Trip to the Parliment

On Wednesday and Thursday mornings we had lecture with Kristjan. He grew up in a small fishing town on the north shore of Iceland before moving around and finally ending up in Reykjavik. His lecture taught us more about Iceland and its political history about how the Vikings first settled here. They were really good bout keeping records on animal skin, which are still preserved today. There was a lack of timber, so they built their houses into the hillsides, pretty neat. He taught us about Thingvellir, the meeting location for the first parliament around the year 930. He also focused much of his lecture on the bank crash of 2008. All three banks in Iceland crashed within 3 days and there was a huge recession. He talks a lot about how it was before the crash versus after and it definitely had a big impact on all the Icelanders. Speaking of the banks, the money here is Icelandic krona which are counted like if we were to count cents instead of dollars (ex 5000 krona = $40) so the prices are very overwhelming.

            Iceland’s three main income is fisheries, tourism and geothermal/hydro power. There are definitely a lot of tourists in the city, tons of guesthouses and hostels and tour guide companies with huge buses and jeep for excursions out of the city. Iceland also has a very big fishing industry and I believe they were the first (and maybe only?) country to own the ocean in a 200 mile radius around the country for fishing. I look forward to eating a lot of fish on this trip!

            Iceland also has the purest water. The water comes straight from the ground and doesn’t go through much treatment at all so it tastes so pure. Apparently the hot and cold water come from different sources because there are so many natural hot springs in the country. So when running the hot water it smells like rotten eggs because of all the sulfur and when you switch to cold it becomes more fresh tasting.  

            After lecture on Wednesday we went on a tour of the parliament down in Reykjavik.

It is very very small, which makes sense considering the population of Iceland (300,000). The politics here is confusing (especially because I don’t follow politics even at home). They have a parliament which is 63 people and a speaker. Within the parliament is 9 ministers and the prime minister. However, they also have a president. In the past the president didn’t have much power in the sense of law making and regulations. The constitution was adopted when Iceland was under rule of the dutch king and has not changed much since. However, in the past few years the president has sent certain laws to referendum for the people to vote on. This caused a bit of a stir because the president has never done that before, but it doesn’t sound like a bad thing to me. 

 After parliament Kristjan took us to the coffee shop his wife runs and owns. Cute little coffee shops are very popular here and the coffee is amazing. It obviously is imported but the way they roast and prepare it is delicious. By the end of this trip i will most likely be addicted to coffee.