Icelanders love to quote facts about their country. Not the usual mind-numbing statistics about how many tons of iron ore they export (they don't!) or what the gross national product per capita is (actually higher than many industrialised countries, but mainly because they have a very small population). They will tell you that until a few years ago, beer and dogs were not allowed, that they have no trees, that all homes are heated by geo-thermal energy, and that Iceland has one of the highest literacy rates and life expectancy ages in the world.
You will very soon learn that Icelanders have a fierce pride in their country, its history and its achievements. One of the first things they will tell you is that they read and write more books per capita than any other nation on earth. Every Icelander is an aspiring poet, and many do more than merely aspire. The total population of the country is 300,000. The central plateau is uninhabited and uninhabitable, with the majority of the population living in the Reykjavik area.
This might be the only country in the world where the telephone directory lists people under their given names. This is because if Sigurd has a daughter, called Helga, she is known as Helga Sigurdsdottir. When Helga marries Sven, she doesn't change her name, but their son Arni would be known as Arni Svensson, or if she were unmarried and had a son, he would be Arni Helgasson. Complicated? It's almost too simple to be true. And in order to help things along, if there are 6 Jon Olaffssons, then the profession of each is listed next to his name.
This is a country where crime is almost unknown. People leave cars unlocked in the street, even in Reykjavik, and see no reason why they should not do so. Friday and Saturday night in Reykjavik downtown can be pretty rowdy affairs, with all the young people out in the streets and circulating around the bars and discos. By 3 or 4 in the morning most of them are pretty much the worse for wear, but there is little or no violence and they all return safely to their homes, or at least to someone's home, to do the same thing the next weekend.
The Icelandic Parliament (the oldest in the world) meets in a small brown building in the centre of Reykjavik, and anyone can walk in and go up to the public gallery and listen to the proceedings. There is no security whatsoever. That made me realise, more than anything else what a close knit community this is. Why, my Icelandic friend said, would anyone want to do any harm to one of our politicians? Another quaint touch is that when an Icelandair plane touches down at Keflavik, the country's international airport, whilst the English announcement made by the cabin crew is 'Welcome to Iceland', in Icelandic they say 'Welcome home'.
The Icelandic language is related to the modern Scandinavian languages, but these have evolved so far from their medieval roots that an Icelander and a Scandinavian would not be able to understand more than about a third of each other’s conversation. Paradoxically, if an Icelander of today met up with his 12th century counterpart, they would be able to chat to each other with no difficulty, so little has modern Icelandic changed over the centuries. Many English words are derived from ancient Norse roots which gave birth to Icelandic, and it is interesting for example to read the Icelandic subtitles of films whilst listening to the English soundtrack, and to hear words like 'svindel', meaning 'to cheat'.
Iceland is closer geographically to North America than to Europe, and despite the name of the country, it is not as cold as one might imagine, being surrounded by relatively warm water. Of course there is a lot of ice around, in fact much of the interior is covered by glaciers which can be crossed by specially adapted vehicles, this being one of the many interesting and attractive physical features of the country. Notwithstanding the country's northern latitude, the temperature when I arrived on a late November afternoon was + 2'C, compared to the chilly -9 of Luxembourg at lunchtime.
Iceland lies on a very thin part of the Earth's crust, a physical phenomenon which literally made Iceland what it is - a volcanic island still in formation. Only 23 years ago, a new island, Surtsey, was born. Visitors can see and touch living proof of the ongoing activity when they visit the area of the Geysirs, some 50 km outside Reykjavik, with natural hot springs bubbling up from the interior of the Earth. It is almost uncanny to walk around in the silence, standing on snow, with the ice-capped mountains in the background, and to look down into the crystal clear water and your feet, knowing that it is at boiling temperature! Every few minutes the silence is broken by the sound of one of the Geysirs going off, as the pressure of the water bubbling up from underneath breaks through the cooler layer on top, throwing jets of boiling water and steam high into the air at regular intervals in one of nature's most impressive live shows.
It's one hell of a place ... go and check it out!
I hate to contradict you but I saw plenty of violence at 6am on the Sunday morning. Random fights breaking out, guys getting dragged out of bars and people generally acting like idiots. One Icelandic girl said "the problem is that after a few beers all the men think they're Vikings". I was also told that there is a significant cocaine problem. But then what do you expect with drinking until 7am. Point being be wary when you're out late, it's nowhere near as peaceful as suggested above.
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