Your Excellency President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson
Dear Mrs. Gudrun Katrin Forbergsdottir
Excellencies
Ladies and Gentlemen

I am very glad for this opportunity to welcome our guests from Iceland in Estonia. Here in Estonia we have always felt a deep regard and affection towards your country. Estonians envisage your country as severe, diligent and practical. We have learned to know you through your literature. The Icelandic literature has for years had a significant share in the foreign literature published in Estonian. ''The Elder Edda'' and ''Grettir's Saga'' stand on our bookshelves beside such national epics as ''The Odyssey'', ''Niebelungenlied'' and ''Kalevala''. The translators have told me that Estonian is one of the few languages where the internal rhymes of ancient Icelandic verse can be mastered. We have also learned to know you through your history. Here, too, we can see analogies with our own past - aspiration towards national consciousness, self-determination and independence. This is the way of the world, the way of human psychology - although delighted with the different and diverse, excited to meet the exotic, we are still emotionally keyed to receive the familiar, the analogous, the similar, and this seems to be especially close to our hearts. This is the way Estonia receives Iceland. I hope that you have already sensed this atmosphere of special intimacy that the Estonians feel towards you. And I believe that you will feel it even more during the remainder of your visit.

Besides everything else we are united by our dimensions. We are both small countries. There must be some young people also in Iceland who wave the flags and paste the walls with slogans: small is beautiful. Far be it from me to over-idealize the beauty of being small. But being small has its ethical and social advantages. The social advantages of being small mean that many political steps, many reforms, which would take decades in bigger structures, can in our cases be executed much more rapidly. A small society may, if it so desires, respond with considerable dynamics to both outside influences and internal compulsions - thus determining its own fate and influencing the world around it. The ethical imperative of being small is the necessity to think very clearly. Our opinions can never be announced vociferously to the world, for our voice is small. And yet if our positions are novel, original, logical and ethical, the world can not afford to ignore them.

As the ancient and recent history of your country have demonstrated, being small does not preclude very independent, sometimes, I daresay, even quite headstrong solutions. During the second half of this century you have devised your destiny with great determination and outlined your relations with the structures of Europe and the whole world with considerable ingenuity. This experience has, ever since 1991, set a very important example for Estonia. I have already had the opportunity to tell you, Mr. President, how highly we appreciate your recent statements on the prospective development of NATO and the participation of small countries in this organisation.

Besides the bilateral problems that create a lot of opportunities for the tightening of mutually beneficial contacts, we also have the opportunity to declare, as the message of our meeting, a joint conviction that close contacts make it possible for small countries to do a great deal to shape the world around them. Our being small often causes similar attitudes. The fact that we announce our concord to the world is of no little importance. I have been told that Njördur P. Njardvik, who is also familiar to the Estonian reader, has once, on a visit to Estonia, said that there is a unique primeval ardour, a primeval endowment inherent in small nations, and that he, Njardvik, had first discovered it in the Icelandic and the Irish, and then in the Finns. Visiting Estonia, he without hesitation included Estonians to his list. Thus the spiritual basis for co-operation has been established.

Mr. President, dear guests, my ladies and gentlemen. I would not conclude this speech without reminding you of Iceland's contribution, of Iceland's support to the restoration of the Estonian independence. The Alting resolution already in December 1990, and Iceland's unconditionally clear positions on several international forums were not post factum statements, but the shaping of new reality. I dare not say that it is known to every Estonian, but I am certain that almost every Estonian knows - Iceland was the first to recognise us, the first to restore the relations to Estonia as an independent state. It was on August 22, 1991. Four days later Foreign Minister Hannibalsson and I signed a joint declaration on the conclusion of diplomatic relations - this was one of the finest moments of my political existence. It is my firm conviction that besides the common blood circulation that unites us on dramatic moments, there exists between us also a feeling of simple everyday solidarity in common working relationships. During our discussions we have mentioned several opportunities for co-operation and there are enormous tasks expecting our officials. The great interest of the Estonian students towards the possibilities to study at the Icelandic University of Reykjavik is just as important but perhaps even more significant. This is the future of our relationship, headed towards the new century.

Mr. President. Honourable Mrs. Gudrun Katrin Forbergsdottir. Dear guests. I wish you on behalf of myself and Mrs. Helle Meri the best for the hours you have left for Estonia. I wish you happiness and success in your life and your work. Let us raise our glasses to the health of the President of Iceland and his spouse. To the honour and glory of Iceland.

back | archive of speeches | main page