Quirky Iceland

There were so many things we saw in Iceland that defy classification.  Here are a few of them:

Fishing drove most of Iceland's economy for centuries.  Back before half the population moved to Reykjavik, people lives in very small villages along the coast and fished for a living...in boats like these.

Imagine how crazy you had to be to brave the North Atlantic storms in fall and winter in boats this small!



Now, big companies have driven the small, independent fishermen out of business.

Icelanders do know how to cook fish.  The food that cannot be grown in local greenhouses is imported...making it all very expensive.

But the fish is plentiful, fresh, and delicious.

We ate fish in four different restaurants... everything from fish and chips (the best we've ever had) to the fanciest gourmet restaurant in Reykjavik.  Each meal was more outstanding than the one that preceded it.

And there are no McDonalds!

You can get puffin in some of the fancier Reykjavik restaurants, but these quirky-looking birds fit in with  Iceland's personality.

They pair well with Icelandic horses, which are small (about four feet talk) and have been in-bred for more than a thousand years.



To keep their stock pure, Icelandic horsemen have a rule:  you can take one of their horses off the island, but you can never bring them back.

Because there were so few trees around, fishermen and farmers usually lived in sod houses... just like Laura Ingalls Wilder
in Little House on the Prairie.

These houses were every bit as small on the inside as they look from the outside.

Perhaps because the weather is so gray and overcast (even by Seattle standards) much of the year, Icelanders are proud of the bright colors they paint their houses.

Weather jokes are often based on the fact that even though Reykjavik is 2,600 miles north of New York City, because the warm water of the Gulf Stream reaches Iceland, winter temperatures are historically warmer than New York's.

A running prank that's been going on the past two years has a mystery person place a little plastic soldier on the roof of a building or on top of a corner street sign.



It's a a pre-smartphone version of Pokemon Go.  Residents try to be early identifiers, determine why that figure was placed in that location, and then identify (so far without luck) who the mystery man is.









To prevent graffiti, the city of Reykjavik pays local artists to paint murals on building walls.

The more fanciful, the better.





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Below is a photo of one of the hottest controversies in Iceland...

About a decade ago, a consortium of Iceland's banks financed the construction of this convention center.  At the same time, the banks  invested heavily in U.S. sub-prime mortgages.  The banks went bust.  Construction of this building came to a halt.



The government of Iceland had to bail out the banks to keep the entire economy from collapsing.   Icelandic taxpayers footed the bill.  As part of the bail-out, construction resumed on this building...while the budgets for the national health system and public education were eviscerated.



As a final note...

Speaking of quirky...



Could it be that Roger has a bunch of Icelandic relatives?



That could explain a lot.