Reykjavík Grapevine - jan. 2023, Side 6

Breaking news: fewer young adults than
ever are living at home with their parents
… but also more young adults than ever
are living at home? How can that be? It
turns out both are true, depending on
which age ranges you zoom in on.
As Stundin reports, the percentage of
young people ages 18 to 24 who are still
living with their folks was at an all time
low of 55,5% in 2021 — that’s significantly
down from the high of 62,2% measured
by Statistics Iceland in 2016. However,
sometime in that five-year span, a not
insignificant proportion of those young
Icelanders realise they are lacking either
the life skills, gumption or the cold hard
cash (likely the latter) to make it on their
own two feet in the world and the stats
begin to tell another story.
You see, never before did more
Icelanders ages 25 to 29 live at home with
mamma and/or pabbi than in 2021, with
22,5% of them still sitting tight in the
family abode — which we are absolutely
certain their parents love just as much as
they do.
Just to be clear, we’re throwing these
figures out without a hint of judgement.
The housing market in Reykjavík is in
absolute shambles. Real estate is prohib-
itively costly and rentals are too few, too
far between and way, way too expensive.
It’s no wonder the figures show more
adults at home in the capital region than
in other parts of the country (where
property is slightly less unaffordable).
The average cost of a residential
property in Reykjavík is up 50% since
2020 and up 20% just since 2021. Adding
another barrier for young people to enter
the housing market is the fact that,
according to Statistics Iceland, some
53.000 dwellings are owned by just 5.000
individuals or legal entities. Give that a
moment of thought. That means 14,6%
of all housing in the entire country is
owned by people or entities who own
more than one home or apartment.
So how, pray tell, is a 24-year-old
middle-class Icelandic person meant to
move out when such a large percent-
age of the country’s housing stock is in
the hands of the wealthiest 10% of the
population, who, the data shows, are
most likely to own more property than
their primary residence? And how, in a
competitive market, is a first-time buyer
meant to muster up an offer as appealing
as those expertly playing Monopoly up
and down the streets of Reykjavík?
With great difficulty
I’m reminded of an out-of-touch
campaign run by one of the big banks a
few years ago highlighting the stories of
bright-eyed young people who success-
fully bought their first apartment —
huzzah! — only those young people had
their down payments topped up by the
generous bank of mom and dad. That’s
not a scenario that is a reality to a decent
proportion of young Icelanders. If we
had to venture a guess at who, exactly,
it’s not an option for, we’d ballpark it to
be around 22,5% of 25 to 29-year-olds.
New Housing Statistics Paint
A Grim Picture (Of Statistics)
The kids are alright. And also not.
WHAT THE NEWS!?
ASK AN EXPERT
Q : When Are The Northern Lights Strongest?
Words: Catherine Magnúsdóttir Photo: Art Bicnick
The magical beauty of the north-
ern lights draws a lot of people to
Iceland. In fact, a whole lot of peo-
ple plan their entire trips around
the forecasted activity. So when
are the Aurora Borealis at their
strongest? And what, if anything,
influences their activity? We went
to Marcel de Vries, a meteorolo-
gist at the Icelandic Met Office, for
answers.
“The northern lights are a result of
solar activity hitting the geomag-
netic field of the earth, which
guides the material being shot out
from the sun towards the poles of
the Earth. That’s the reason why
you can see them in polar areas
and not, for example, near the
equator,” Marcel explains.
Put simply, the surface of the
sun can be an unruly place, with
solar winds and explosions spitting
out particles in all directions at
very high speeds. If the direction
is Earth, then those solar parti-
cles enter the upper atmosphere
(meaning several hundred kilo-
metres from Earth’s surface) and
collide with the molecules there.
“The sun particles collide with
those molecules, creating en-
ergy, releasing it as light. So, for
example the green lights come
from (ionised) nitrogen atoms and
sometimes you have pinkish-red
lights, which are more from oxygen
atoms,” according to Marcel.
Things like altitude, particle energy
and light wavelength also factor
into the colours we see in the sky.
The amount of solar activity
also depends on the solar cycle —
the 11-year intervals at which the
sun’s magnetic field flip. That cycle
can be observed by monitoring
the rising and then falling activity
on the sun, mainly through occur-
rences of sunspots. On satellite
pictures they show up as dark
spots on the solar surface, with
more spots meaning more activity.
Marcel points out that sunspots
are relatively cool (in the tempera-
ture sense) regions of instability,
with explosions on the sun mostly
happening around them, spewing a
lot of material into space. Currently
the sun is on an upward curve of
activity, reaching its max in 2025
and promising a continued uptick in
northern lights in the meantime.
Even with increased solar activ-
ity, we’d advise against putting all
your hopes and dreams into epic
Aurora sightings if you’re visit-
ing Iceland for a finite amount of
time. The weather and a bunch of
other factors will also play a part
in whether or not the lights will be
visible on any given night.
“There are a lot of myths around
the northern lights,” Marcel points
out. “A lot of people say that it
needs to be very cold for northern
light activity and that’s not true
in a scientific sense, but it is in a
more practical way. In order to
see the northern lights, it needs to
be very clear, without any clouds,
and usually if you look at weather
patterns, the best chance to have
a cloudless sky, especially here in
the south-west, is when you have
a cold wind from the north. There
may also be a lot of northern lights
activity when it’s cloudy — you just
won’t see it.”
Words:
Cathrine Fulton
Photo:
Julia Stiles
6 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 1— 2023
Stay like
a local
[ 8 hotels, restaurants & spas
in the heart of Reykjavik ]