Mafiosos and metamphetamine

Jason Pine, a college teacher who flees from his native New York City each summer, goes to Iceland says he enjoys the quiet in the North. Jason, who now lives in Akureyri, spends his spare time building a house on the other side of the fjord in Vaðlaheidi. When he has time off, he enjoys nature and works on his novels. One is about his Hungarian grandparents, another about Monika in Merkigil farm, and a third is a crime novel about an American who builds a house in Iceland. It’s obvious where he gets that idea from!

Always looking for peace and quiet

Why are you here in Iceland?

“I had long been interested in coming to Iceland and got my chance in 2013 when I was on my way to a conference in Germany. I was here for four days, in Borgarnes, and I hardly slept at all. The light here filled me with energy. I traveled all over the Snæfellsnes peninsula and was really upset when I had to leave. At Arnarstapi, I got the impression that the wind could blow me off the cliffs without anyone noticing. I felt joy and feeling that it wouldn’t matter; because so many other things were going on; like the wind, the weather, and the sea,” says Jason, “and I didn’t have any death wishes at all, but the feeling of being swallowed up by nature was overwhelming and joyful at the same time. That day he knew he had to come back. He has been doing this every summer since, but Jason is from New York. He now lives in Queens, and teaches anthropology and media studies at Purchase College in New York.

“I’m always looking for peace and quiet and being in the green. I go for walks a lot and Iceland has been the place that has given me peace and quiet,” says Jason, “and I like to swap apartments with Icelanders. This summer he’s in downtown Akureyri with a view of the City Square.

I used to be scared

Anthropologist Jason has not been idle in the last few years and decades. In 2012, The Art of Making Done in Naples, a book about a Naples pop singer who forges links into the Mafia, was published in 2004.

“When I was studying for my doctorate in anthropology, I created a project that connected me to the music scene in Naples, which is connected to organized crime. My research project became a reality, and I lived in Naples for four years. I love Naples, which is very chaotic and unlike any other city in Europe,” says Jason, “and I learned what he calls the Naples dialect, which he says is quite different from Italian.

Since Jason had become well acquainted with the pop music people associated with mobsters, it is not out of the question whether he was in danger.

“There is a lot of threats and there were some things that were implied. There is of course violence involved as well, but often violence is about creating fear in the minds of people. Even though I had not been directly victimized, I still experienced the fear. I was often scared,” he says, saying he often feared that people misunderstood what he was working on.

“People questioned me over and over to see if there was consistency in my answers,” he says, claiming to have conducted a number of interviews with people who were members of the mob.

“I not only interviewed but spent a lot of time with people and learned from them through regular conversations. It was not necessarily accepted that you would be conducting direct interviews. ”

So you were like a secret police?

“That’s exactly what I had to make them realize that I wasn’t! They thought so for a while. One good way to make them understand that I wasn’t on the force was simply to work with them. Therefore, I created music videos with the pop musicians who were on Mafia scene and some of the Mafia were actually agents for singers who often sang at weddings or christenings at Mafia families,” Jason says, explaining that this type of music is made with synthesizers and the songs are more often than not love ballads.

Learned what hopelessness is

Jason later took a completely different course and settled in a small region of Missouri, USA. While there, he taught in a university, and then, using ethnographic methods, decided to study the origins of methamphetamine production. He lived there for about a year, watching “cooks ” who observed methamphetamine. The result was The Alchemy of Meth: A Decomposition, published in 2019. Both books have been recognized and Jason has lectured widely on their content.

“In this district, at this time, most methamphetamine plants were in the United States.”

It sounds like a very depressing place!

“I can’t express in words how depressing it was. I learned what a lack of hope is,” he says, “and it’s been a very difficult time.

“I did not research the drug itself, but the production and then went into these factories or laboratories, but I did not go into them while someone was making the material but afterwards,” he says, claiming to have conducted numerous interviews with “the cooks” as well as the consumers.

Is it hard to make methamphetamine?

“No, it’s shocking how easy it is. But making mistakes is costly. It can cost you your life,” says Jason, saying that many people “shake” the medicine in a plastic bottle.

"If the bottle bursts, the whole upper body burns."

Fighting for nature

We return to the interest in Iceland, but Jason has spent the summer here for many years in a row; often in Saudarkrókur. He is now spending his first time in Akureyri, and has bought a plot of land in Vaðlaheiði, where he plans to set up a house and even a sort of mansion where people from different disciplines might gather to put ideas into practice.

“I don’t want to come to Iceland to live in a city, so I’d like to have a summer house here in the countryside. I found a beautiful town, but I was very disappointed when I found out that the banks don’t lend me enough. So I bought some land in Vadlaheidi, where the view is divine,” he says.

“I want to own a home there and also build a mansion for specialists of all kinds; naturalists, biologists, economists, and artists, who would work together on projects that have a positive impact on the environment and to combat the threats from nature, ” says Jason, mentioning that he envisions that the project will eventually become a profitable one. He is in the business of developing a business plan that investors could see their interest in investing money in.

“I think many people are concerned about the climate emergency and are willing to take risks in investments such as this. Products or inventions that would be created would contribute to a more environmentally friendly world and, in the process, create value,” he says.

“I personally invest a lot of money into the project, but I plan to retire here. I want to do my part in saving nature. We need to take it into account, but Iceland and nature here have increased my interest in these issues because here the landscape is so magnificent. I go home to Queens in the winter and I can't wait to get back here in the spring."