In the onboard libraries of aircraft usually have safety briefings. In the case of Iceland, there were already a few such training tapes — from a short adaptation course for drivers to the rules for handling nature (and the corresponding fines). And why it is necessary to take with you both swimming trunks, and a fur coat, and wind protection. In general, it is better to dress in color, so the body is easier to find.
Every time like a new planet.
When we took off from Keflavik, one of the cones of the fence flew past the window because of the strong wind. The captain of the aircraft also noticed him and immediately turned to the passengers:
- Now we will start to take off. Will shake. Please shout down.
Yes, everything is in the spirit of Firefly.
When you go somewhere - fill in the sign where you are going, when you plan to return. And put it under the windshield of the car.
In Iceland, there is a special phone for drivers, where you can call and find out the condition of the roads - and the weather is the same for drivers. Because everything can suddenly change from the sun to the storm. Or vice versa. That is exactly what happened on arrival: an ice storm was blowing into the plane, and after the customs outside the window it was quite sunny. At the beginning of particularly interesting roads, the informers are with the weather - there is a chance to go, go, and then rest against the fact that the road is closed.
Hringvegurinn - Iceland Route # 1 around the island
Monument to the bridge. In November 1996, the glacier stream began to flood the valley. Of course, they assumed something similar, but the plan-fact did not agree two and a half times. Plus came the icebergs 10x10x20 meters (more than a thousand tons each). As a result, a 376-meter bridge with an unpronounceable name was swept away. The next bridge, 176 meters long, with a slightly less unpronounceable name, demolished the central section and perekorezhilo the rest.The speed limit on the highway is 90. And even at that speed it is very scary in some places. Everyone needs to be fastened, because Iceland’s most common problem is an inverted machine. There are still sudden bridges for one car - “use common sense”. Always headlights, never telephones, and most importantly - in no case can one go off the road to the side or at least something like moss. Moss is a national treasure, it grows back from scratch in 70 years. The life of one hmm ... clusters of moss is estimated from 500 to 3000 euros. Naturally, tents can be put only on specially designated places. If in Australia they protect you from breaking nature to meet you, then here is the opposite. Flora and fauna on land are almost safe. The weather, too, in general. But the Ministry of Tourism really wants to take money from you for viewing the waterfall. Here is your parking, sir.
The most frequent non-insured event is the flying door. You just have to open the car door to the wind. Her pull all the way and a little more, to significant dents near the loops.
Only 320 thousand people live on the island (it was now, in World War II, there were only 50 thousand, before that the population either grew or decreased again because of wars and epidemics). This is very little, given that the area of Iceland is twice the size of the Moscow region. Why a little - because it is the whole country. High-tech country, mind you. And from this there are several consequences.
Here the water is already about 40 degrees, and literally five meters higher - about 90 degrees. As the military say, this is a right angle.First, the genetic database accessible to all. You can’t just take and meet a girl in a bar and drag her home to show a collection of paintings - imbreeding may well turn out, if not incest. Therefore, you need to carefully find out her name and surname, check on the database, then continue acquaintance. When the Icelanders realized that they had the most requests to the database on Sunday morning, they thought hard. And they attended to the application. Now it keeps track of who you are approaching in the background and notifies you by vibration if the relationship is too close.
The second consequence is that much is automated. The work of a person is expensive, so everywhere or “Call if you need an employee here” (for example, some official), or an automatic machine, or some other process that will replace a person. For example, instead of a counter at a hotel, you will be sent by mail a door code and your room. The waitresses are beautiful, but for the bill you have to go to the counter. In the museums there are audio guides on a pile of languages (there are Russian, studio voices, obviously ordered from a translation agency). Taxi for 5 kilometers - 3 thousand rubles, but a passenger car in a day for rent - the same 3 thousand rubles.
On the road to Reykjavik, we somehow stood for about five minutes, until a smiling grandfather came out of the back of the car. What is strange, without mounting. He indicated with gestures that he needed to drive another meter forward to the stop lines and said, smiling, like Victor Bagrov:
- Sensor!
