ICELAND.- OK, -Now Lets Head on over to Iceland!, -That Arctic, Mid-Atlantic Land of Fire and Ice!

From the Canadian Wilds, as we Fly Past the Greenland Icecap once again, We Descend over the Angry North Atlantic thru some Half Foul or More of Weather, to Reykjavik's Keflavik Area Airport. This Weather Often Likes to Turn on a Dime, and It Does so, here on our Approach. This of course is Often a Turn Toward the Worst.

We Have Met Iceland in Her Southeast. -The Population Center of What Population There is! Thats Only a Quarter Million, in this Indiana Sized Island Country. (Iceland is Slightly Larger.) It Comes In at 39,699 Square Miles. It's one of the World's Reasonably Larger Islands. And a Quite Isolated One at that!

This Population is of Many a Fine Scandanavian Farmer and Fisherfolk!, -Direct Descendants of the Norse Vikings. Their Language is a Scandanavian one, -Icelandic. Which is Very Much the Old, Original, Norse. But Many Icelanders are also Quite Fluent in English as well, -This Shud usually be Little to No Problem. In Fact, our English is Related, to those Germanic and Scandanavian Languages. So it's Not Totally Foreign.

This Land is just Below the Arctic Circle. It's Northern Coast only Skirts It. Only One Small Northern Island, Grimsy, "Breaches It" a Bit. The Rest of Iceland Sits in an about 180 Mile North to South, and 300 Miles East to West, of a Squareish Oval, just South of It. Plus some Small Outlying Islands, of course. Now Thats still Pretty Darned Far North.

Though the Warm Gulf Stream just to it's South, Does Moderate the Climate some,- It Still gets Cold Enuf. And This Does Qualify as One of the World's Wild Places,-COLD! An Arctic and Antarctic Ocean and Continent it is Not. A Siberia, Canada, or Greenland it is Not. But a Pristine Wild Place, Arctic, Northern, and Cold, -It Definitely Is!

Though Possessing All that Goes with that, Iceland Additionally has Many Unique Characteristics All it's Own!

First of All it's a Large Island. In the Midst of a Cold, Polar Area of the World's Oceans.

Next, It's Very Volcanic! It's one of the World's Foremost such Volcanic Areas! Every Last Cubic Inch or Centimeter of it's Soil, was Formed via Volcanic Eruption or Lava Outflow. Were there No Volcanism there, There would be No Iceland! It's Area would just be More Cold, North Atlantic Water.

It Uniquely Sits Over Not just a Tectonic Plate Boundary Alone, (-Which it Does). And Not just Over one of the Earth's Deep and Rising Hot Spots Plumes Alone, (Which it also Does). But it Sits Over BOTH ! At One and the Same Time Both!

Its also been Thought by some, that some Distant Killer Asteroid, May just Happen to Have Struck Here!, -Setting Off or Accelerateing this Process! If so, -What a Place to Have Hit!

Even Without a Possible Asteroid Impact, The Other Two Coincident Factors, would be Enuff, to Bring Nearly 40,000 Square Miles of Mid-Oceanic Icelandic Land Mass, About! And it so Has.

Half of Iceland is also on the European Side of the Mid-Atlantic Rift, while the Other, Western Half, is on the North American Side. Where Iceland specifically Sits, upon such Undersea Rift, This Icelandic Rift Runs generally NE to SW, within the Middle of the Island Country. Iceland's literally being Ripped, Rifted, and Stretched, Along this Seam! New Volcanic Land, Continually Fills the Void, though! It's Not being Split into Two Islands as such. This is How Iceland Grows! This is How Iceland's Gotten as Big as it's Got!

Being as Volcanic as They Come!

And Being in the Arctic North Atlantic as She Is!

This is How this Icelandic Wild Place, is the Land of Fire and Ice!

It's Often been said, that both Iceland and Greenland have been Misnamed! And They Have! Like the Proverbial Blind Man Describing an Entire Elephant, by *Only* the One Tiny Spot he has Touched!, -Ice and Green Land's Too been Mis-Touched and Misnamed! Much of the Greenlandic Coast is Rock and Mountains, though it Turns to Towering Ice Not All that Far Inland! Some Parts of that Southern Coast even have Greenery! This is the "Greenlandic Elephant's Eye"!, that the Viking who Named it, -Saw and Touched. And Thus it's Description and Name. And Likewise Iceland Too!, Had First been Touched in a Quite Atypical, Unrepresentative, Spot. In a Far Northwestern Fiord, which Uncharacteristically Ices Up! The Gulf Stream Doesn't Reach there. The Viking who First Named Iceland, -Saw Only That! And Thus his Misnomer! Greenland is the One that shud Really be called Iceland! And Iceland is the One that shud Really be called Greenland! Though Much of the Icelandic Landscape, is Bare Brown or Otherwise Dark, Volcanic Ground. But She has More than a Little Green as well! But What has Happened Happened, and now we are Stuck with this Misnomered Convention! So Long as we now Really Know Whats What! Thats the Important Thing.

And Iceland Too, has a Few Sizeable Icecaps! Making Up perhaps 10 % of the Country, especially in it's Southeast! It's Not All entirely Ice Free! They get Thousands of Feet Thick too!

Just to Iceland's North, is the Frigid Arctic Ocean Ice Pack, and Floes! As well as Much of the Eastern Greenlandic Coastal Waters. The Ancient Greek Voyage of Pythias and Crew, Came Up Here, Reporting Such to a Tee! In What they came to Know as Ultima Thule!

