If you think America has it bad right now then you haven’t been paying attention to what’s going on in Iceland recently. Hit particularly hard by the global recession, the country went bankrupt a couple months ago, all their major banks have failed, and inflation is skyrocketing. As the country’s government scrambles to prevent a complete collapse, banks are trying to collect on debts that citizens can no longer pay, the result is a powder keg that threatens to turn the daily protests into all-out chaos. Bloomberg, reporting on the situation, interviews local protest leader Eva Hauksdottir, owner of a local Witchcraft shop.

“It was the week before Christmas in Reykjavik, and all through the town Eva Hauksdottir led a band of 60 whistle-blowing, pan-banging, shouting demonstrators. “Pay your own debts,” they yelled as they visited one bank office after another in Iceland’s capital. “Don’t make the children pay.” When she isn’t leading one of the almost daily acts of protest in this land devastated by the global financial meltdown, Hauksdottir sells good luck charms made from the claws of ptarmigans, a local bird, and voodoo dolls in the form of bankers. She says she expects to lose her home, worth less than when she bought it two years ago, after the amount she owes jumped more than 20 percent.”

Hauksdottir claims that only civil disobedience can now stem the tide of evictions and the collection of debts that people can no longer pay.

“We’ll use our voices, and then if we have to we’ll use our hands, and maybe axes.”

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to axes. In the meantime, you have to wonder if American Pagan and Witch shops are also starting to sell poppets of fiscal miscreants and whether they’ll be out in the streets leading protests when things get even worse.

Tags: economics, Iceland, Paganism, politics, Witchcraft