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Comment by ytdytvhxgydvhh | Hacker News Reader

That was true a few decades ago. Demand for tourism jobs has outstripped supply (especially in summer months) so a good number of people have come to Iceland (some temporarily, some permanently) to work. Poles are the largest group, making up about 5% of the population of Iceland: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poles_in_Iceland

Anecdotally, on a recent trip I briefly felt like there were no Icelanders in Iceland - I had a British masseuse, a Finnish horse tour guide, and a Namibian scuba guide.

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Yeah Americans seem to have gotten the idea that nordic countries are completely homogenous for some reason. It's absurd how often I see them act like we can't compare our countries to the US because we apparently have no immigrants.

"Nordic countries" is an inappropriate generalization. The other ones are not islands.

People say this about both Sweden and Iceland and it's not true for either of them.

They aren't, but Scandinavia may as well be. The only land border is an icy, barely-populated taiga controlled by an extremely authoritarian, violence-happy enemy of the West. My bet is crossing that border is _significantly_ harder than the US-Mexico border

they do have a bridge to Denmark now, though.

>The only land border is an icy, barely-populated taiga controlled by an extremely authoritarian, violence-happy enemy of the West

Finland isn't that bad

In the US there are many ideas about how things work in Sweden without closely considering facts. This is often politically motivated regardless of political affiliation.

It's a mid 2000s internet trope that somewhat persists. Back when Ericsson and Nokia where cool the media would make an example of Sweden and Finland.

Every discussion would be a variation on:

- "I want $LIBERTARIAN_POLICY policy"

- "In Sweden, they have $SOCIALIST_POLICY and its better!"

- "That only works because it's small and homogeneous!"

That, or people would motte-and-bailey harder left-wing opinions behind the Sweden motte.

In most cases you have Icelanders running the tourism business, but they won't be fronting the business necessarily. That is where imported labour comes in.

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