So Iceland is an Almost Unique combination of Fire and Ice!, in our World. A Few Other small locales also Share something of This. Norway's Arctic Volcanic Island of Jan Mayen, a Good Ways Northeast of Iceland, and the McMurdo / Mt. Erebus Area of Antarctica, being Two of the Few. They're Small and Local. While Iceland is as Big as one of our Typical States.

It's also such a Perfectly Clear, Clean, Great Outdoors Locale! -Land, Sea, and Air! Though European, It's Set Well Apart from Europe and All of it's Development and Buildup, (And America's too, for that Matter.), in It's Great Isolated, Wild, Free, and Natural !, of a Mid-Atlantic Location. Little to No Pollutants to speak of are Generated here.

I Like and Love Iceland and it's Unique, Wild, Untouched, Volcanic Outdoors so! It is One of my More Favorite Areas of the World, Wild or Otherwise!

Most of What Small Population as Does exist, is Peppered Every Here and There around the Coast. More like Sprinkled! Far Far Fewer, in the Inland Interior! Like Hardly Anybody. Though you may See Icelanders Touring their Own Country there. Much of the Interior is Uninhabited, and Uninhabitable!

This Area Isn't so Uninhabited for No Reason! It's Ruff there!, for Life and Survival! And Not Only from the Cold or Oft Times Lack of Vegetation. Nor the Huge Glaciers which Overlie Part of it. Or Quakes or Volcanic Activity. It's also in the Often Bare, Rocky Ground! It's also in some of that, being Talus or Other sorts of Loose Scree. Footing's of course Bad to Non-Existant on such Spots! There's of course the Capricious to Bad Weather too!

But a Part of this may also be Due to, Settler's Natural Tendancy to Settle on the More Life Conducive Coasts. Or perhaps Up River, to some Extent.

For That is Where the Fish Are!, to say the Least. Iceland is such a Fishing Country and Culture! It's Surrounding Waters are one of the World's Great Fishing Grounds! Iceland is to Fish and Fishing!, as Coffee and Carnival are to Brasil!

Geysers and Geothermal Hot Springs Abound! Icelanders have Very Shrewdly and Skillfully Tapped into this!, for Very Much of their Water and Home Heating Needs!

Occassionally, Entirely New Volcanic Islands Spring from it's Nearby Sea! The Latest in Ages of Volcanic Additions, to the Icelandic Landmass as a Whole! Surtsey Sprang Forth in 1963. As Did Heimeay in 1973.

So How's It for Trying to Make It and Survive here?!

Ruff Enuf, but Far from Entirely or Prohibitively Too Bad!

You're on a Rather Sizeable Island, with both the Advantages and Disadvantages of Such.

You've got Few, but Friendly, Helpful, and Down to Earth People! Well Familiar with Iceland and Her Ways!

You've got Birdlife, Beachlife, and a Fish and Seafood Rich Waters and Coast! Fish Rich Rivers too!

Plenty of Fresh Water! At Least Much Food, Depending on where you're At.

Maybe a Satisfactory to Good Amount of Fire and Shelter Materials, Depending also on where you're At. But Precious Little of This will be in the Form of Trees, Shrubs, or Other typical Woody Plant Materials! Iceland's Not a Land of Forests! It is Sufficiently Above the Latitudinal "Treeline", to be Predominantly Timberless so! Trees and Forest only Exist in the Occassional Sheltered Pockets. And even Parts of That have been Cut Down, since the Vikings Arrived.

Shelter Materials will consist Largely of Soil, Rocks, Sod, Thatch, and Grass! Building Such at least partially Underground, would also Help.

Game Exists, but it's Smaller and I'd say Less Plentiful, than in say Canada.

Icelandic Survival would Sum Up to, a Combination of Cold / Arctic, Grassland, Sea and Coast, and Rocky Desert Survival. With some Mountain Elements, and of course Volcano, Earthquake, and Other Disaster Awareness, thrown in as well. Hunting, Fishing, and Trapping Skills and Equipment, would be a Great Addition too!

If in the North or Interior, Follow Southward, Eastward, or Westward Flowing Rivers, to the Coast. Beware of Rocks, Rapids, and Such, All Along. If in the North, you may also even Want to Head for it's Coast. It Beats being in the Interior! Strike Out for Iceland's Second Largest "City", -Akureyri, up here on the Northern Coast. (But Well Inleted.) Being a State Sized Island, you Don't have all that Terribly Far to go, to Get to a Coast. Some Parts of the Coast are More Hospitable / Inhospitable, than Others. If in a Less Hospitable one, Work your Way Up or Down, to a More Hospitable one. Most Ideally, You'd Want to Work your Way South or West, to the Reykjavik / Keflavik Area!

Iceland is a Progressive, First World, Developed Nation. As a Part of This, They Have Good Search and Rescue, Game Warden, and Etc. of Activities / Capability, in Place.

There is also I Believe, an at least Reasonably Good Island Ringing Road or "Highway". Make Good Use of that!, if you can.

Many of the Same Survival Techniques mentioned for Other Earth Wildest Places COLD, Apply here as well. As also mentioned though, Notable Icelandic Differences also Do exist.

Again, All in All, -It's Not an Alaska or Siberia! But it's Not the Cool Wet Washington, Oregon, or British Colombia Coast either! It Presents Quite an Across the Board Survival Challenge!

This is One of the World's Greatest Wild Places COLD and Arctic!, and This is How you're Gonna Have to very much Survive here! In Iceland's Fire and Ice! [color:"black"] [/color] [email]ScottRezaLogan[/email]