I aim to please.
But a fascinating this happened tonight. I was out having a business-dinner with a french guy and afterwards we go to this kinda posh place to have a few beers and chat for a while. After some small-talk he leans forward and asks me:
So I look around and realise that we are pretty much the only guys in this place, crowded with beautiful blondes.
We skipped the business-talk after that.
Nashiitashi is better at explaining it than I am. Quite correct.
Okay, I’ll buy that. Hey! I’m American. 200 years is old to me.
Seriously, though, what was a typical Icelandic farmhouse like circa 1800?
Something like this - they never went out of style. Both my grandpas are born in houses like that - and my living one is just over 80.
The Dragon-heads got out of style in the 12-13th century and so did that way of clothing. Which is mainly what I was basing my estimate on 
I am still 
over here. Why would Iceland commemorate 9/11? Why would UK (except that UK lost many, many civilians that day who worked there).
So how many hours of daylight do you have right now? how many will you have at Christmas? In March? just curious.
Ok, those houses are cute as hell. Why can’t America have cute houses? The Swiss, the English, other Europeans have cute houses. For all I know, Asian countries do too. Not us–we have ugly as sin stuff. 
I thought it was a joke…?
I refer to my answer in post #211. Not wishing to upset any one in any way.
Now - sun in my drivers window when I drive to the office at 7,45 and down at 20:30. At Christmas (please don’t make me answer that, I get depressed)… 2-3 hours of dusk In March - pretty much same as now.
But in June/July - we get it all the time babe! When it’s the best, it’s only 2-3 hours of dusk. I like that 
Too quote Sunspace - you have geography, we’ve got history
And they’re cute, but really small and crappy. More fit for a hobbit than a normal person. I’m always hitting my head on the beams when I visit those houses (they only exist at museums these days) and I’m just 1,86 m (6,1").
Surprisingly, second only to the US, the UK lost the most people at WTC. I would have guessed Canada.
Do Icelanders still love their coffee? When I was there, it was difficult to buy a cup; the restaurants preferred to sell (smallish) pots instead. The stuff would keep you wired all afternoon and into the night.
It’s still like that, and that’s the way I like it
I’ve never gotten that mocha-latte-frappucino-cinnamon-non-fat-milk “coffee”.
Just give it to me black and strong
But hey - you having spent a while here out in Keflavik. How was it? I remember reading that the regularity of bar-fights dropped a lot in Keflavik after the base was closed (I assume was the primary reason beforehand, was young aggressive guys picking fights with foreigners hitting on “their” women)
:: starts looking up airfares to Iceland ::
Hmm. The icelandair.ca site is slightly broken* in Firefox 3.0.1 on OS X 10.5.4 on my “Late 2006” Intel MacBook Pro: the little window that pops up to select flight dates is too narrow for its content, and I can’t select the ‘later month’ arrow to find flights in, say, February**. Let’s see what Safari can do with it.
:: pause ::
It works in Safari 3.1.2 on my Mac.
Crud! They’re routing me through Boston! I don’t want to go through the States if I can help it. Too much hassle.
Hmm. Maybe the direct Toronto service is only during the summer? Let’s try July.
Ahh. Much better. Non-stop. $980 return (not bad considering fuel prices).
Now let’s see about a trip to the UK. I can [del]annoy the LonDopers[/del] drop in on my cousins. Hmm. $1326, including an outbound stopover in Reykjavik. Cool!
:: starts making plans ::
[sub]*Consider this an informnal bug report.
**From what you’ve said, you guys are warmer than we are in February… of course, that’s the time that my co-worker from Siberia complains about the cold. Obviously, she has never lived in Saskatchewan…[/sub]
Me, too. “If it’s not good enough to drink black, it’s not good enough to drink at all.”
To be honest, I dunno about any possible bar fights. I didn’t go to any bars or clubs much, on base or off. Kef was the only overseas station, and with the exception of one stateside station, I’d been to without a strip just outside the gate, “strip” meaning a line of tattoo shops, bars and (legal or not) brothels eager to clip us sailors of our money.
It was way above my head, but there was some friction about reducing the number of people (marrieds, mostly) living off base. Those who did so had “take-off privileges” – permission to buy food and gasoline on base and take it out the gate without paying duties on it. Without it, no GI could afford to live “on the economy.” The powers that be were building as fast as they could, blocks of housing. As each block came up, X families would move from off-base to on- and X take-off privileges would be taken off of the books. The goal was to have no one at all living off-base within a couple years (this was 1976).
