Anyone looking for enlightenment about the politics here will have to seek that elsewhere. I’ve tried reading the local papers and watching the news but the language is incomprehensible. Though there is a nagging feeling that in some deep part of your brain you should be able to understand it.
Still class struggle there must be. How can you have banana plantations (or greenhouses) and smelters without it?
There is one horse for every three people in Iceland.
Reykjavík is a bit like Croydon without the racy glamour. Everything in it, and surrounding it, seems to have been built in the last thirty years. You could not guess that there has been a settlement on the site for a millennium. I’m told that the average wage is about £21 000 a year. It’s a wonder there hasn’t been a revolution if that’s true. I find myself swearing every time I do the mental arithmetic to work out the price of things in pounds. Partly this is because I’m not too hot at hard sums. More usually it’s because of the prices. I think I paid £18 last night for a lovingly micro waved fish stew made of potatoes and cod with a pint and a half.
Only 1.5% of Iceland’s farming land is cultivated.
Earlier today I went horse riding for the first time in ten years and the third time ever. My theory that watching a couple of westerns every week would compensate for a lack of practice was not entirely wrong, even if it wasn’t adequate preparation for the thigh muscles. This being an efficient Scandinavian type of place they help you get over that by taking you to the local open air swimming pool and geo-thermal hot tub. You sit immersed in very warm water while a freezing rain blows into your face. That I quite enjoyed but very few holiday experiences are improved by the arrival of a primary school class splashing water at each other and randomly shrieking.
Iceland is a wonderful place. Echo and the Bunnymen first gave me the hankering to visit when they had themselves photographed here on an album cover. The landscape is hard but gorgeous and you cannot imagine how pure the air is outside cities. Take out a mortgage and come soon.
You can’t graduate from school in Iceland without passing your swimming exam.
The horse in the photo is not a pony. It is an Icelandic Viking Warrior Stallion.
This has proved to be a very popular post. Here is a bit of a commentary from our Icelandic correspondent.
Kveðja, Sigvaldi
Liam redux 
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