As BBC Travel columnist found from his own experience, Iceland's culture, born of centuries of shared hardship and adversity, reminds us of how important and powerful resilience is.
In search of an answer to this question, I pestered everyone who was willing to talk to me, ate hákarl (fermented shark), drank without a break, and of course bathed in the Blue Lagoon – the magical geothermal spa that has become synonymous with bliss in Iceland.
Shortly after my departure, one of Iceland's largest banks collapsed, and the country's economy teetered on the brink of collapse, falling victim to the global financial crisis of 2008. The unemployment rate rose eightfold, and trust in various institutions – such as banks and parliament – plummeted.
I thought that universal happiness in Iceland was over. But I was wrong.
“The economic crisis had almost no impact on the sense of happiness,” says Dóra Guðmundsdóttir, a healthcare specialist and author of a large-scale study published in the international scientific journal Social Indicators Research, which is dedicated to quality-of-life indicators. Not only did overall happiness decline only slightly during the crisis, but 25% of the population reported becoming happier. What is going on?
“Many people had a very hard time, pensioners lost their savings. But when you live in a small country, all your acquaintances are nearby,” explained Karl Blöndal, editor of a newspaper from Reykjavík. “People who lost their jobs are not isolated from society; the risk of alienation is not as great as in larger countries.”
This is important to understand: happiness for Icelanders is largely a collective affair. Despite the many nationalities living in Reykjavík, Iceland in many ways resembles a small town. As Icelanders themselves say, people here are not afraid of falling into a black hole because there are no black holes. There is always someone nearby ready to catch the falling. As one American who moved to Iceland told me, if a car gets stuck in the snow, someone will definitely stop to help.
In fact, the level of trust in each other here is so high that no one is surprised to see six-year-old children walking to school in the winter twilight without adult supervision.
With typical Icelandic optimism, Blöndal even saw new opportunities in the financial crisis: “Now we can start with a clean slate. Who knows, maybe this is our chance to build an even more just and open society, where power is more evenly distributed, and the previous self-interests and economic blocs become a thing of the past.”
Apparently, this striving for an open, just society is the key to happiness for Icelanders. According to the latest United Nations World Happiness Report, happiness is evenly distributed in Iceland. This means that most Icelanders are happy to roughly the same degree, whereas in other countries – especially the Middle East and Latin America – there are huge differences in happiness levels. This is important because “new research shows that people are significantly happier if they live in a society where there is no inequality in happiness.” In other words, if our neighbors are feeling bad, we ourselves will not feel too good.
Icelanders seem to have intuitively grasped this truth. Moreover, centuries of deprivation and isolation have hardened this nation. Consider the mere winter twilight, volcanic eruptions, and inhospitable nature so alien to our world that in 1965, the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) chose Iceland as a training ground for the Apollo astronauts who were to land on the Moon.
Stubborn optimism reigns everywhere in Iceland. People in this country swim outdoors year-round; it is not customary to judge a neighbor for quitting a boring job or ending an unhappy relationship. This resilience is also reflected in the country's rich literary heritage, dating back to the ancient Viking sagas about heroism in adversity.
Today, more books per capita are published in Iceland than anywhere else in the world. Some psychologists believe that literature – like other cultural components – serves as a buffer in difficult times. Narrative allows one to express grief and thus alleviate it. Moreover, literature acts as a means of transmitting creative energy.
And Icelanders truly know how to appreciate the written word, which is reflected in a common saying: “Better barefoot than without a book.” If happy thoughts exist, then this is definitely one of them.