But a story which is extraordinarily inspirational, however tragic the ending might be. So let's go before you begin to be in the center, or part of that story critically. Let's start with a crisis, the financial crisis in 2008, and what that did to the people of Iceland and what that led them to organize through the National Assembly.

If you want to picture it, let's talk about Iceland as being people who are not the friends. I'm not going to the streets protesting like Matt, but more in front of our television, shouting at the politicians. Not a very effective way, but that's our style. And then in 2008 and 2009, when everything collapsed here, and everything, like all our banks collapsed, and we were like the canary in the mine, because we were the first state to go down in the big economic downfall. And the people took to the streets, and it was amazing, and it was something that you could actually describe as a constitutional moment, for sure. Those amazing moments where you can get big changes through. So all of a sudden, people started talking about our very outdated constitution. That had not been something we were discussing before, because we got the independence from Denmark back in 1944, and we just took their constitution and just translated it and put the word presidents that are king and ran, because we were basically slightly getting out of this colonial relationship while they were being occupied by the Nazis. Then afterwards, we were always supposed to get our own constitution, but it never happened. It's really interesting that in all those years, the politicians somehow never managed to finish this task. So when the economic downfall happened, even though the links between that and our constitution were not quite obvious, people started demanding this, that we got our own constitution. We were burning big fires outside their parliament, and lighting the Oslo Christmas tree and stuff like that. It wasn't the same. And it was called by Mandy, the pots and pans revolution, because people took to the streets with their kids in the world, and we're banging the same tune all the time, telling the government to please go fuck itself. I'm so sorry if I can't use blankets like this in your podcast. People just had to go like, you're allowed to go into. So finally, in January 2009, they said, okay, we will have elections. They sort of folded the newly elected government. And the elections led to the first left wing government ever since the democracy to be formed. And they had to do, of course, enormous tasks. They had to try to rebuild the financial situation where tens of thousands of homes were bankrupt, essentially, and tried to fix all this bloody mess that we were in, in regards to other nations and so on. But then they still decided also to make a new constitution. And we had a prime minister at the time called Johanna Sivratov-Tev. I think this is actually the first open decay prime minister of the world. But she had been an enthusiast of constitutional changes for a long time. So it was also a hint of luck. And she said, okay, let's do this. We will try to make this new constitution, but we'll have to do it with people involved. Because like I told you, the ag-mospheric society was quite unique. People were demanding to participate, to be part of the solution, and somehow together to fix our society. So one of the beautiful things that arose from that was a thing like a little NGO called the Act Hill. And they were sort of trying to explain the wisdom of the crowd by doing a big national assembly where people were randomly selected to discuss policies and so. And the government sort of ripped that idea and said, okay, we will do a national assembly just like they did. And they decided to have 1,000 people. Now bear in mind that at the time Iceland was about 320,000 or something. We are very few, very special to have Iceland, the guest of your podcast. And we basically decided to have this national assembly where 1,000 people would be randomly selected from all over the country, from different sexes, from different age groups and so on. And they would just discuss sort of the values of the new constitution for a whole day in a big sports complex. Motrated by like, of course, like people who were helping them to discuss it and so on. But the outcome of that was really beautiful. In one way, you could say the outcome is just the amazing lived experience of those citizens who have been allowed to participate in such a discussion is one thing. And I think sometimes we forget the sort of the intrinsic value of conversation and we tend to focus on the outcome of stuff, like something that you can measure. But I think the other thing is even more important, you know, because conversation changes you. Especially conversations like these where you're actually allowed to have those big questions with people who are not your friends, not the usual, you know, the echo tunnel and all that, you know. They came out with beautiful suggestions, which of course are not all something that you can just use as a hard fact decisions for new constitution, but nevertheless, it painted a broad picture. After that, there were elections where 25 people got elected, including myself, to be on a thing called the Constitution

