Culture

The culture of Iceland is rich and varied as well as being known for its literary heritage which stems from authors from the 12th to 14th centuries. Other Icelandic traditional arts include weaving, silver crafting and wood carving. The Reykjavik area has several professional theatres, a symphony orchestra, an opera and a large amount of art galleries, bookstores, cinemas and museums. Iceland's literacy rate is among the highest in the world, and a love of literature, art, chess and other intellectual pursuits is widespread.

Attitudes and Customs

An important key to understanding Icelanders and their culture (and which differentiates them from many contemporary Nordic peoples) is the high importance they place on the traits of independence and self-reliance. Icelanders are proud of their Viking heritage and Icelandic language. Modern Icelandic remains close to the Old Norse spoken in the Viking Age.

Icelandic society and culture has a high degree of gender equality, with many women in leadership positions in government and business. Iceland also has a highly progressive gay rights legislation, with couples having been able to register civil unions since 1996, and adopt since 2006. Women retain their names after marriage, since Icelanders generally do not use surnames but patronyms or (in certain cases) matronyms.

Iceland also has the most extensive and progressive child protection law. The new Children's Act, passed in March, 2003, and effective as of November 1, 2003, not only places Iceland on the list of twenty-two nations that have outlawed spanking, the act also outlaws verbal and emotional abuse and makes child protection a priority. Physical or mental violence is punishable by imprisonment and/or fine, and there is no legal defence.

In 2006, Iceland was ranked as the fourth happiest nation in the world by an independent scientific study. The inhabitants of Iceland take care to preserve their traditions and language. For example, the word for computer (an introduced object) is tolva which combines the ancient terms for number and seer.

Architecture

Icelandic architecture draws from Scandinavian influences and, traditionally, was influenced by the lack of native trees on the island. As a result, grass- and turf-covered houses were developed. The original grasshouses constructed by the original settlers of Iceland were based on Viking longhouses.

Cuisine

Iceland offers wide varieties of traditional cuisine. Thorramatur (food of the thorri) is the Icelandic national food. Nowadays thorramatur is mostly eaten during the ancient Nordic month of thorri, in January and February, as a tribute to old culture. Thorramatur consists of many different types of food. These are mostly offal dishes like pickled ram's testicles (hrutspungar), singed sheep heads, singed sheep head jam, blood pudding, liver sausage (similar to Scottish haggis) and dried fish (often cod or haddock) with butter.

Much of the cuisine centres around Iceland's fishing industry. Traditional dishes include hakarl (putrefied shark), graflax (salmon marinated in salt and dill), hangikjot (smoked lamb), and slatur (sausages made from sheep entrails). A popular food is skyr made of cultured skim milk, in the summer time it may be served with bilberries as a dessert. Brennivin is an Icelandic liquor made from potatoes and caraway.

Leisure

Though changing in the past years, Icelanders remain a very healthy nation. Children and teenagers participate in various types of leisure activities. Popular sports today are mainly soccer, athletics and basketball. Sports such as golf, tennis, swimming, chess and horseback riding on Icelandic horses are also popular.

Chess is a popular type of recreation favoured by the Icelanders Viking ancestors. The country's chess clubs have created many chess grandmasters including Fridrik Ólafsson, Johann Hjartarson, Margeir Pétursson, and Jon Arnason.

Glima is a form of wrestling that is still played in Iceland, thought to have originated with the Vikings. Golf is an especially common sport, with about 1/8 of the nation playing it . Team handball is often referred to as a national sport, Iceland's team is one of the top ranked teams in the world, and Icelandic women are surprisingly good at football compared to the size of the country, the national team ranked the eighteenth best by FIFA.

Ice and rock climbing are a favourite among many Icelanders, for example to climb the top of the 4,167-foot (1,270 metre) Thumall peak in Skaftafell National Park is a challenge for many adventurous climbers, but mountain climbing is considered to be more suitable for the general public and is a very common type of leisure activity. Hvita, among many other of the Icelandic glacial rivers, attracts kayakers and river rafters worldwide.

