Iceland is not part of the EU. It keeps its own currency, ISK, and has its own Icelandic language. The Icelandic language is made up of words of many letters. We gave up remembering the name of places fairly quickly.
As an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, Iceland has a very high cost of import and export. There are quite a few essentials that Iceland is largely self-sustaining: energy such as electricity and heating from its hydro and geothermal energy, basic animal-based foods, delicious tomatoes produced in in-door tomato farms. There is still a long list of imports. For example, its subarctic climate and short summer growing window makes it very challenging to farm large-scale grain crops, so it has to import 99% of the grain. Take the shy, furry and lovely Icelandic sheep, it is more economically viable to slaughter most of them than importing the grains to feed them during the winter months. While the Icelandic sheep can live up to 14 years, their typical lifecycle is far far shorter. The traditional lifecycle of Icelandic sheep consists of lambs being born indoors in May, roaming completely free on their own to graze on wild mountain vegetation all summer, and being rounded up for slaughter at their peak weight around September. Its life span has been shortened from 14 years to less than a year. It is brutal. At the same time, just because these Icelandic sheep do not feed on corn or grains, their meat tastes much more delicious than any other lamb that I have had everywhere else.
Iceland is also known for “it is not just cold but expensive”. Its gasoline is about 4 times of US gasoline rates. Restaurant dinners are easily well over $100 for 2. I wanted to ask Icelanders how they manage such a high cost of living, but it is not easy to meet the locals. With a population density of 4 people/km2 , Iceland has more tourists than locals. In comparison, New York has over 11,000 people/km2 and highly concentrated urban districts in Hong Kong easily exceed 40,000 people/km2. The majority of the tour guides and restaurant servers we ran into are from other countries such as Ireland, UK. While the majority of Icelanders speak English fluently, finding them on the street takes some luck. Finally we met some Icelanders in the Hlemmur food mall that locals also dine at. From the conversations with them, we learned that the education, including college education, is mostly free, the covered health plan is of high quality, and the housing is affordable (we also found our airbnb daily rate is compatible with many other European places). While dining out is expensive, the grocery markets and home cooking offer more affordable alternatives.
Parking fee is ~$8 USD (1000+ ISK) for every attraction, large or small. There is no escape. You will be charged a penalty if you don’t pay for it. Some public WCs have a turnstile and cost ~$3 USD (300 ISK). As much as this takes some getting used to, I find the underlying principle of “whoever uses it, pays for it” to be fair and efficient.
Long after the conversations with the locals, it keeps coming back in my mind that Iceland has a better way where the government covers the most essential aspects of life: health, housing and education. In doing so, it gives everyone a fairer chance to define their lives. I keep wondering when the US will do the same.
