columbus wrote If anyone has been there, please share your experiences and tell me if it's as good as it seems.
I spent 6 weeks in Iceland in 1999 and had quite a blast. I'd be happy to answer any specific questions you may have.
Some neat/odd things about Iceland you might wish to know before going.
Reykjavik is pretty the island culturally. If you like urban areas there is only one really on the whole island, but it's heck a good one with great people, discotheques and great architecture. Additionally their culture is very unique as they have a unusual amount of medieval history preserved and their language is the least changed
Reykjavik is quad lingual for the most part, a good portion of the population speaks English, German, Danish and Icelandic.
There are nearly no trees on the island. Iceland has experienced severe soil erosion due to overgrazing by huge sheep population. So much that the island held a mass slaughter of sheep in 1970's in a last ditch effort to save their soil.
There is nearly no natural produce on the island. The soil is too basic to grow many vegetables. Most of what is available in stores is either imported or grown in greenhouses. Food is very expensive there. Some of the vegetarians I went with there really struggled when we went out of the city. There wasn't many places at all to get veggie only food , or even food with veggies outside of Reykjavik.
Iceland has a very high sales tax and a very unfavorable exchange rate for Americans. They can support high sales tax this apparently because energy is so cheap there (geothermal). Also tourism is central to their economy. They don't have many natural resources we take for granted (e.g. limestone, all their concrete has to be made of components dredged from the Atlantic floor)
The Icelandic gov't requires all citizens to submit their DNA to the gov't to prevent inbreeding problems . Their isolation over centuries has created a rather unique problem there re: inbreeding. Furthermore Scandinavian naming nomenclature can complicate this further.
Iceland is full of natural beauty, from amazing geysers (Icelandic word btw) to shield dome volcanoes to huge glaciers. Don't expect to go in the ocean though . You'll get hypothermia in under 5 minutes w/o a wetsuit. The water in the summer is about 2-3 degrees centigrade.
Iceland is constantly growing and shrinking. The interior of the island is very barren and raw (so much that the Apollo Astronauts trained there for moon walks) as this where most of the volcanism takes place. However Iceland like Hawaii is on a hotspot and the island can only support so much weight. So with every addition to the island some of the older more fertile coast lines slough into the ocean.
Finally last piece of advice, under no circumstance should you eat their version of Mexican food there or drink what they call syrmjólk. It will make you hate life.
All in all it's a really neat wacky place. You can do a lot there in a short of amount of time. It's definitely worth it if you can afford it (I can't anymore due to the horrid exchange rate).
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