Council, which became a sampling when the parliament then appointed us. And we had. Yeah, but you're going over some things pretty quickly. Let's take so the first thing is the National Assembly is a process for basically identifying the values that the people of Iceland think a constitution should embody. And then there's a second stage where the parliament passes a law that says there's going to be an election for this constitutional assembly. There is an election. You're one of the 25 who are elected. And footnote, it's an extraordinary ranked choice voting election. So people get to rank their preferences and that produces the 25. Then the Supreme Court steps in and declares the election void. Yes, I

didn't know how much detail you wanted, how much glory detailed, but I'm happy that you want to talk about. I love glory. Let's bring it on. Okay. So basically, yes, what happens, like there are so many complications in this because this has never been done before anywhere in the world, you know, and it was all being done sort of on the run, very Icelandic style. It's like, oh, let's just start and see where we end, you know. So one of the things that they didn't anticipate was that 470 people would actually go forth for the constitutional council. You know, and how do you, as a citizen, pick 25 good candidates out of 470 names, you know, it's insane. And what happened then was the media sort of just gave up on the task. And they just, instead of like trying to help people to figure out what they wanted to vote, they just sort of looked the other way until all the people or lots of the people came together as a group and said, please, you know, we don't care who wins. Could you just please try to cover this? And then there was a really beautiful effort made by our public service broadcaster where we all got 10 minutes to tell what we wanted to do when it was played like day and night, you know. All those amazing voices of all those different people like, hello, my name is Olav and I'm a truck driver in the north of Iceland. And I think we should get the more profits from our natural resources. That's why I run, you know, an old lady with a German accent was the next one, you know, it's beautiful. And I really hope they preserve it because it shows like the same thing I was talking about before, how people seriously wanted to participate in building this place up again and making society whole again, you know. Yes. And then people somehow managed to choose the 25 individuals that they wanted to have. And immediately after that, two of the guys who didn't get in, they sued the election. I don't know what the right word is. And we thought, OK, I mean, no problem. This is basically just a stunt. But law and behold, our Supreme Court said, yes, the elections are invalid. And in my humble opinion, I'm a lawyer, this is a fucking scandal because it was nothing. There was no indication of the outcome being wrong. Nobody even even implied that what they were doing was saying, oh, the booths were not yay high. Technically, somebody could have and, you know, like such a complicated election. We are doing right on like four digits, like to be able to cheat or see what somebody was doing. It's like out of the question. And then, you know, maybe the ballots were numbers you could have possibly known what somebody voted, you know, something like this, all like little technical things that they sort of add up together and said, oh, together, they're actually big enough to make it invalid. And in my opinion, this is a really clear example of when the system really tries to reject changes to itself. Of course, a constitution is two things. It's a sort of maybe the music to the future that you're done to as a society. But it's also an idea brochure of how you actually construct a society. And that entails

the courts and so on. Can you just be clear? You just said IKEA brochure. Is that what you just said? So it's like IKEA brochure. Yeah, how do you

assimilate? How do you build it? I've been

in constitutional law for, you know, 40 years. I've never, that's a perfectly clear conception of what a constitution is. It's beautiful. Okay. So you have an IKEA brochure for what the society should be and then you have a dance for the future. Those are the two aspects of a constitution. Those are the two aspects I think a constitution should have,

at least. And ours doesn't really. Ours is the IKEA, not the other thing. But that's why it's lacking a soul. And that's why people don't love it. Yours, however, has the soul. We the people. It's beautiful. And that's why people love it, even though it's really fucked. Okay. So anyway, we're back in the Supreme Court. And the decision, now let's be clear. This is not a judgement. It's decision. So for some weird reason our Supreme Court has the power to make an like an administration or decision on elections. Therefore, you can't appeal it, you know? And nothing can be done. So people were totally shocked when this happened, but it was like it was a debt and sort of street to try to fix it. So what the parliament decided to do is to actually appoint the same people based on the fact that no British has suspected any wrong outcome. It happened. It was more like just, but this hurts the legitimacy of our whole process and really gave power to those who are against the whole process to always say, oh my God, this is just like a bogus thing. It's based on a, you know, it's not real enough. And people always talk about this as a really negative thing, but I have come to the conclusion that this was a blessing in this case. Because what happened when we were, when we had to meet those 25 people who had no month that all of a sudden, and were supposed to figure out what to do, and we were like having this emotional meetings saying, okay, let's just do it anyway. Let's do it for free. Let's do it for our nation, you know? And even though we can't like have any salaries or nothing, we just, let's just try to do it. This decision came from parliament to do it this way. And we, because we had been hurt and our legitimacy and our sort of credibility had been hurt, we became a group instead of 25 egos, which we were, of course, I have a huge ego. And a lot of the people that were voted were the same, you know, you, you, we were picked because we are standing out, you know, and we would probably all have been like, oh, according to my statement, I want this and, you know, make more like fighting, but we were like, oh my God, we just have to make it work now. And I think that's why it was a blessing. And I think that that's due to the fact that there is a constitution spirit, you know, I know it sounds very hippious, but I think a nation has a spirit. It's really hard to explain it. And sometimes when this group mind somehow wakes up, destiny also helps, you know? And it helps in really sly ways. And, okay, and really weird spiritual wrath. Okay. Okay. But, but let's just be clear

