Visited Iceland once for three weeks in summer. Loved it. Such an unique country with a wonderful heritage. You have so many positive things going for you including your Christian beliefs. I hope you are able to stay independent with US as your allies. Would hate to see Iceland's unique character swallowed up by any other culture or country. One question? Why have you not made more use of the cheap energy sources? Perhaps that is a hidden strength that could help you be more economically independent and encourage investment. Also I would Like to thank the people of Iceland for their Iceland Crisis Response Unit. As small as you are, you are doing more to make the world better than large countries like France.
Thank you for kind words. It is surely not easy for a small nation of 300 thousand to preserve its culture and language, specially now that we are so thoroughly submerged in the Anglo-Saxon cultural sphere all around us and most of us speak English. But as long as the independence party is strong and true to its values, Iceland should keep its independence. But free trade agreement with the US f.e. could help us stay clear of the EU´s aims of subjugating us. The military presence also helped.
About the cheap energy sources, we have used it a lot, even to the point of it beeing a hot debate weather we should do it any more, as hydroelectric dams are spoiling previously untouched natural landscapes. We are mostly using it to attract aluminium smelters, we allready have two big ones, one under construction and plans for one or two more, although due to the political situation they are likely in my opinion to be scrapped, also because the other ones want to expand.
I once heard that if we did not have hot water running to our houses cheaply, the standard of living would be considerable less here, I think it was five times higher energy prices than now if we had to use other sources. I lived in the Vestfjords, wich had at least much higher electric bills, as there is not abundance of hot water there, due to it beeing an geologically older than the rest of the country.
I heard once a story about a man moving from the Vestfjords after having lived in a big individual house there he moved to an apartment building in Reykjavík. There he had to take on the responsibility of beeing the House Manager or head of the House Council or what it is called. When he got the electric bill for the whole building he paid it and thought he escaped well that month, not realising he was paying for the all building, not only his own apartment.
There are ideas beeing researched of bringing with deeper drilling hot water to towns in the West- and Eastfjords, where there hasn´t been much hot water. Some even claim that if drilled deep enough, and the proper technologie to control the pressure, hot water could be brought to the whole world from below ground.
We have at least started to export our current technology, now most recently to a City in China with hot water in its vicinity.