Iceland and its medieval past

This whole story reads like this complete detachment of Iceland from everything else around it. But many Americans are entirely infatuated with Iceland and don’t look beyond its borders to put it in context.

Almost everything said about Icelanders here would apply to my native Norway. The attitudes, values etc are very similar. Same with the connection to nature.

Same with institutions. The Thing like the Icelanders had existed all over Scandinavia. It was not unique to Iceland. But Norway being much larger had multiple Thing. They still served as a sort of proto democracy. New Kings got voted in by election. Every free man and women could vote. Every offspring of the king, bastard or not was eligible to “run for office” so to speak.

What is unique to Iceland is how tightly knit society they are due to how few people they are and everybody knowing everybody.

And of course that they can read the original sagas but sagas also play an important role in Norway. I also learned about old Norse and read sagas in high school.

It is more difficult for us of course but we can still see it is a strongly related language. I can guess a lot of the text if I read an Icelandic newspaper.

There are many positive qualities in modern day Icelandic society, but there are also an equal amount of negative aspects that rarely make it into the international headlines. And most of the positive attention is often based on the delutional ideas Icelanders themselves have as being superior to others (direct lineages to vikings, fighting the elements for generations, having that special spark that can't possibly exist elsewhere on a planet of 7 billion people.....)

In my experience, Icelandic society has an ingrained sense of inferiority from its long history of being left behind as Europe and the US developed further ahead (and from being a tiny spec in the modern landscape). It wasn't until aid from the Marshall Plan hit the shores of this country that it was able to partially catch up to the rest of the western world (and not until some decades later). Iceland, for its part of being neutral in the war and not having any fighting happen within its borders, got the highest ratio of aid per capita than any other country.

This effect can be seen anytime Iceland, or anything related to the country, gets any positive publicity in the foreign press or by internationally recognized individuals as the local(s)/ news goes crazed reporting on it, even going so far as starting to calling whom ever gave the attention "friends of Iceland" (Íslandsvinur).

Icelandic people will also turn nauseatingly nationalistic when interacting with outsiders, falling over themselves trying to offload as much local history, lore and what they perceive as local wisdom on life and work in an attempt to be elevated in the eyes of those they are talking to, when most times what is said is not grounded in reality or fact.

I say this as a born and raised Icelander.