The third consequence - people once suffer from garbage. Everything that a live person participated in the manufacturing process is very expensive. Especially if you remember about the 5-hour working day (so that people do not go crazy with despair, which in the polar region often occurs because of snow 3 months in a row, for example, like last winter).
The original solution to the problem of the barn. We must take the cave and attach the entrance.The last trip was to the Philippines, there are many people there, and the wooden figure of a crocodile cost 10 rubles. Threw up to 7 rubles after a short bid. The figure of the same size (4-5 centimeters) will cost about 2 thousand rubles here. The local board game “Ragnarok” costs 3,000 rubles for a deck of cards, and we have a large Monopoly about the football championship (no one participated in production, just the difference in taxes and living standards) is only 5,000 in terms of our rubles.
Immigration growth is not very big.
As on all islands, everyone knows everyone here. Well, figuratively. The local newspaper "Glacier" is replete with stunning stories of local residents. In the eastern part of the country, cars in parking lots and the doors of houses are not locked, but in the western part (where there are many tourists) they have already learned. Kills - 1.3 per year. The police walk only with a baton. Several years ago, they shot the first violent, firing a rifle from the window at all in a row, and were very upset about this. Like, we were aiming at our feet, and we hit our heads, we are very sorry. The officer has stress, he will be treated for a year.
Here is the story.
Very peculiar sense of humor. For example, a punk museum is made in a former public toilet.
And this is a museum curator, by the way. Pretty typical metropolitan.Three exports: fish, sagas, and aluminum + data centers. With fish - these are amazing
stories of cod wars in retelling for children (carefully, mate). Sagi - well, Thor and Loki appeared in American culture for a reason. Only the original Loki was completely without a roof - for example, he turned into a mare, got pregnant from one noble horse (either Odin or an ice giant with the wrong TK on the wall) and gave birth to an eight-legged GMO horse. Oh, yes, and Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings was originally a gnome. In the saga. Then he became a little taller and older in the drafts of the book, and then he was generally divided into two characters - Thorin and, in fact, Gandalf. The Witcher, by the way, also in the first cycle, Sapkovsky was a grandfather, and then he looked younger and became keen on girls. But he is not from the sagas, he is a Slavic hero. Slavic hero can be.
Luminescence and data centers are one and the same export item. The fact is that there are geothermal sources in Iceland. They build geothermal generators on them and get a lot of electricity. As electricity consumption in the country jumps all the time, they lay them on the peaks. Suspending the generator is meaningless, so a lot of energy is generated, in fact, for heating the air. One of the most expensive parts of the process for producing aluminum from fossils is electricity. Here Icelanders buy fossils and figary finished product. The same with data centers - a lot of cheap electricity and a minimum of cooling problems.
The city is small, and there are many IT companies. These, by the way, even put up an official monument to their game on the embankment. Now the monument to Eve Online is a cultural object of Iceland.Water in the crane, by the way, is also geothermal most often. And in the heating. Cold - from the glaciers, it is clean and tasty. Hot - it's worse with her, she smells of g ... hydrogen sulfide. Like baths in a couple of cities, where the locals prefer to crash into the heating circuits for hot water, and boilers in return add odorants to the water. But the smell does not stick.
You can also see greenhouses in the place of geothermal sources. Or a stadium with green grass. Because why heat disappear, right? In Verargi, there is a restaurant with food on geothermal energy, where many people enjoy cooking bread on a geothermal steam.
Red domes - sources, smoke - thermal generators, pipes - communication. Reminds game Factorio.
Steam outlet.Now Iceland is under a wild tourist load. There used to be 400 thousand people a year, now the forecast is 2.2 million (according to the organization of guides of Reykjavik). Taking into account that many people go for aurora in the winter, and throughout this winter there was almost continuous snowfall (the roads are closed, instead of shining in the sky, horseradish) - tourism is pretty funny. That is, you can come to Reykjavik and spend the whole trip there without leaving the hotel and bar.
