Iceland Comes To Me

My weekend social calendar is pretty booked.

Amidst all the exciting alcohol to be imbibed, and friends to be around, I am very excited to be meeting with my host sister from Iceland, Lilja.

There are a myriad of reasons for this, but the main focus for my excitement is because I haven't seen/spoken to an Icelander in almost 6 years (except for yesterday, when a family of tourists came through the shop,) let alone seen anyone I actually know.

My exchange student trip was an amazing one. If you don't already know, Iceland is one of the only countries in the world whose language is still basically the same after 2,000 or so years. This is a paramount fact that Icelanders the world over-- all 300,000 of them-- are proud of. This little fact about their language enables them to clearly understand what happened thousands of years ago, through the Viking Sagas (yes, the word saga means history, which is an Icelandic root word.) A basic understanding of their language, also regarded as one of the most difficult languages to learn, really helps to uncover what had happened many generations ago.

To go along with this, Icelanders are a very friendly people. My host family was amazing at best, and they took me in with open arms and included me in everything they did for the 10 months I was there.

Beyond that, I made many friends there, some of whom I am still in contact with today.

I was thrilled to be from a unique place like Alaska, and even more thrilled that I spent a year in a foreign country so unique as well. I was quickly known as "the guy from Alaska," and gained a lot of notoriety because Icelanders don't meet a lot of foreigners with brown skin. Needless to say, I loved being me.

A few more fun facts about Iceland:

1.) Iceland boasts to have some of the most beautiful women in the world. And speaking first-hand about this tidbit, I must claim that this is also fact. I never encountered a more savvy, more fun culture, chock-full of hotness. I fell in love almost every day there.

2.) The Blue Lagoon is one of the country's most prized tourist spots. It is said to have natural regenerative properties, due to the amounts of minerals and sulfur in the lagoon. It makes for a very relaxing, youthful spa experience.

3.) Icelanders are multi-lingual. Beside their primary language, Icelandic, most of the population speaks Danish, and English. You can choose to be educated in German, Spanish, Italian, Latin, and French, among other languages when you get to their equivalent of high school. The interesting twist to this is that the younger generation learn colloquial British English, yet absorbs American English culture through movies and television, which divides the English-speaking population between British and American accents.

This further enhances the fact that Icelanders speak in both British and American terms (i.e.: using "flat" for "apartment," and so on.) This also influences their tastes in pop culture-- many Icelanders favor British bands and American hip-hop artists simultaneously (how many people do you know love Franz Ferdinand, Blur, Wu-Tang Clan, and Tupac?)

4.) Icelanders love to travel, which means that a lot of them have been to both Europe and America, which, by my opinion, makes them a more worldly people. This is due to the fact that their capital, Reykjavik, is positioned equidistant from London and New York.

5.) The movie, Judge Dredd, was filmed in Iceland. My host dad was part of the production team that filmed the icy, mountainous scenes. Also, a little known film, The Viking Sagas, was also filmed there.

All of these facts were offset by the fact the bar scene also has a legal drinking age of 20, and to frequent the bars and clubs wasn't hard. They loooove to drink. And have lots of sex (there isn't much else to do up there in cold Scandinavia.) I was glad to be a part of it. Soooooo much fun!

I'm looking forward to seeing Lilja again. There's a lot of catching up to do.

Lilja is very dear to me. She helped make my foreign exchange experience a very good one. This was because I went to school with her, and she helped my transition getting integrated. My other host sister, Bjork (no, not the Bjork,) went to a different school and had a more demure personality (and a boyfriend to which they both rarely came out of the house.)

So I am very thrilled to be reuniting with Lilja, since it's been almost 10 years since I've seen her. I hope to be speaking a lot of Icelandic this weekend, which will be a refreshing highlight to an other-wise fun weekend.