“Yet, for all the chaos Eyjafjallajökull has caused – not just in Iceland, but around the world – the people of Iceland are handling the situation remarkably well. Their emergency services team, which is made up entirely of volunteers, has been working around the clock on monitoring the eruption area, cleaning up farmland, and generally overseeing the safety of everyone involved, all with a sense of calmness and efficiency that’s startling given the circumstances.”
– Tammy Burns, Toronto Star, April 23, 2010
“Iceland’s financial system may have hit bottom, but it’s the world’s top-ranked country in environmental performance, getting virtually all of its power from renewable sources like geothermal energy.”
– Alexandra Zissu, writing about “Hot Spots Around the World,” for The New York Times Travel Magazine, Mar. 28, 2010
“The word up north these days is no longer Scandinavian, please, it’s Nordic. … In Reykjavik, the New Nordic trendsetter is the year-old Dill restaurant, located in the city’s landmark Nordic House, a cultural center with a distinctive purple wavy roof designed in the late 60s by Alvar Aalto. … The cool and cozy dining room, which sits only 30 amid white walls and pale wood, has since drawn hoorays from critics (it was Iceland’s restaurant of the year) and has earned a following of diners so impassioned they are given to dropping by with a gift of local herbs for the kitchen.”
– Barry Yourgrau, Table Hopping (New York Times blog), April 28, 2010
“Iceland is the cleanest country in the world. This may be hard to believe right now, what with the clouds of volcanic ash grounding flights across northern Europe, but according to researchers at Yale and Columbia universities, the Nordic island ranks first out of 163 countries on their Environmental Performance Index.”
– Christopher Helman, Forbes.com, April 21, 2010 http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/21/environment-cleanest-countries-business-iceland-cleanest-countries.html
“It seems that all the recent headlines about Iceland revolve around two things: their economic downturn and the lava-spewing volcano in the south. Sure, Iceland has been in the news over the past year because of its economic downturn. What I love about Icelanders is that they remain an optimistic, resilient people that adapt to their ever-changing climate, as they’ve done for centuries. (Boarded up shops now become venues for impromptu art exhibitions; and top chefs are following more of a locavore route, relying on locally-sourced ingredients.)”
- Jeanine Barone, Citylisten blog, April, 2010 http://blog.citylisten.com/2010/04/how-to-experience-reykjavik-like-a-native/
We had never heard the term “dirty lightning” before a small part of our country decided to blow itself up, but WOW, is it appropriate.