Hi guys!
I’m Kári and I’m here today relieve Craig of his blogging duties and teach you about my quaint little home-country, Iceland. The fact that astounds most foreigners is our extremely small population. There’s only 319.368 of us, which accounts for a about 0.005% of the world’s population. But Iceland is not a small country, physically. It’s bigger than South Korea and slightly smaller than Guatemala and Kentucky at 103,000 square kilometres or about 40,000 square miles. The Icelandic nation is of Germanic descent and we descend from Norwegian immigrants and their red-haired Irish slave girls who settled here around 874 AD. Icelanders are in fact 50% Norwegian, 50% Irish with most of the male DNA coming from Norway but the female DNA coming from Ireland and the British Isles. This relatively newly discovered Irish factor probably accounts for the great amount of writing which was done in Iceland in the past – much greater than that of Norway and the other Nordic nations. Out of these the Icelandic Sagas (saga means story or history in Icelandic) are probably the best known. And yes, the settlers called it Iceland because there are glaciers here. We did not switch names with Greenland to confuse the Nazis. And no Iceland is totally not green, it’s more like a muddy greyish-brownish colour.

My first name, Kári, might look somewhat scary, with that accent and all (just be glad my name isn’t Þormóður) so here’s a primer: The á is pronounced like ow, as in “owl”, the r is tapped or rolled depending on your mood and the i is like the i in… well… in. It’s not like the one in machine but slightly lower. For that vowel, we have í with an accent. But since I live in the States currently, I don’t torture people (or myself) by going through all that all the time so you can also just go ahead and call me Cary instead. It’s usually easier for all parties involved.
My last name is Helgason and it means “Helgi’s son” cause my father’s name is Helgi. That is also my brother’s last name. If I had a sister, she would be Helgadóttir which means “Helgi’s daughter”. My mother is Emilsdóttir because her father was Emil (incidentally my middle name too) and my father is Magnússon because his father’s name is Magnús. These are called patronymics and used to be used all over Europe (most of those English last-names inding in -sen and -son descend from this tradition) but we are the only nation to carry on doing it. In the past few years, matronymics have become more common, where the mother’s name is used, and a few people use both.
Our language is Icelandic, which has changed the least out of all the Nordic languages since the first millennium, so we can still read our old books since 1200 AD. It is a Germanic language like English and we have a lot of words in common like ’skip’ ship, ‘land’ land, ‘hár’ hair, ‘maður’ man and ‘meik-upp’ make-up (just kidding, that’s borrowed). Icelanders learn British English in schools and we watch loads of American TV and movies so our English becomes this weird mix of Patsy, Veronica Mars and Vigdís Finnbogadóttir (if you don’t know her, google her!). We also learn Danish, because Iceland used to be under the Danish crown until 1944 and people also learn either German, French or Spanish if they go to high school (and 80-90% of people do). And no, we don’t speak Portuguese, and no, we don’t speak Russian either.
For the better part of our great nation’s existence, we were very very poor. My ancestors used to live in small huts, called torfbæir (turf-huts, the singular is torfbær), dug into the ground, built out of rocks and turf:

Icelanders have never lived in igloos or snow-houses, just to clear that out. Don’t ever ask us either, cause we’ll probably lie and say that we did cause we think it’s so funny people actually think that and then we’ll laugh at you behind your back. But really, come to think of it, torfbæir are not much better.
Our housing situation starts to change in the 18th and 19th centuries and we start becoming slightly more civilised with every passing decade (or so we like to think) until we reached our high point in 2007, when we became the most developed nation in the world according to the United Nations HDI. Since then, everything has been downhill, our banking system collapsed, our currency collapsed and so did our dignity. But hey, fret not. We have a lesbian prime minister who is awesome, we still have Björk, Sigur Rós are still around, and we are not yet back to living in torfbæir. And the weather gets better every year, thanks to Global Warming. And yes, we are physically capable of feeling cold. But Iceland is actually not really that cold in the winter. New York City gets much colder. In the summer, it tends to be in the 59-69° F area (15-20° C).

We have lots of fish in the sea which accounts for a good part of our income. We sell it to various nations around us, including Spain, Britain and the States. A friend of mine found fresh Icelandic fish in Atlanta, Georgia, believe it or not. We also have lots of waterfalls which provide us with most of our energy in a completely non-polluting manner (though actually constructing the dams is a big issue here because it destroys a lot of land). Iceland is situated on the boundary between the North-American and Eurasian tectonic plates so we have volcanoes, earthquakes, hot springs and geysers (Geysir is our most famous geyser (it means ‘Spewer’) and that word you guys are borrowing from us, thank you very much). You may or may not have heard of the Blue Lagoon but that’s not a natural formation but a by-product of geothermal water processing (cause we use it to heat our houses). But it’s been made really nice and the silicon mud is good for your skin too.

Because we are so far up North, there is daylight most of the night from May to August and none at all throughout most of December to February. This is immensely freaky, even to me, who have lived in Iceland almost all my life. If you decide to take a visit during the summer, you might wanna bring along a sleeping mask and if you come in the winter, take some anti-depressants. Nah, just kidding. We don’t do that kind of stuff. We drink away our sorrows. But because the winter tends to be kind of gloomy, we have huge amounts of ghost stories. I might share them with you one of these days, but I think this is enough for now.
Wanna come visit? The flights are pretty cheap at the moment and because of our currency the króna’s collapse, the exchange rate is very favourable. For those that are into music, that seems to be among the few things we still have going for us and we have a really strong music scene, not just Björk and Sigur Rós. Maybe I’ll cover that later too!
So what do you think? Any questions? Comments? Stories to share? I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Sjáumst,
Kári Emil Helgason