As long as tourists do not go wild, the attitude is very benevolent. And a lot of instructions for everything: how to use an Icelandic shower, what to take with you, a whole bunch of carefully prepared information, even there are settings and brief instructions for each popular camera, how best to remove the aurora.
Subject, quite a lot of talking about the mysterious Viking soulOh yeah, the weather. Since this is an island in the north, everything changes incredibly quickly. I used to see this in Glasgow. But if it’s just raining and dry, then all four seasons can pass in an hour. The sun is shining, right? But you rain! But he already hail! And now the snow! Wind! Now it's raining again! Sun! - and all of a sudden. I saw the hail swept over the next house, but did not hook ours. On the first day we drove through the snowy fields, which melted the next. It was very funny to soak in the hot natural pool at the geyser - under the snow. You can lock yourself in the car from the snow and wait for the summer.
The dominant form of island life after Chinese tourists is moss. He actually helps to make the ground, but over the past 5-8 million years, apparently, it is demolishing somewhere in the direction of lower-lying villages.
There are few trees, dwarf birch trees grow (here they have time to grow). Locals plant trees themselves - in the east there are plantations of Christmas trees planted with German precision and a passion for squares, and in the west there is just a bunch of trees near Reykjavik. This is a consequence of an ecological catastrophe - in the days of Erich Red, there was no such garbage; there was a large full-fledged forest in 25 percent of the island.
Birch trees
In ReykjavikInvasive species - sheep and pigs are to blame. They spoiled the soil, which, because of the ashes, didn’t feel very well. Now grazing is limited.
It seems like by the year 2100 it will be 12% of the island green again. Those who did not see the animals were local:
“I read a lot about squirrels, but when I saw it was just a miracle .
” But they almost all scratched the tip of a whale. There are many whales here.
On the southern side of the island between the mountains there is a small bay, where there is a local temperature inversion, and therefore ice does not melt there for a very long time.From the fauna of the local incredible, just insanely respect the ottoman. Sorry, deadlock bird, Puffin. Last year, our head of the publishing house played “pancakes” on the east coast: point by point for a jump. And then on the 4th jump out of the water, a surprised deadlock face suddenly appeared. The bird naturally received a stone on the head and went under the water. The local Icelander cursed for a long time, it seems - for the waste of meat.
They look like toys. This ottoman is about to pop into its hole, by the way.In the colony of dead ends, I was most worried about how things are with domestic cats. It turns out that there is no social responsibility, everyone understands what is possible and what is not. And the dead ends only in one place do not nest on the island. And in the south of the island in the colony there is a ridiculous tourist delivery system - on an old tractor right across the sea to the island.
With dead ends, everything is from postcards to shops. I ask the saleswoman of the store “In Puffin we trust” why they love them so much:
- Well, they come in the spring. They have colorful faces, they bloom with nature. And they are delicious.
I have an unconfirmed feeling that the dead ends are lucky because of the color. The fact is that here most of the time is gray and dull - snow or heavy rain. And you want color, so as not to climb on the wall of boredom. Therefore, a lot of graffiti, so the famous style of northern comfort (read - Ikea), so the colored birds are better than black and white.
Products - everything that can be obtained from a sheep, then - greenhouse things, then - import. Here is a typical Icelandic breakfast from the cafe "Loki":
Black bread (it is convenient to bake it right on the geothermal pipe), a sandwich with egg and herring, on the second - mashed potatoes and ground fish, in a cup - ice cream with some kind of grains and cream. Water from the glacier. With this charm and a high standard of living in stores, it is quite possible to buy a delay - they are following this rather strangely, it seems that the user himself should check. But returns without any questions and instant.
And the Icelanders now began to export views of nature. The nature here is really magical. Iceland has everything from different countries. Even a cave in a lava tube, where bats go crazy (no echo, stone rough and porous).
This thing is a sheep pen.
