On route to the UK for my cousins wedding at the end of July, my parents and I took the opportunity to stop in Iceland, the stingray shaped island in the North Atlantic Ocean and explore the country. Over the course of our lifetimes we have taken many a transatlantic flight and accidentally leaving the phones on which has resulted in a plethora of "welcome to Iceland text messages", so it was about time we took up the back logged welcome offers.
This trip was not without it's apprehensions though as the night prior to departure, my mother stumbled upon a blog post entitled "Iceland smells like farts." The gist of the article was that due to Iceland being dependent on geothermal energy and all water being geothermal the smell of sulphur, which resembles eggy farts pierces the air throughout the country. This however turned out not to be completely true, and it was only in a few places where the pungent stench of eggy farts tantalized our nostrils.
One of these places this was present was the showers, which is actually advantageous if you have ever had a shower and mid shower find yourself succumbed to the urge to fart and so you fart. Upon realising the excess carbon dioxide between your buttocks, releasing the fart is instantly regretted as the moisture in the shower amplifies the stench as it clings to the moisture droplets and you find yourself gagging on your own farts. Fortunately in Iceland this isn't the problems as the stench of the water can mask pretty much anything including this. Thankfully though Iceland is pretty windy, especially it's capital Reykjavik this comes in handy as the continuous gusts of wind swiftly move away the most pungent of geothermal fart water and instead turns your nipples into icicles.
This is apparent in almost all parts of the country, along with the ever changing weather. It's a slogan in the country that, if you don't like the weather in Iceland wait ten miniutes, as with every gust of wind the weather completely changes. In addition to the wind causing Iceland's weather to constantly change, I am convinced it has also shaped the landscape.
The Icelandic landscape is dramatic and completely random, one minute emerald hills are cascading for miles, the next jagged mountains and booming waterfalls and ten minutes later, your surrounded my mountains and lava fields. This is the result off a serious volcanic eruptions and glaciers melting.
This Subsequently explains why one goes from thinking they are on the moon and wandering what in the hell they have gotten themselves into, to feeling like they are in the middle of no where or a fantasy world....actually to the extent Iceland is a fictional world as it's where Game of Thrones is filmed along with several other fantasy shows and much of the population still believes in elves and fairies. Needless to say, if one has ever wanted to frolic through fields of flowers and unleash there 1960's hippy child, or has ever dreamed of performing the underpants Charleston in a field,Iceland is the place to do it. Alternatively and more family friendly, it's wonderful for hiking, meandering the countryside and enjoying the remoteness of it all. One of the best ways to enjoy the countryside is on top of a horse weaving through volcanic craters and through fields of lupines.
With the parents and I being chiefly based in the capitol Reykjavik, we got a good insight into the Icelandic population, or what very littler there is of it. With only 300,000 people in the entire country and 120,000 living in the Capitol, the Icelandic gene pool is rather limited. Resulting in the governments decision to encourage Icelandic to marry non Icelandic ignored to diversify the gene pool.
The Icelandics have flawless skin( l'oreal got nothing on these people) most likely attributed to lack of sun and high fish diet, and are buy and large soft spoken and very pleasant people, whom are adorable. It is clear though that some Icelandic's are much stranger than others, probably a result of the ethnic homogeneity, lack of sun in the winter and billowing winds year round. The most classic example of this is Bjork obviously, and the lesser know equally as strange Icelandic , Hjörtur Gísli Sigurðsson, the curator of the Icelandic Phallogical museum, passed down from his father. The museum features a collection of 200 plus penises and penile parts mostly animal but there are some human contributions to the museum, including models of the Icelandic Handball teams.
Strange and adorable Icelandic's aside, the high fish and low sun diet appears to have resulted in a plethora of attractive people. If the sexy bastard or hot piece of ass index existed, in which the geographer examines the amount of sexy bastards in a population, divide that by the total population in order to calculate the sexy bastards per capita. Iceland would probably win. This can also be attributed to the, Norwegian/ Celtic settlement in the Viking era, and the Danish colonization of Iceland in the 18th century. The Celtic influence in the Icelandic's is still present in there sense if humour in there over all bluntness, this can be seen in the grapevine, the English language newspaper which featured a section entitled "a guide that fucks you up" featuring a list of all the happy hours in the city. The Celtic sense of humour can also be seen through many other publications where they openly make fun of themselves in comparison to their other Nordic neighbours, revealing an inferiority complex .
So if you've ever wander what happens when you get a volcanic island,in the North Atlantic which is currently the youngest earth mass on the planet, is covered in a glacier that then melts, gets occupied by broke ass Viking farmers looking for land. That then drag Celtic slaves kicking and screaming to work their land, that accidentally get rid of all the trees on the island, forcing them to depend on fish until Danes show up and start bossing them about....until the Nazis take over Denmark making it so they couldn't rule Iceland anymore. Resulting in independence just before World War Two ended. All of this in addition to constant wind, horses, 24/7 golf courses when, there is 24/7 sun, and 24/7 ski hills in winter, an abundance of fish and a distinct lack of people and an average temperature of 11 degrees, resulting on a dependency on the greenhouses.You would get something delightfully quirky like Iceland.