to people understand the kind of diversity of this, these 25. I mean, I mean, there's academics, Tora Tora was professor of economics, and you have media people, there's doctors, there's a farmer, a couple lawyers, journalists, a pastor, an architect. It's quite an extraordinary mix of people, a theater director, that sit down to form the constitution. I mean, our constitution is basically a bunch of lawyers sat down and wrote our constitution. I mean, some wannabe lawyers, some actual lawyers, but this is really a mix of the society as a whole, which when you imagine them working as a group, I imagine it's the first time you had a group like that that you worked

with. Yeah, totally. And, you know, because of the way they were put together, but together, they were really, you know, diverse. And, and the most interesting thing I took from all of this experience, now we had four months to write the new constitution, which in retrospect is a little bit too short. And we backed the politicians, oh, can we do it, please, in two rounds? Can we do first for two months, then talk to the people, go around the country, introduce it, get feedback, come back maybe a year later and finish it? No, we have rented the building, so you cannot.

Oh my

gosh. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes, but you have to remember, this is almost a bankrupt nation that's doing all this. And I mean, this is a costly affair to have thousand people flown from all over the country to talk together, then have a massive election. And then, right, I'm the building and all that. It sounds a little bit hilarious, but it's actually, you know, at the same time, people were being carried out of their houses, you know, and we were owing, you know, other nations like ridiculous money. They were, you know, the Brits were putting terrorists on Iceland, the people on the Icelandic banks. It was really serious, economic situation. So maybe I can have a little bit of sympathy for this. Anyway, we were together, all those different people, like you mentioned, in this building for like four months, almost like day and night, I would say. And what we decided to do, because we were like so different, like one of the people was a computer programmer, and he said, okay, we have to use methods that we use so we can do it in time, because we decided really early on to try to be the chains that we wanted to see in our society. And one of the big things we wanted to see was more transparency. So we said, okay, let's, what happens if we just like put it online as soon as we are making it like simultaneously. And we got really scared. And then we're like, okay, and we are our IT department was like one guy. And we were like, okay, now you have to make blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he was like, you know, I have this picture of him looking so worried, but he managed to do it all. So basically what we ended up doing was using something that is from programming called agile programming, where you actually, instead of like, my dad was a professor of computers, he was obsessed with this, where you tried to build small usable units and test them immediately instead of trying to build something enormous and then test it and find out that it actually failed. And you don't know why, you know, so what we were doing was we were using this sort of scrum method where you do shorts, runs almost like sprints, and then you test, and then you test. And so we put our draft 11 times online, I think, or 13 times. First it was only like the names of the chapters, you know, and then people could comment through like a Facebook plug, which in that spot was really bad idea because Facebook is a really even shit and it ended up actually getting lost, you know. So if any nation is listening that is planning to do this, then please build your own open source thing. Okay, anyway, so people were commenting first just on the chapters, then there was a little bit more articles and then people started commenting, oh, I liked it better last week, you know, and we tried to actually, we built three committees with different topics and we tried to read all the comments and sort of some of them actually resulted in changes and people could also send us proposals of something that they wanted to emphasize and we used that a lot. And then we also used experts, of course, we really reached out to all the people we could in Iceland that could help us through their expertise, a lot of lawyers and so on. So this was sort of the rough idea and then we had a meeting each week where we all together sat and discussed the changes and that was streamed so people could see how we made our decisions and why life. And also, they could just come, you know, they could come. That's why we have a little document that is beautiful called Blooperi Soup because an American girl called Eileen that is our mutual friend, she actually, she was there for some weird reasons, she was going to do a documentary on Iceland music scene and she found out about this and she started like she was often the only guest in her really big room, you know, and yeah, people can see the film if they want to can learn more about it. But anyway, yes, so this was what we did and this was a novelty in so many ways, you know, I don't think like you explained, not so diverse crowd test before written a constitution and not in such an open and way and it has been called the world's first crowd source constitution because of this. In the end, what we also did was I think it's enormously important and it's a part of the legacy of our feminist movement because the woman you mentioned, the one who was the theater director, she had also been one of the sort of foundational members of a women alliance party that was here in the 80s and totally changed their landscape and the women alliance used consensus methodology, which is really beautiful and it's really sort of, I think where democracy should be trying to develop because basically it says you have an idea, let's call it idea A and I have another idea, idea B and normally we would vote on it and just whoever has a little bit more power behind them wins, it's so stupid, it's like warfare mentality instead of saying hey, why don't we try to find idea C that we both can live with, yeah? And we solved a lot of the issues this way, a lot of the issues that I thought we would not be able to solve, you know, like he did issues like the national church, you know, and so on, we knew we could take it out. We were more people inside this council that wanted it out, you know, having a national church as a constitutional thing than having it in, but instead of voting down the two priests we had or like we had a priest and a really religious nurse, instead of voting them down we were like okay, let's find another way and we did, we found a way to just make it the decision of the nation when and if it should be changed. So that was also part of our methodology that I think really matters and also,

