“For many others, the ash fall from the glacier was a great distress, but it turned out to be a blessing for us,” says Lynali Keller from the Philippines. She and her husband visited Iceland this week on a special pilgrimage and told their story to DV.

Lynali and Marcel Keller, from Switzerland, visited Iceland to visit the distant place which changed both their lives forever: Eyjafjallajokull.

The couple met by chance when they both intended to take photographs of the sunset in Zurich, on an evening when it was predicted to be uniquely beautiful due to the volcanic ash in the atmosphere. “The newspaper said that the sunset would be magnificent in the ash; dramatic colours and a photographer’s dream. I didn’t know anything about that and just wanted to take pictures of the sunset [anyway]. I walked up this hill and there was a group of people gathered there,” Lynali told DV, who then decided late to try and photograph the spectacle. “Unfortunately I didn’t get and good pictures, but Marcel was still there and had taken photos. I waited there for a while and he found me and we started talking,” she says. “He asked if I’d got any pictures of it and I said, ‘no, I missed it; I should have got here sooner.’”

The two amateur photographers got chatting and ended up keeping in contact. They regularly talked about photography, went on a date and ended up as a couple…

Nearly a year-and-a-half later they arrived in Iceland to see where it all began.

(Photo: DV.is // Sigtryggur Ari)

The District Court last Friday ordered Jon Bjarki Magnusson to pay Kim Gram Laursen, from Denmark, ISK 500,000 (EUR 3,010) in compensation over quotes he published from Laursen’s former partner and mother of his children in an article about their custody battle. He also has to pay ISK 750,000 in legal costs, RUV reports.

The court ruling says that DV’s coverage of the case had not been balanced. The coverage in question stated that Laursen was a bully who had subjected his children to physical and psychological abuse.

Hjalmar Jonsson, chair of the journalists’ union, says it is ridiculous that people can be prosecuted for directly quoting their sources.

“It is incredible how people think journalists will be able to perform their role if they cannot directly quote from their sources. It is part of freedom of speech to be able to express oneself,” Jonsson says.

The case was tried under Iceland’s old media laws; although the new media law came into force on 1st July. Had the exact same coverage been made online or on the broadcast media, the journalist would probably not have been taken to court. The new laws include print media equals to other media.

“There they have passed judgement using the old faulty laws. This is of course completely ridiculous. We have a similar case, where an interviewee was directly quoted, the so-called ‘vikumal case’, in front of the court of human rights, and we believe nothing other than that we will win that case.”

DV.is reports that a group of investors passionate about independent and unaffiliated media has bought DV and DV.is from the Birtingur publishing house, owned by Hreinn Loftsson. A new limited company, DV ehf., has been established with enough capital to support the paper during the continued temporary recession in the advertising market.

The new company will ensure that owners’ influence on editorial content is unusually low – and part of this ethos is illustrated by a rule forbidding any single shareholder to hold more than 26 percent of the board’s vote, regardless of number of shares held. A clearer distinction between company management and editors has been put in place and a larger majority will now be needed to change important rules.

The change in DV’s ownership will take place on 1st April. The two editors Reynir Traustsson and Jon Trausti Reynisson and their current writing staff will remain and Reynir Traustsson is now one of the two largest owners. The other is Lilja Skaftadottir, an art dealer who lives in Iceland and France and has little previous experience in the Icelandic business market.

DV.is reports that a comprehensive list of shareholders will be published after Easter and that it will be available online as well.

DV is Iceland’s oldest surviving newspaper which has had a large succession of different owners and has been on the brink of bankruptcy since the 1990s. It is, however, doing comparatively well at the moment, with many in Iceland saying it has been the only newspaper willing to conduct real investigative journalism against implicated politicians and businessmen.

Loftsson says on DV.is that it has been sad to follow Althingi’s Icesave debates in recent days and weeks. He believes that with such strong and organised opposition from the parliamentary opposition parties and nearly 30,000 signatories to a petition calling on the President to veto the Icesave loan agreement if and when it passes parliament, further negotiations between Iceland, the Netherlands and the UK are the only way.

Unlike in the previous two rounds of discussions, this time Iceland should be represented by somebody like Bill Clinton, the former President of the United States – somebody internationally recognised and with a proven track record of being a good and impartial mediator. The mediator would also serve as an anchor for Iceland’s politicians who have largely been acting shamefully, using Icesave to score political points when they should be speaking to the world with a united voice, Loftsson believes.

Loftsson describes the bill currently being debated by parliament as salt to Iceland’s wounds which was deliberately applied when the Netherlands and the UK decided to reject some of Iceland’s proposed changes to the agreement in the summer. Iceland simply cannot tolerate the unfairness of the Icesave debt burden as it currently stands, he says.

DV claims the figures come from a survey carried out by the research centre at Bifrost University on behalf of the media advertising and planning agency AM Media. According to DV, the number of Morgunbladid subscribers has fallen from 40,000 to 30,000.

Morgunbladid publisher Oskar Magnusson hit back hard, saying that the number of ex-subscribers is nothing like as high as DV make out. “This news is nowhere near the truth – and that is pretty much universal for DV’s coverage of Morgunbladid,” he said.

Bifrost University sources confirmed that the survey was carried out exactly as DV reported; but that the data collected is the property of AM Media. Bifrost’s Njordur Sigurdsson stated with apparent certainty that wherever DV sourced its figures, it was not from Bifrost University.

AM Media meanwhile says it does not intend to make the results public, at least for the time being. The media uptake data is collected for AM Media as a tool for deciding advertising costs.

All Icelandic citizens and people living in Iceland are eligible for the award and everybody is free to send in their recommendations. It makes no difference if the nominees are nationally famous, les well-known or not known at all; rich, poor or somewhere in the middle; “Outvasion Viking”, fishwife or exterminator – everyone is equal in this election.

If a nominee has not featured in the news for his/her heroics, then the nominator should include a description of why the nominee deserves the recognition. The winner will be decided by a specially selected judging panel, about which DV will release more details as they become available.

It is possible to send nominations either to the email address: hetjaarsins@dv.is or send them to: Birtíngur útgafufélag, Lýnghalsi 5, 110 Reykjavík, Iceland. The deadline for applications is midnight 23rd December and the result will be announced around the New Year.