Message from Iceland
E hope our readers will be as much interested as we ourselves have been in the report from Iceland printed on Page 6 of this issue. Although Iceland is not as far away from New Zealand as it used to be before the war, it is still so remote from the minds of most of us that this report is almost like a message from another planet. Yet we no sooner read it than we feel completely at home with the author of it and extraordinarily familiar with his subject matter. For in Iceland as everywhere else in the world now, only very *much more so, broadcasting has done in a few vears what the discovery of print-
ing did in as many generations: put-mind in contact with mind and carried culture to the remotest Settlement. However, it was not broadcasting in general that we asked Iceland’s Director to discuss with us but the broadcasting of politics. We wanted to know what use the oldest Parliament in the world was making of the microphone, what difficulties it was encountering, and what changes, if any, it had under consideration; and we are very grateful indeed for Mr. Thorbergsson’s frank, full, and friendly reply. It is most interesting to know that there are apparently no complaints when. parliament displaces all other programmes. The explanation is no doubt complex-partly social, partly cultural, partly climatic; life has always been harder in Iceland than it has ever been in New Zealand, and although we are remoter than the Icelanders are from what may be called the distractions of civilisation, we are probably more influenced by them, But whether we are less serious in New Zealand than the people of Iceland are, or just are less inclined to value privileges that we do not remember paying for, the fact remains that the oldest (and traditionally the best-read) democracy in the world began to broadcast its parliamentary proceedings as soon as it began to broadcast anything, and has no thought of bringing that practice to an end,
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 343, 18 January 1946, Page 5
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343Message from Iceland New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 343, 18 January 1946, Page 5
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