Today is bolludagur here in Niceland, or Cream Puff Day to all youze English speakers. [Actually bun or ball day would be more accurate, but it just doesn't have that same ring, does it?] This is the day when Nicelanders eat cream puffs in copious amounts - and not only cream puffs but also balls [...]

Some architects have a hell of a sense of humour. This is a genuine aerial shot of the Smaralind shopping mall in Reykjavik. It's probably also the largest phallic monument in the world!

Few places I have been to in Iceland have impressed me as much as the island of Drangey, which we visited this past summer. Drangey is the manifestation of several things quintessentially Icelandic: awe-inspiring nature, mysticism and a multitude of stories.
Earlier this summer I blogged about the outlaw Grettir Ásmundarson who is said to [...]

People from, you know, other countries, countries where they do proper family names and call each other Mr and Mrs and suchlike, are usually pretty aghast when they see our phone book.
The Icelandic phone book lists everyone by their first names. Then comes your last name, then your address, then your occupation [to set you [...]

I am delighted that as our World Blogging Challenge starts, Alda of the Iceland Weather Report is our blogger of the day.

One of the best-known folk songs in Iceland is Á Sprengisandi [On Sprengisandur] – a song that every man, woman and child in Iceland learns virtually in the womb. The lyrics tell of a man who is crossing Sprengisandur sands in the central highlands on a horse [in the old days, obviously] and who cannot [...]

I had a meeting in town today, and on the way back home I walked through the area known as skipstjórahverfið, or the ‘captain’s quarter’. About a century ago, sea captains made up Reykjavík’s elite - they were the people with influence, and they were the people with money. They built stately homes in the [...]

No, dear readers, the title is not a smug example of postmodern irony, it is a very real reference to the subject of this post. Which just goes to prove that, despite our obsession with new elections and revolutions and helvítis fokking fokk, we at the Weather Report have not forgotten our roots.
A reader contacted [...]

Thorvaldur Gylfason is one of Iceland’s most respected economists. He holds a PhD in economics from Princeton University and is currently Professor of Economics at the University of Iceland. He was an economist with the International Monetary Fund in Washington D.C. from 1976-1981 and is one of the editors of the European Economic Review. Since [...]

Have just returned from an incendiary citizen’s meeting in Háskólabíó.
It’s hard to convey to people the boiling cauldron of energy and ideas that is Icelandic society at this present time. I will go so far as to say that the force of what is happening now is like the movement that took place in the [...]