The culture of smuggling

When Gísli Garðarsson drove a Bronco filled with liquor through a fence, he became part of a story long discussed by word of mouth but never fully brought into print. Writer and former parliamentarian Ásmundur Friðriksson recalls that episode in “Stories from the Base,” his new account of life around Keflavík Airport during the era of the U.S. defense presence.

The book covers the years 1952 to 2006, a period that began when Icelandic authorities entered into a defense agreement with the United States. Friðriksson is less interested in airport infrastructure than in the society that grew around it: Icelanders working in the defense area, contractors arriving on military projects, and the smuggling that stands out in the stories.

He describes a poor region of southwest Iceland when construction began. People came from across the country to find work, including the family of Magnús Kjartansson, whose story appears in the book. The local population numbered 2,000 to 3,000 when construction started, while 5,000 people worked on the project.

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People came here from all over the country, largely because of the airport.

“The Americans did not ask what people wanted to be paid, but when they would finish the job,” Friðriksson said. Place names still preserve traces of that era. Patterson and Meeks airports, along with the Nickel area, took their names from soldiers who were wounded or died while serving in Iceland. The former oil-storage area now lies amid housing, but residents still call it Nickel.

Friðriksson said he wrote the book primarily to preserve the memory and history of Icelandic employees at the base, including those who worked directly for the defense force and those employed by contractors brought to Iceland through military projects. For him, the airport created a distinctive and unfamiliar culture whose legacy remains embedded in Keflavík’s stories.

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The Americans did not ask what people wanted to be paid, but when they would finish the job.