ICELAND: BRAVE NEW WORLD

An iconic photo:  Tiny houses lend scale to a gigantic landscape

Land of the Future?

A film I saw recently was a thriller filmed in Iceland. Most of the scenes took place in dark stormy winter with howling winds and blowing snow. Scenes that took place in doorways–and there were a number of them–showed the actors chatting right there, the door wide open. No one seemed to mind. Obviously, I figured, this was for filming purposes because people don’t do that in winter. No one leaves a front door open. Not even for a minute. But who cares if the open door lets in a little cold air when you have infinite heat?  Not to mention hot water, really hot water, in endless amounts.

Iceland is 100% energy independent, generating the cleanest energy from renewable sources (geothermal and some hydro), an ideal sought by many countries and achieved to date by––hmm, none, actually.  Admittedly it’s a tall order for countries that don’t have Iceland’s unique conditions: only 350,000 people, a location atop a volcanic hot spot (with tectonic plates moving apart 2.5 centimeters per year, by the way), extensive water power, a well-educated population, and a mindset that favors innovation.

When you can cook bread by putting a raw loaf in the ground, you don’t have a heating problem.

Cooking a type of brown bread, local recipe. It takes about a day to bake.  

Steam, not smoke, comes out of the earth in this valley.

A schematic of Iceland's thermal fields; to the west is the American tectonic plate, to the east the Eurasian plate. The white splotches are glaciers.

Jarðböðinn thermal spa, one of many, the most famous of which is the Blue Lagoon. Thermal spas are a delightful extra that comes with volcanos.

Ahead of the curve socially as well, Iceland sees itself as having total gender equality, as well as an openness and embracing of everyone declaring themselves LGBT or Q.  Iceland is, in fact, our guide explained, a matriarchal society. Women are fully empowered–totally equal, and have been for ages. The current prime minister is a woman, although the president is a man. Female power is often cited in the sagas, where women are frequently described as powerful and as ready to wield a weapon as any Viking hero. There were hints here and there that this equality may not be quite so thorough (example: at the Ocean Cluster organization all the “suits” were males, and it was a female who served as receptionist and guide even though she held advanced degrees. Could just be chance, right?) Immigration is favored too, but with Iceland still notably homogeneous, this may yet have to be tested.

Viking hero, Lief Ericsson, son of Eric the Red, Viking hero

A show of power:  This is Go∂afoss

Besides being ranked as one of the countries with the most educated population overall, Iceland has an almost non-existent level of unemployment.  Farming, according to our guide, is often farmed out (so to speak) to outsiders, as are lower level jobs in the service fields (restaurants, hotels, shops, tourism in general). Farming, not in the least resembling farming in Vermont, seems to consist mostly of having sheep and Icelandic horses graze the fields.  (The genes of both horse and sheep are ancient; no sheep, horses or other animals are allowed into the country.)  Even hay baling looks surprisingly enlightened, what with pink plastic bales supporting breast cancer, blue in support of bladder cancer, and green, black or white plastic covers existing as local color choices. Many farmers have turned to hosting tourists to fill empty barns while they live elsewhere. Greenhouse owners run their "farms" remotely; they are almost completely automated to the point where those owners may live in Spain if they like and check on their crops via the internet.  There is no agriculture as we know it.  Despite the Gulf Stream keeping the climate just short of Arctic, there is not enough warmth or sun year round to support crops of fruits or vegetables. 

A huge greenhouse growing tomatoes for Iceland and, cleverly, including a cafe that offers tomato soup.

Only horses are missing from this farm photo.  Mostly green hay bales employed here.

Land of the Past

Tin framed (hence "old") buildings in Reykjavik's center; the Hotel Centrum where we stayed for 3 days

A neighborhood in old Reykjavik. Newer areas looks like ordinary suburbs.