There were about 3,000 Navy and Air Force personnel working at the base at that time. Doesn’t sound like much, even allowing another 1,500 or so dependents, but as someone remarked, imagine a force of 3,000,000 stationed in the US. The Icelandic government was worried about cultural contamination.
None of this was of any consequence to the guy or gal in the street. Everyone I bumped into was quite friendly.
Ok, you were there that long ago 
I guess things might have changed a bit since then.
A fun consequence of having the base there was that people who lived within it’t TV-range could watch American TV. This at a time (as previously mentioned) Icelandic TV was limited to one station and nothing on Thursdays and in July. This made the Keflavik-area quite popular to visit, to pop in at a friends for coffee and US TV
Would you know anything of the “black market” which was bound to be there - considering the “duty-free”-zone on the base? Grandpa used to work there as an electrician in the 50-60.s and he’s sometimes reminiscing of how they smuggled all sorts of (mostly booze and smokes, though) goods out
Okay, this is going to be a weird question, but what’s up with Bjork? (Sorry, no umlaut.) When I was younger, I used to think Iceland was populated by a nation of Eskimo-type people, based on the only Icelander I had ever seen: Bjork.
Are there other Icelanders who have her Asian-like features, or is she a strange outlier, and you really are all seven-foot blondes?
We come in all sizes and types. There’s one pic in post 214 and another of me in a Santa Suit earlier (I’m 6,4 with lightbrown hair).
But the tall-blond stereotype is there for a reason. We do have (%-wise) more blondes and tall people than most other countries, and you tend to notice them when you’re out and about (since they tend to look lovely).
The Björk-type, isn’t all that usual though, but it’s there. Don’t know enough about her heritage to trace her back to Eskimos, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a bit in her.
Some of the features that Björk exhibits run in my family. The slight epicanthic fold that she has? I’ve got it, and I got it from my mom, who appears to have gotten it from her mom. This random woman I googled with “Icelandic women” as the search term has them too. They’re common enough, but are pretty uncommon among other “white” ethnic groups that people get confused. It makes it even more confusing when we have dark hair and dark eyes; when I was small and tan, I got confused for being East Asian in one form or another. The tan skin (I turn “golden” with pink undertones), dark hair (I had almost black hair) and dark eyes confused just about everyone, so it wasn’t until I stopped hanging around in the sun so much that people would actually recognize me as possibly being of European ethnic origin.
Another thing Worm commented on was the height of Icelanders; to me, having grown up around a lot of Icelanders, 5’4" is short for a woman, and men under 6’ also tend to be on the short side. It’s just another typical feature of Icelandic people, so it seems “normal” to us.
You’re all beautiful. 
Hello!
Thanks! That explains it well. I had never heard of this before (having never met any Icelanders), though there’s at least one former poster on the boards who had the same epicanthic fold, but was not native or Asian.
blink
Under six feet = short? :eek:
Here, 5’10" (175 cm) is almost perfectly average for height in Canada (and by an odd coincidence I am that height). But there have been many times I’ve stood head-high above all the other people around me on the subway.
I’m almost 5’10" and live in a part of Central Florida where being this tall often gives people the reaction of “OMG, I’ve never seen a lady so tall before!” from some of the residents of the area. I don’t feel so self conscious, though, as I’m too busy going “OMG, is she even five feet tall?!?” at some of our shorter locals. I do, however, find it immensely funny when the shorter locals nearly keel over if they accidentally come thisclose to running into me, then look up as if they’ve just seen White Devil Incarnate. I’m not entirely sure why it’s funny, but I think it’s related to my tendency toward schadenfreude.
This, compounded with the fact that all my male relatives are at least two inches over six feet tall, and most of my close male companions when I was younger being comparably tall, makes me feel like most people who are significantly shorter than me are at least kinda short, and most men who are any bit under my height to definitely be short. At least I don’t have too much trouble seeing over crowds in the right areas.
This would make you pretty much average height among my female relatives This is also what leads me to defining all women shorter than that as short, which has gotten me some strange reactions from some people.
Yeah. Most of the guys I know are over 1,8 m (5"9) - so it’s a ditto an that too. We do, however, not have the Dutch beat. They’re even taller than us
I’m 5’7", can I still come? Ooh, and I’m blonde and blue eyed and look like Casper the ghost (google him).
Blondes with blue eyes are always welcome
(and if you can fly like Casper - you’re definitely welcome :D)
If it makes you feel better, nashiitashii, my sister is taller than I am.
Is it possible to visit an active volcano in Iceland? Is there a volcano observatory like in Hawai’i?
