Page 2 of the Icelandic phrase book in our Reykjavik apartment is a little off piste…

13 comments
  1. I mean, it is the introduction. I don’t know if I’d put Icelandic sex life as page-2 material in the “intro to Iceland” section, but it was bound to pop up somewhere.

  2. haha welll… it’s not false. I’ve got some weird looks when I explain the number of siblings I have. And then more weird looks when I explain that some are not full-siblings. Seems to be some sort of taboo in other countries or shameful. So maybe it’s early in the book to make sure you aren’t flabbergasted by the promiscuity and the endless ungodliness that the Icelandic women and men allow themselves.

  3. Don’t take these books too seriously. I, as an Icelander, have occasionally opened them and in many cases they are laden with stereotypes and catered for tourists. Many things on this page are true. But, it’s the fact of how big of a deal is made of the sexuality and promiscuousness of Icelander that bothers me. These books are kind of weird and pervasive and yucky.

  4. Yeah this is true and common. Imho a very natural thing. On page 2 of a phrase book, it’s quite a strange thing to mention tho?

  5. Yes, being a boomer, living first in Iceland and then in America but having grown up to adulthood in Iceland, moving back to the US in my early twenties was quite a culture shock. Attitudes towards nudity, sex and body positivity are quite different between the countries. I remember back in the day when the 3 hot spring tanks in Öskjuhlíð didn’t have a restaurant on top of it, but had an overflow brook of hot/warm water running down to the ocean with pools scattered in between. It was a popular place in the summertime after the nightclubs let out at 3am and there would be an endless line of taxis where people in different stages of intoxication would get dropped off, stripped down and skinny dipped in the pools of hot water, natural hot tubs, if you will. At 3 am in summer it was quite daylight out but nobody cared, it was fantastic and nobody was rude or creepy because that kind of behavior wouldn’t be tolerated. Good times!

  6. The big thing missing from this page: consent. It’s all about consent.

    I’m fine with the stereotype though as there’s so many places in the world where tradition trumps people.

  7. Icelandic people are sexually/ethnically fetishized and this just panders to tourists who like those stereotypes.

  8. Vakna þunnur og fá sér sígó, símtal eftir 8 mánuði að það er barn á leiðinni. Íslenski draumurinn.

  9. I would say this shows more about the interests of the author than what Iceland is about.

    A very strange, misleading way of introducing a nation.

  10. Yeah my SO is Icelandic and she has told me the distaster that is Icelandic society these days. Divorces left right and centre.

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