okay, so let's see the things you think matter most, okay, first of all it's a diverse group. Secondly, it's done in public, meaning you're both posting your drafts, you're getting feedback, you're adjusting on the basis of the feedback, you're letting people see how you're talking to each other. And third, you've decided not to be a traditional voting machine, which is just basically deciding who wins each of these little corner solutions and then adding them together. Because you're a group, you're trying to figure out how to produce a document that everybody gets as much as they each want inside of that. So you're compromising to these ideas. Yes, very, very well summed

up and also to add, I mean, I think the magical sort of recipe of this is the way that you actually before commit to doing compromises. Because people have echoes like I mentioned and the one emotion that people can't stand and really is 90% of all disputes that go on for a long time are based on this emotion. The whole most happiest hates being humiliated. It fucking hates it. And if you lose in an election, it is a sort of a humiliating moment, you know. So instead of piling up loads of humiliations onto all those 25 people, which in the end would have made this very sort of maybe grudgy against each other, we left the voting, which we certainly did in the end need to resolve to the end. And then it was only like to decide like tweaks that we couldn't land, you know. And then we have had this like sort of group spirit the whole time, which made us like I remember, I put something in and I was really proud that was limiting ownership law. Because in the asset of the constitution, it talks about the right of property like a whole thing. And it's way above all other human rights, the way it's written. So I was just a little bit sort of like, you know, decreasing this. And one of the members said to me, like, listen, I just, I'm not in anymore because I got it through. I was very convincing and we decided to have it. And then I decided to say no, I want to withdraw this change, even though I had made it because I feel that he's, it's just not on for him anymore. And I'd rather have him with me in the last part of this job than get my own way. Even though I think it's really important, you know. So then that was just one example of how the group dynamic was. At least we tried a lot. And you know, I'm a mediator in my heart. And I think in the end, what the big miracle of this thing is that all 25 people signed all 114 articles of this constitution. Now that my friend is a miracle because I said that people are really argumentative. You know, you can't find like three people to agree about what to have dinner, you know. And if you have 25 people with such diverse political opinions, like we did certainly have, you know, and they all signed the same document. What is that? Seriously. I don't know what it is, but it is in my opinion part of this a little bit spiritual moment that we were experiencing as a nation. And anyway, we finished it. We in the four months, we handed it over to Parliament and then I personally thought, fine, okay, I can just go work now, be a lawyer and forget about this. I've done my job. And then I was like, hang on. When like two or three years had passed and nothing was actually happening except for like a lot of angry experts coming before the Parliament explaining how this was a very bad idea, you know. So in the end, what happened was the Parliament decided to take this document, which was made in 2011 and put it to a national referendum, which I thought was sort of a clever thing to do because it was great luck in a sort of a political argument. And the election was held in November 2012 and October. Oh, sorry, October, yes. And I always confuse October and no, but one of them should be eliminated, you know, like an item.

