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Comment by JetSetWilly | Hacker News Reader

It is nonsense anyway. There's been lots of studies (eg by the University of Iceland) showing that the original inhabitants were about 25%-50% Irish/Scottish [1]. Why? Because the norse who settled Iceland kidnapped and enslaved thousands of women from the coasts of Scotland and Ireland and took them to Iceland.

So, Iceland is less Norse pureblood than the rest of Scandinavia, and secondly, the "Iceland has had the benefit of developing free from the guilt of having displaced native inhabitants" statement of the article is also total rubbish in the sense that there were plenty of forcibly displaced inhabitants, it is just that they were native to elsewhere.

[1] https://www.irishtimes.com/news/why-people-in-iceland-look-j...

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This whole “displace natives” narrative is such American thinking. This applies to most of Europe. What European go around having guilt about displacing natives in their home countries? Are the descendants of Normans in Britain riddled with guilt over having taken power from Saxons and Anglos? Are the Saxons guilty about displacing celts?

This Americanized way of viewing history falls flat on its face when applied to Europe.

This map shows that there's a lot of guilt to go around!

https://youtu.be/UY9P0QSxlnI

Interestingly, there is also some research suggesting that Vikings might have brought back Native American people to Iceland from their travels to Vinland.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ajpa.21419

Does anywhere actually show much "guilt of having displaced native inhabitants"?

I don't know where you live but for the last few years, every public event or performance in Vancouver, Canada, has been preceded by a land acknowledgement statement. It happens at political events, at Hockey games, at plays and performances.

It's just a brief statement along the lines of "We acknowledge that this event is taking place on the unceded territory of (list of indigenous tribes who inhabited the specific region)"

There are debates about its merits as an actual tool of reconciliation, but I don't think it's possible to argue that it isn't an expression of guilt by the cultural majority.

Yeah but most countries are not newly settled countries like t he US, Canada, Australia etc. Europeans don’t think like this. Doubt Asians or Middle easterners think like this either. Singling our Iceland as a special case is bizarre. The US and Canada are the special cases, not Iceland.

I'm a Scot and the Declaration of Arbroath (1320) is pretty clear about the point:

"The Britons they first drove out, the Picts they utterly destroyed, and, even though very often assailed by the Norwegians, the Danes and the English, they took possession of that home with many victories and untold efforts"

Not very apologetic!

Don't forget the guilt of the "native" inhabitants displacing the prior native inhabitants.

It's a rabbit hole.

There's some in Canada now.

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