Cabinet Building Reykjavik

 Island > Reykjavik

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Icelanders demonstrate in front of the government building in Reykjavik. The occasion was the arrest of a man who had sailed the same day with a white and blue flag on his boat, the flag being the symbol of the Icelandic independence movement. At that time, Iceland was still under the Danish crown. People gather around the statue of Jón Sigurðsson, leader of the independence movement, waving blue and white flags. When Iceland got its own flag in 1915, it was actually not this one that became selected, but the blue-white-red one which is still icelands flag today. Instead of the statue of Jón Sigurðsson, today there is a statue of Hannes Hafstein, the first Prime Minister of Iceland, right in front of the building. On the left stands a statue of Christian IX, a Danish king who allowed Iceland to have its own a constitution in 1874.