Iceland History and Folklore

Iceland is visually beautiful but underneath that beauty is a dark and strange history. The stories of Iceland are very tragic and the folklore reflects the hard life of Icelanders. The stories and traditions of Iceland are almost as interesting as the natural wonders.

Our education on Iceland began on the ride from the airport to the blue lagoon. The driver was telling us how beer wasn't legal in Iceland until 1989. You could drink wine, vodka or most other sprints but Iceland didn't want to legalize beer because they thought cause a lot of drinking problems. I'm not sure the logic of its OK to get drunk off your ass on vodka but beer is evil. Our driver remembers the day beer was legalized because she was in 8th grade at the time and remember all her teachers were "sick" for a couple of days after beer was legalized.

Iceland was founded by people from Norway who were looking for some land to farm since it wasn't easy to own any good land in Norway. Its hard for me to imagine that people saw the rocky shore of Iceland with its poor soil and short growing season and said this will be a good place to live. You can't grow any good vegetables in Iceland because the weather isn't warm enough. The only thing that really grows is grass. The Norwegians did bring over sheep and horses which do well in Iceland because of the abundance of grass. The winters are also not overlay harsh. In the lowland it doesn't get much below freezing most days. There is also a lot of good fishing around the island so if you like lamb and fish you can scratch out a living. Of course since you can't grow any vegetables or fruit you have no source of vitamin C so your going to have scurvy. The only way to combat that was to eat some seaweed and I'm not talking the good tasting stuff that is wrapped around sushi.

Although the fishing is good, this is the North Atlantic so the seas are rough and unpredictable. The chances that your boat is going to survive the sudden storm is not really good. If you are lucky you will be able to run the boat aground and only half the people will die of drowning and exposure.

This is why for most of Iceland's history the women far out numbered the men. As our driver told us men didn't really have to be well groomed to get women until about 30 years ago when fishing got a lot safer because of better boats and better safety gear.

Assuming you didn't die because of malnutrition or being killed at sea there was still the fact that about every 5 years some major eruption occurs in Iceland. The volcanoes in Iceland have many different ways to kill you. There is the normal volcanic explosion that rains lava and rock down on your village and you die. Then there is the volcanic fissure when opens up and hot lava rolls through your village. You can easily run away from the lava but your farm is now a wasteland where nothing will grow for 30 years and your house and all your food stores have been wiped away so you have no way to feed yourself and you die. Then there is the volcanic eruption that happens in volcano far enough away that you are not affected by lava or ash of the explosion but because the volcano was under a glacier the eruption melts the glacier so fast that a massive wall of water flows down to the sea and right through your village and you and ever thing you own gets washed out to sea and you die.

On the tour our guide told us many stories about all of the different the volcano eruptions that occurred in Iceland and the story always ended with "and many people died". The worst eruption that occurred was in Iceland was the eruption of Laki in 1783. This was a volcanic fissure which erupted for 8 months spewing out 42 billion tons of lava and 120,000,000 tons of sulfur dioxide. Not only did this kill 80% of the sheep and 50% of the horses in Iceland but 25% of the population died not only from the sulfur dioxide but also from famine since the eruption poisoned the land for may years. This eruption was so large that it affected the entire world. The amount of sulfur dioxide was large enough to cause clouds of it to cover parts of Europe where many people died or were sicken. The clouds of the eruption were so large and lasted so long that they caused major weather changes in most of the world. Causing either very hot or very cold weather with lots of violent storms. It is estimated that a total of almost 6 million people died as a direct or indirect result of this eruption.

This violent Iceland history comes with a equally dark mythology and folklore. Trolls are a big part of the Icelandic folklore. According to the myths, trolls can only come out in the dark and if they are caught in the light they turn to stone. As we drove around Iceland our guide would point our various rock formations and tell us some story about some trolls that didn't make it back to their cave before dark like this one of some trolls returning in their sailboat and getting caught in the sun just before getting the their cave on the beach.(I guess I can kinda see it)

One of the darker stories about trolls is centered around Christmas. Iceland doesn't really have Santa Claus. They instead have Gryla and the Yule Lads

Gryla is a giantess who likes to eat misbehaved children. She is on her third husband. The first two she ate. She walks around collecting bad children then cooks them in a large pot. She has 13 children of her own, called the yule lads who steal things or harass you. You can look up the Yule Lads for details. One of the yule lads visits you for each of the 13 days before Christmas. So if you are a kid and still alive by Christmas its a good year.  It makes getting coal in your stocking seem kinda lame.

Modern life in Iceland is much better than it use to be. Many of the hardships of living in Iceland have be overcome by improved technology. Fishing is now a very safe way to make a living. The people in Iceland have learned how to manage the land to be as self sufficient as they can. They have produced an abundance of lamb, beef and fish which they trade for other food and resources they need. They are also producing fruits and vegetables in green houses powered by geothermal heat.

In fact 95% of all power and heat for Iceland comes from geothermal power plants which tap the deadly steam and hot water that is bubbling below the surface. The other electricity is produced through hydroelectric dams. This make Iceland a very clean place with cheap power. The typical power bill per house is $20-$30 a month. Its even better when you realize that houses don't need any furnace or hot water heaters. Hot water is piped directly from the power plant to the house where it flows directly to the shower for hot water and directly through the radiators to heat the house. The left over hot water flows under the driveway to clear the snow then the water flow out of the house and eventually into the sea. So each house has a hot water line,a cold water line and and electrical line coming into it and that's it. 

There is still the threat of volcanic eruptions but they have early warning systems in place so most people will be able to get to safety before their house is swept away by lava or flooding. That doesn't mean a major catastrophe can't happen. As recent a 2010 there was a major eruption that stopped air traffic for months and caused ash to rain down on most of the island...but they weather it and there was no major lost of life.

The coast of living is high in Iceland because a lot of things have be imported but the standard of living is good and they have a good health care and social services. If you don't mind long dark winters or the threat of volcanic eruptions its probably not a bad place to live.