The angle on this article is a bit strange. They talk about Icelanders as the real Vikings because they where settled by 100% Vikings. How are other Scandinavian countries less Viking? They where also 100% settled by Vikings at the same time because that is where the Vikings came from.

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.