There is no problem with the language. Basic Icelandic (it is valued and protected, there is little left). At the age of 6, learning English as a second basic language is included. Then at 12 years old Danish. C 16 - French or Spanish, or another to choose from. That is, to adulthood - 4 languages. Language, by the way, is modified - for example, there is a new word tolvan (telva) - this is a computer. The word comes from two: "number" and "mining in the future." By the way, a week before the trip I started to learn the word “Eyyaflyadlyaokudl” - it was useful only once. There, my grandfather broke the language of "Welcome" and decided to show me how difficult it is in the analogies that are clear to him. I was waiting for this. In fact, the secret of Icelandic is simple: they pronounce all the place names, pronouncing the first syllable and crumpling the rest. Therefore, even incredibly long things when asked how to get to the library, for example, sound no longer than ordinary words.
Icelanders like to say that they have the oldest acting democracy. It was like this (I do not pretend to have complete historical accuracy): at first there were quite a lot of farms (and each farm is, in fact, a small fortress and a medieval village), it was necessary to convene a council of heads of households. Found a place where two tectonic plates disperse from each other, there is such a huge rift and divers scurry. They decided: “Oh, this is the very thing to execute someone spectacularly. Here we will judge! And where the court, there is a discussion of the laws. But with the latter something went wrong: it was necessary to learn from the experience.
They sent a farmer to the mainland to collect intelligence. He returned and spoke about the voices and the system of decisions with independent arbitrators, about the laws and the fact that almost everything can be foreseen. The fact that you can prescribe what to do and in what situations was an unexpected concept, but interesting. True, the writing was sucks, so they singled out special people who still remembered by heart and acted as moderators like the fictional pirate Tich. Then, with the development of writing, they became something of a modern lawyers. Since then, everything is decided. From the indicative - a pause on the rolling of any law in a couple of years.
The Internet is good, but unstable. Icelanders are trying to do everything on air, that is, on radio relay bridges. In case of heavy snowfall or rain, the connection may simply fall off. A sim card for 10 GB costs 2 thousand rubles (without a passport). Cellular coverage is almost one hundred percent. Even in some caves there are repeaters (but they work in the range of radios for rescuers and guides).
As in Australia, Icelanders try to make every kilometer of the island with an event. In addition to natural wonders like the rookery of seals, colonies of dead ends, various waterfalls (there are hundreds of them!) And all sorts of natural anomalies (thanks to the sliding tectonic plates) there are a lot of artifacts.
Experimental machine for the sale of sweets for 100 kilometers from the nearest houses - working in the wind and sun. Aircraft Museum, where the owner flies on exhibits. Wreck of "Douglas" in volcanic sand - and so on.
Here I tried to describe all this in a little more detail. And, of course, their ministry of tourism creates crazy stuff like this most difficult
karaoke song .
Iceland is strange.
A closer examination of the Icelandic genetic database (it was a study, not a hike in the bars!) Showed that girls have a lot of Celtic roots. The thing is: the Vikings sailed here at a time when the island was almost empty. Despite the fact that now the Vikings are almost noble heroes, then the reality was somehow harsher. Let me remind you: these guys earned their living by killing, robbing and raping. And not necessarily in such a sequence. And on the island were only Irish monks, from whom there was nothing to take. The Vikings came to rob, but they broke off very much - the monks were ascetics. As a result, they had to rob near Ireland (most of the women on the new research was of Celtic blood), and the Viking men themselves - for the most part Norway.
The irony is that these brave corsairs have become peasants themselves.
Because it was impossible to survive otherwise in Iceland. At the end of the study, I note that the taste of the ancient Vikings was quite nothing - it seems they didn’t steal ugly kegs. By the way, yes, the genetics database itself has been very rich in church books from the seventeenth century, inclusive, where all marriages and births were recorded. This is how the church helps science.
And finally, the biotechnology of the darker Middle Ages:
They took the ship of three ravens, sailed from Norway and walked for two weeks. Then released the ravens. One flew back to Norway - the Vikings conferred and decided that it turned out to be a ragged crow. The remaining two flew and returned. Severe men swam further, then released again. One rushed somewhere to the north-north-west. We took the azimuth and followed him, believing that he was unlikely to spend the night in the ocean.
So the first settlement was founded.