English: Icelanders flock to the presidents residence in the morning on January 2nd 2009 asking him to veto a bill recarding Icesave. On January 5th the president vetoed the bill.

The sermony starts with a chorus singing following lyrics from the Icelandic poet Jónas Hallgrímsson:

Iceland, fortunate isle! Our beautiful, bountiful mother!

Where are your fortune and fame, freedom and virtue of old?

All things on earth are transient: the days of your greatness and glory

flicker like flames in the night, far in the depths of the past.

Comely and fair was the country, crested with snow-covered glaciers,

azure and empty the sky, ocean resplendently bright.

When the chorus finished singing the group lit several hundred bengal lights in and when the fire and smoke had vanished group of representants from Indefence gave the list of signatures to the president. Indefence presented a petition bearing more than 56,000 signatures (equivalent to 25% of the Icelandic electorate) urging Grímsson not to sign the bill. By 4 January, the number of signatories had risen to 62,000.

See w:Icelandic debt repayment referendum, 2010