Iceland review - 2014, Page 6

4 ICELAND REVIEW
Iceland has changed more than any other european
country in the last one hundred years. When farmer
and former Minister of Culture and education Vilhjálmur
hjálmarsson was born in 1914 in Mjóifjörður in the east
fjords, see page 18. At that time 420 people lived in the
fjord. now, a hundred years later, the population is 24
and has halved in the last decade.
A hundred years ago, more than half of the population
of Iceland lived in turf houses. now none. It’s a pity,
they’re so beautiful, and not only part of our culture but
part of world heritage.
A few distinct features set the turf houses of Iceland
apart from those found in other countries. the
prevalence of walls made mainly from turf is one
feature, and the fact that the interior of the turf houses
was often a timber construction is another. the passage
farmhouse is also a unique design, where the passage
between houses is a separate, covered construction.
Iceland stands out in this respect, as the turf building
technique was used for all social classes and for all
types of buildings: homes, stables, stately residences,
churches, see page 26.
today, three out of four Icelanders live in the capital
region, which has a single turf house: the árbær turf
church.
one hundred years ago, there were hardly any
foreigners living in Reykjavík, with the exception of a
handful of high ranking Danes (Iceland was at that
time a Danish colony). today the capital is a vibrant
multicultural city, with residents from well over one
hundred nations, see page 20.
We don’t even need to go one hundred years back
to see some of the really big changes in Icelandic
society. Just 36 years ago, the front page of the daily
Dagur ran the big headline: Negri í Þistilfirði (‘Black
person in Þistilfjörður’). the news story was about a
32-year-old farmer from Ghana, who was learning
some tricks of the trade in sheep farming in the winter
of 1978, at the farm Gunnarsstaðir in langanesbyggð,
northeast Iceland.
langanesbyggð is the remotest municipality in
Iceland, with a population of 531, see page 72. today,
people of ten different nationalities live in the
community: Iceland, poland, thailand, estonia,
holland, the U.S., Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany and
Zimbabwe.
Páll Stefánsson
ps@icelandreview.com
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