Comment by gardarh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gardarh | Hacker News Reader

I'm an Icelander and I quite like this article, it is one of the better written pieces I have seen on a cultural phenomenon I relate with - and it is no exaggeration, swimming pools are quite central to our culture. I have two young kids and I take them to an outdoors swimming pool nearly every week, also in the wintertime. Since I live in the capital area we have a few swimming pools to choose from and we rotate between them.

The title hints that this is the reason for the country's high score in happiness surveys such is this one: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/denmark-happi... . While I don't think it's that simple I can forgive the author, the title "A survey on Icelandic swimming pool culture" just doesn't have the same ring to it. Usually when I see these surveys the first question that pops up is "How do they measure that?" and it seems journalists generally are not to keen on pursuing that question.

My point is that isolating one thing from a culture and pinning that down as a "cause for happiness" seems a bit silly to me. But apart from that the article is pretty accurate.

I did car trip around Iceland few years ago in may, having most of inner part still unreachable due to metres of snow. Running tiny Chevrolet Spark in places like Western fjords on their dirt roads with meeting car overy 1-2 hour, good memories. Communal pools could be found in most small villages around, I recall a big one in Akureyri, second largest city (population 18,000). Definitely part of the culture and considering overall ridiculous prices there, pretty cheap.

But all pools are standard treated clean water although whole island has natural hot springs with bluish hot water coming straight form he ground all over it (it's basically like a big volcano all over). Very few places to enjoy those. I guess tourists want to have different experiences than those living there.

>second largest city (population 18,000)

Could a SMALL population increase bonding / a sense of belonging amongst countrymen thereby creating happiness?

I would definitely agree with that. In the US large parts of the country seem fairly alienated from each other. Not only do they seem to not be able to relate to each other but often times actively vilify. I have only lived at the West coast which largely seems at odds which some other parts of the country. Parts of the South come to mind immediately. The circumstances people live I seem so very different and thus are their needs and concerns. I rarely meet people who have social bonds to the South who fondly talk about them. I fact that might have never happened. For contrast on Iceland life also send to be very different if you live in Reykjavik rather than I a farm in the rural South East. However, even during my few visits I've heard people talk about how they will go to their cousins farm in spring scabs help with the lambs. I think that that kind of relationship is needed to keep political discussions from resulting in discontent if there is a conflict of interest. That's something that send took be lacking their larger the country is. Originally being from Germany I found my home country to be somewhere I the middle in this regard. There sometimes would be a little bit of conflict between regions but never even close to the almost dehumanizing things I hear in the US.

> I have only lived at the West coast which largely seems at odds which some other parts of the country. Parts of the South come to mind immediately. The circumstances people live I seem so very different and thus are their needs and concerns. I rarely meet people who have social bonds to the South who fondly talk about them. I fact that might have never happened.

I think that might be an artifact of living on the West coast: the Southerners you meet are likely to be those who hated the South, hated their neighbours, hated their families — and moved as far away as they could. Believe it or not, a lot of folks love the South: good, decent, kind people who take an interest in one another (of course, if one is neither good nor decent nor kind, that wouldn't be appreciated, and if one is private then one might find them nosy).

Everyone's different.

I love Iceland. I visited only once, but I might go back again in July. It would be great to connect to some HN Icelanders that live there, like you, and meet when/if I visit again. My details are in my HN profile, and/or you can simply google me to find ways to contact me, if you'd like to.

It felt like Icelanders made sitting in a hot tub a national sport, which was fine by me when I visited. My son and I walked over to Vesturbæjarlaug a few times and it was great.

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