school in Reykjavik which had been tasked with overseeing the Icelandic tests. There were about 30 of us, foreign nationals from many different parts of the world, waiting in front of a classroom. After a short wait (in addition to the seven years waiting period required by law), we were led into the room. There, some envelopes with the test material were waiting for us on the tables. The exam consisted of three different sections: comprehension, writing, and conversation. The first assignment: listening to a text and answering multiple choice questions related to it to show our understanding. One, two, start…

Except we couldn’t start. The CD with the recording wouldn’t work. Or was it the computer? I’m not sure. There were signs of anxiety on the part of supervisors – three middle-aged Icelandic women – but the rest of us were cool as cucumbers. One of the supervising ladies suggested reading the text herself, sort of “live”, but the others were not keen on that. The reading had to be mechanical. That’s how things were supposed to be.

So another CD was fetched, which didn’t work either. The supervisors then tried fiddling with the computer, but all to no avail. In the end, a technician was found who finally fixed the problem. At last, the fun could start!

Except that the piece of literature trickling out of the speakers turned out to be so poor fiction that Halldór Laxness would have turned in his grave. However, it was at least comprehensible. After having listened to the text, we were asked to write a few sentences. The supervisor stated, however, that the sentences did not have to be grammatically correct; they just needed to be understandable. This comment was heartily welcomed by all present, as non-native Icelandic speakers tend to bear a grudge against Icelandic grammar rules (who would have guessed?). But most held the joy to themselves, probably out of fear of offending the supervisors. An emphatic cheer would also have seemed inappropriate under such fateful circumstances.

When I had completed my task, I was asked to wait outside until I was called upon to take the oral portion of the exam. One more wait, again, didn’t make much difference after seven years of waiting. I was finally led into another classroom where I was interrogated by an examiner and our exchange was recorded (for posterity?):

“Can you describe what you see in those pictures?” (In Icelandic, of course)

The first picture featured a family of four sitting on a sofa. They all looked lively and happy. The dad was reading a book to his family. Then, the next picture came up: a family of four on the beach, all of them smiling. Next: a family of four having a barbecue in their backyard on a sunny day, peace and love all over again. The fourth picture: a family of four that had just completed building a snowman. Needless to say, a smile on every face.

By that point, I was starting to admire the illustrator who had created those pictures. Such a lack of imagination is not so common among the general population, even in Iceland. Or was it perhaps some kind of hidden message? A polite way to remind us immigrants to keep smiling, seem happy and preferably not procreate beyond two offsprings? The manual didn’t follow. After this refreshing picture show I was led into another kind of conversation:

“Can you tell me what you do during your free time? You can make up a story, it doesn’t really matter whether you tell the truth or not.”

Was that a trap? Was there some sort of lie detector hidden underneath the table? It was surely tempting to make up an outlandish story: that I used my holidays to build a spaceship and that I was planning on moving to the moon (the application process for moon citizenship is much simpler). But, as I lacked the conviction to lie in full honesty, I decided to tell the whole truth. I told the examiner about all the petty things that I attend to during my free time and, with that, the exam was over.

Three weeks later I received the results: I passed. I was deemed worthy of holding an Icelandic passport and expressing my feelings at parliamentary elections. Perhaps not such an exceptional achievement as about 95% of applicants pass the exam according to statistics from Námsmatstofnun for the years 2009-10.

But what about the other 5%? And what about all those who don’t have the self-confidence to take the test? What justifies denying them, among other things, participation in elections? Is democracy not based on the ideal of a universal, unalienable right to participate, regardless of social standing, education, or physical and intellectual capability? The poor-sighted and the illiterate have a right to vote, as do individuals with auditory or intellectual impairments. Why should immigrants be subjected to discrimination based on their language capabilities?

At the time of my application, the Icelandic test was actually not the only entertaining challenge that applicants for Icelandic citizenship had to go through. The authorities also required us to turn in recommendation letters from two “authentic Icelanders” who could vouch that the applicant was not one of those intolerable, villainous immigrants, or by any means unworthy of bearing the title of “Icelander”.

Since then, though, the law has been changed so that the recommendation letters are no longer a requirement. However, applicants still have to submit a plethora of documents: among others, a criminal record from their home country (translated in Icelandic by an authorized translator if not in English or one of the nordic languages), three years’ worth of confirmed copies of tax returns proving that the applicant has financial means to support his or herself, and a certificate confirming that the applicant has never received financial assistance from his or her municipality.

It is good to know that authorities are on the lookout…