Except for buildings that date from the 1920’s or so, everything looks new. Is new. (Even the trees are new; major efforts at reforestation began only 30 years ago.)  There are no 14th or 15th century homes, ruins or monuments.  Vikings, the first settlers, arrived in the 870’s. They chopped down the existing birch forests and built with wood, stone and turf.  When the forests were gone, wood came from Norway.  It wasn’t until the 1870’s that tin was introduced and swiftly became the material of choice for outer walls and roofs.  Color arrived, too.  The oldest houses in town centers (notably Reykjavik) date from the 1920’s with a handful from the late 1800’s.  Then came concrete.  The architectural shape of choice seems to be the square and the rectangle.  Sometimes this works really well. Often, though, the lack of exterior decoration and the endless boxy-ness has a soulless quality. It’s mostly the older houses that look inviting.

A Viking history buff build this reconstruction of a sod dwelling.  It is surprisingly roomy inside, if dark.

A photograph of the sort of housing most settlers had before the arrival of new materials.

The crude kitchen area of one of those old houses. The housewife looks pretty grim.

After the Viking period there were dark days.  Danish rule lasted from 1262 until 1944, the day of independence.  But there were many dark periods. The plague swept through Iceland twice in the 1300’s and again in the 1400’s killing nearly half the population, the volcano Laki erupted in 1783 and killed a quarter of the population, and there were several unusually cold winters, plus the Spanish flu that arrived early in the 20th century. Life here was often hard. Not to mention the dangers faced daily by fishermen.

This interior had wooden walls, but life was generally still pretty difficult, even in the 1920's.

How to account for all the churches.  Their numbers are a thing of mystery. Nearly every farm has its own church, generally a small building resembling a chapel, made out of wood.  And then there are the town churches.  Every town has a church or two and at least one of them in nearly every case is likely to be a striking––as in you-can’t-look-away­­––modern building of avant-garde design, in concrete.  The old farm churches may have been built by farmers because their homes were so isolated they were unable to make their way to a town in order to go to church.  It may also have been simply something one did if one could afford it (wood, after all, had to be imported)––a way of displaying one’s faith. Or was it built ias a talisman against the hope that lava wouldn't eat you up?  At any rate, in these modern times church attendance is said to be very low, with only 10% of the population reporting that they go to church occasionally, and 50% saying they never go at all.  (Marriage too may be fading, with only about 1/3 of babies born in 2014 born to married parents––unless, of course, they married afterwards.)  I watched a film on the plane that took place in Iceland. The husband in the story was always leaving for choir practice.  I’m guessing he went to a church for that.  Still, the church mystery endures.

Old church above the town of Vik (Vik means harbor).  The town below is very near the glacier and volcano (unseen behind the hills).  If and when it erupts, they may only have 15 minutes to evacuate.

Per caption above, volcano Katla, one of Iceland's largest, lives right under the ice cap behind Vik.  

In the small town of Stykkisholmur the church dominates the hill at right. It may not be the most extreme design.

Another spectacular waterfall.  This one is Gullfoss.

The Dark Side. Or Isn't There One?

Winters are long and hard and, no doubt, depressing.  (I admit I am writing this on a dreary rainy day in Vermont in October when the sun is already setting as early as 6:30.)  What do people do during such long winters?  Well, they are either reading books or writing them.  Or perhaps knitting. Here’s a statistic:  More books are published per capita in Iceland than in any other country. There would have to be 328 million books published in this country in order to come up with a similar statement. (An actual book count for the US is closer to under half of one million.)  

The English language section with its dark titles. The larger towns have excellent bookstores.

You don’t have to read much Icelandic fiction before you start imagining the country suffers from (a) a drinking or drug problem (see Arnoldur Indrio∂ason, for example, for tales of a divorced detective with a drug user daughter); and (b) depression.  I thought the drug problem would be severe. Not so.  But it used to be.  The whole country seems to have pulled together recently to draw teens away from drugs and get them involved in activities.  It worked. (“How Iceland Got Teens to Say No to Drugs,” The Atlantic, January 19, 2017.) As for depression, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD has 36 member countries, including the US) “Iceland is the most depressed of all European Countries.”  I always wonder what the questions are in surveys like this.  In any event, the OECD is responsible for a few other interesting pieces of data, like the fact that more women are depressed than men, and Icelanders use more anti-anxiety drugs, sleeping pills and so on than the other member countries.  Well, I guess there has to be something of a downside.

