celandic women may pride themselves on their cool patience, but national airline Icelandair has finally pushed them past the tolerance limit with advertising they perceive as sexist and degrading.
Perhaps it was the new game on the airline's Web site in which points are scored by snatching the bikini tops off giggling girls that brought the rage to a Geyser-like eruption.
Or maybe what set them off was the ad in the London Underground calling on travellers to go to Iceland to "pester a beauty queen," topping off a long series of similarly ambiguous invitations.
But the fact is that Iceland's women have had enough, and the airline will have to answer them in court.
"Some of Icelandair's campaigns where Icelandic women are presented as sex objects obviously violate the laws. By using word games the company is suggesting that Icelandic women are loose or promiscuous," said Valgerdur Bjarnadottir, head of the Centre for Gender Equality.
Both the center, and The Icelandic Women's Rights Association, are suing Icelandair for allegedly violating the recently-passed Equal Rights Act with its advertising.
The airline is by no means a recent offender.
"One-night stand in Iceland" reads one infamous slogan from the past, inviting Americans and Europeans to stop over for a night on trans-Atlantic flights.
In another ad, an image of a young couple taking a mud bath was accompanied by the caption offering Britons "a dirty weekend."
Not to mention the one where three, obviously naked girls cuddled each other in a ridiculously oversized Icelandic sweater.
For years, Icelandic women, who have shouldered more then their share of the burden in times of earthquakes, eruptions, fierce icy winters and foreign colonial oppression, simply ignored Icelandair's campaigns, but not any more.
"The Company is violating the rights of all Icelandic women with their advertisements and it was inevitable that we had to respond," said Dorbjoerg Jonsdottir, chairwomen of the Women's Rights Association.
And the fight will not stop there, adds Bjarnadottir, who calls the legal action "a landmark case."
"If the ruling is in favor of Icelandic women, we have a good weapon to fight increasing pornography in the public domain where advertisers seem to go further and further in using sex in selling their products," she said.
Asdis Eva Hannesdottir, a stewardess for Icelandair and leader of the Icelandic Air-Hostesses Union, said she and her colleagues are not happy with the company's advertising strategy either.
"We do not agree with these campaigns and there must be other ways to sell the country," she said. "We are constantly fighting for increased recognition as professionals and these adverts do not help."
They also make their jobs more difficult in an environment where sexual harassment is already rampant.
Nearly 40 percent of Icelandic air hostesses have experienced some form of sexual harassment, according to research by an Icelandic medical board.
This contrasts with, for example, 2 percent in the country's banking sector.
"This is a part of a more complicated picture," Hannesdottir says, "but obviously the image of Icelandic women portrayed in the Icelandair ads does not help."
The airline's staff also blame their company for encouraging cheap jokes at their expense.
Last year American TV show The Sopranos featured prostitutes dressed, barely, in "Icelandic Airline" uniforms, partying in a New York hotel room. The show was called "Money for nothing and Icelandic Chicks for free."
The company declined to comment on the allegations, but said previously that it welcomed the chance of a "civilized discussion."
Spokesman Gudjon Arngrimsson told Icelandic daily Morgunbladid recently that the company was the victim of a "slander campaign" after Icelandic feminists called for a boycott of Icelandair.
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