Literature

Iceland has produced many great authors including Halldor Laxness, Gudmundur Kamban, Tomas Gudmundsson, David Stefansson, Jon Thoroddsen, Gudmundur G. Hagalin, Thorbergur Thordarson and Johannes ur Kotlum.

Iceland's best-known classical works of literature are the Icelanders' sagas, prose epics set in Iceland's age of settlement. The most famous of these include Njals saga, about an epic blood feud, and Graenlendinga saga and Eiriks saga, describing the discovery and settlement of Greenland and Vinland (modern Newfoundland).

W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice wrote Letters From Iceland (1937) to describe their travels through that country.

Music

Icelandic music is related to Nordic music forms, and includes vibrant folk and pop traditions, including medieval music group Voces Thules, alternative rock band The Sugarcubes, singers Bjork and Emiliana Torrini; and Sigur Ros. The only folk band whose recordings are available abroad is Islandica.

The national anthem of Iceland is "Lofsongur", written by Matthias Jochumsson, with music by Sveinbjorn Sveinbjornsson . The song was written in 1874, when Iceland celebrated the one thousandth anniversary of settlement on the island. It was in the form of a hymn, first published under the title A Hymn in Commemoration of Iceland's Thousand Years.

Folk Music

Traditional Icelandic music is strongly religious in character. Hallgrimur Pétursson wrote numerous Protestant hymns in the 17th century. This music was further modernised in the 19th century, when Magnus Stephensen brought pipe organs, which were followed by harmoniums. Icelandic folk music was collected by the work of Bjarni Thorsteinsson from 1906 to 1909. Many of these songs were accompanied by traditional instruments such as the langspil and fidla. Epic alliterative and rhyming ballads called rimur are another vital tradition of Icelandic music.

Rimur are epic tales, usually a cappella, which can be traced back to the Viking Age Eddic poetry of the Skalds, using complex metaphors and cryptic rhymes and forms. Some of the most famous rimur were written from the 18th to the early 20th century, by poets like Hannes Bjarnason (1776-1838), Jon Sigurdsson (1853-1922) and Sigurdur Breidfjord (1798-1846). Rimur were, for a long time, officially banned by the Christian church, though they remained popular throughout the period. A modern revitalisation of the tradition began in 1929 with the formation of the organisation Idunn.

Popular Music

Icelandic pop music as of today consists of a big group of bands, ranging from pop-rock groups such as Salin hans Jons mins, Á moti sol (Rockstar: Supernova Magni's band), Irafar, I Svortum Fotum, Quarashi, Bang Gang, Amiina, and Skitamorall, to solo ballad singers like Bubbi Morthens, Megas, Bjorgvin Halldorsson and Pall Rosinkranz, and all the way to reggae band Hjalmar and Bulgarian indie-folk band Storsveit Nix Noltes. The indie-scene is also very strong in Iceland, bands such as Mum, Sigur Ros and the solo artist Mugison are fairly well-known outside Iceland.

Easily the most famous Icelandic artist is eclectic singer and composer Bjork, who has received 13 Grammy nominations and sold over 15 million albums world wide including two platinum albums and one gold album in the United States.

Painting and Sculpture

The first professional secular painters appeared in Iceland in the 19th century. This group of artists included Johannes Sveinsson Kjarval who was famous for his paintings portraying village life in Iceland. Ásmundur Sveinsson, a 20th century sculptor, was also from Iceland. Silver working and its old traditions have been preserved.

Religion

Religion in Iceland was initially the Viking religion that believed in Norse mythology. Later the nation became half-Christian and then more fully Christian. This increasing Christianization culminated in the Pietism period when non-Christian entertainments were discouraged. At present the population is overwhelmingly, if nominally, Lutheran. However there are also Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Muslims and others. There are also folk beliefs concerning elves that do not rise to the level of religion, but have gained some note.