Yet another beauty:  Skógafoss

But did I mention that Iceland has no army, the police aren’t armed, the crime rate is practically non-existent (there are currently 26 people in jail in the whole country), and, although lots of people own guns, they are reserved exclusively for hunting? 

Speaking of hunting, what, exactly does one hunt in a place almost entirely without any wild animals?  Although there are some 500,000 or so sheep, plenty of horses, and swans everywhere, only the arctic fox (the fur of which I saw adorning numerous clothing items for sale in some shops), is a native wild animal. (I heard about reindeer imported many years ago existing somewhere in the country although I didn’t see any.)  Do people hunt foxes?  (They're pretty cute, I have to say. )  Birds, maybe?  Puffins? Puffins??  Puffins are kind of a mascot of the country, cherished by children who help them on their migratory routes when they are misled by the lights of a town, and yet you will find them on menus here and there. Somebody must be hunting them. Whale meat is also on some menus. Reykjavik’s three-ship whaling industry, with heavy irony, uses the same dock as the local whale watch fleet. Our guide said only tourists eat whale meat. I suppose some people get a thrill from eating something exotic. Wait a minute. I once ate a witchetty grub in the Australian outback and was kind of proud of that. Witchetty grubs don't come with ecological histories attached, but still...

On the right, Greenland shark (yes, really). These sharks are the unfortunate bycatch of trawling. This company takes them and allows the shark meat to ferment so that it will lose its toxic level of ammonia, and then hangs it for several months until it is deemed ready to eat.  An acquired taste in the extreme sense of the phrase. I tasted it, and found it pretty horrible, even when followed up with a shot of Icelandic schnapps (at left) called Brennavin.  Greenland shark is a national dish and regarded as a special treat. Other northern isles (the Hebrides, for example) have a similar culinary history of fermenting meat and fish.

Our guide, Kolfinna Baldvinsdottir, holding a sheep head, another holiday treat. There is plenty to eat in the head, including (yikes!) the eyes. In supermarkets the meat section is wholly composed of about a thousand cuts and treaments of lamb.

Then there is the downside of Iceland's dangers. You could:

(a) fall down a waterfall,
(b) stumble into a fumarole,
(c) get lost in a lava field,
(d) drown in the ocean,
(e) fall off a cliff,
(f) freeze to death in wind and rain,
(g) whoops! wrong temperature thermal pool,
(h) drive your undersized Kia into a river and be swept away,
(i) be swept away by meltwater from a glacier caused by
(j) an erupting volcano and be rained on by ash and rocks,
(k) get trampled by a herd of sheep,
(l) get lost and taken by a troll, or
(m) eat too much Greenland shark and die.

But there are voluntary rescue squads stationed all over Iceland ready to save you.  

You could drown:  waves and wind came up suddenly, about a half hour after this photo was taken, during a whale watching trip, and seas were growing seriously enough to seek a harbor ASAP.  (All passengers had been required to wear survival suits.)

You could fall off a cliff.  Basalt columns and other formations on the Snaefellsnes peninsula

You could get lost in a lava field, or fall into a hole.  The lava is covered with lichen, the first colonizers of rock.

You could fall into a fumarole.  This place reminds me of Yellowstone.

You could get lost. (This photo is very confusing.)  And be taken by a troll.

Ah, but if I lived in Iceland I would miss the chipmunks, the squirrels, the racoons, the snakes, the bears, the deer, the coyotes, the robins, the hawks, the rodents––all of them.  And the forests.  The country I live in is a different place in so many ways.  We are too big, too heterogeneous to have a future that is like Iceland's present.

But we could take a leaf from their book.