We'll do that next podcast. Thank you. Okay.

Anyway, so we have the referendum 50% turnout, which people thought was low, but in sort of global context, it's not. Hi, very high. Yeah. And two thirds of the voters said, yes, we want this to be the basis for the Constitution of Iceland. So cut to freaking 11 years later, la de la sic, and we still don't have it. What is that all about?

Yeah, I mean, it's 11 years, but there's been a lot that's happened in the 11 years. You yourself have been involved in movements to try to get the Parliament to take it up and to pass

it. Yeah. Yeah. I had to sort of leave my job as an attorney and become like a full-time activist for absolutely no salary, trying to influence the situation because it was just heartbreaking. And we couldn't find the ending, you know, I don't know what is called in English. This thing that measures the time, you know,

like with the sun falls, what's called a sundial. I mean, I, yeah, but it's not a sundial. It's not a sundial. Yeah. We know what you're talking about. We'll put a picture here.

Yeah. But I think if you would try to graphically explain or process it this little bit like that, the start of really white with the assembly, it's condensed, and then it goes white again with the referendum. And I think that's a really beautiful shape to have for a constitutional process. But at the same time, I think what we, where we went wrong is you have this beautiful saying in Icelandic that you have to, in the beginning, think about the end. You can't begin stuff unless you have thought about the end. And I think the parliament having all those million tasks in the middle of an economic, you know, black hole just didn't figure out the ending, you know. And ever since, I mean, after the next elections, the conservatives got back in. They have controlled this country for so many years. And now they're slowly, slowly becoming like less than 20% of the elected, but still they sort of are running this videocracy up here where they just decide what gets through and what does not, you know. And that is part of the problem. And if you ask most people, I think we have come to the knowledge of understanding that there are political reasons for this not going through. I mean, we have classes in the new constitutions saying that the natural resources belong to the people. We're actually giving nature her own rights and so on. And this, for the people who control this country, which basically are 20 families that own all the fish around this country is not a very happy change, you know. And if you talk about it from a global perspective, I think this is basically what happens most of the time. The 1% is blocking democracy from functioning. And people actually think democracy is failing, but it's not. It's being blocked, you know. And that's why people become real haters, you know, because they're not being listened to. And that's a really humiliating experience.

So it's being blocked in Iceland. What's the mechanism of blocking it? And what we're talking about before that we needed the picture for was an hourglass. Ah, hourglass, I love it, yeah. So what's blocking it? What you use the word, autocracy, which is a great description of America too. So what's the autocracy in Iceland?

Well, it's where one party which still has less than 25% of the world behind it can actually stop democratic will from realizing, you know, that's the autocracy in my opinion. They used filibuster for example, to prevent the discussion and parliament about the new constitution. They also, they used filibuster to prevent the natural referendum to go hand in hand with a press dash of election, which would have made it much easier to get people to the, they didn't want to see the will of the people. And when the will of the people appeared anyway, they just looked the other way. And they managed to get away with it, which is quite amazing because we have had service ever since this happened showing that still two thirds of the Icelandic population wants this to be the basis for the new constitution. And we fight and we fight and we fight and we fight and we fight through like political means, but we also use civil disobedience. We join forces with our best artists. We have endless meetings. And we never give up. We're like a totally annoying bee or something because it's like a genius and a bottle thing. You can't actually put it back in the bottle, you know, and it has been, it has been freed and it will in the

air.