If Trump becomes president, I’m moving to Iceland.
I keep telling friends and family that very same thing. Why would I join the mass exodus to Canada? I don’t want to pull up stakes just to plant them right across the border from an outright sexist and racist bully.
And seriously, if enough people would elect a bully to the presidential pulpit, what else needs to be said about the state of America today? Never mind Al Qaeda, ISIS and others, who already despise us, the entire world will have proof that we are idiots.
But why would Iceland – a country 4,000 miles away from the middle of America – be my destination if Trump wins the election? After returning from a two-week camping and hiking trip across the Nordic island nation this past summer, here is what I know and love about Iceland:
1) The People – Icelanders respect each other and possess a civility and communal spirit. (NO ONE pees on public toilet seats and leaves it for the next person in line.)
2) The “thermal pool” culture – Iceland is a country seemingly free of spite and rancor. Maybe it stems from the habit of nearly everyone making a daily visit to a local thermal pool. It’s difficult to disparage your neighbors when you’re soaking, side by side, in hot water.
3) They read, A LOT – Iceland’s 330,000 people have an extremely high literacy rate, about 99 percent. While maybe it’s partly due to long dark winter days, reading and writing novels is all but a national pastime in Iceland.
Here are some other reasons why Iceland seems like the best option if the Trump mania continues. Thanks to an extremely wise and soulful Icelandic adventure guide, who not only led a group of 16 people over and across the land of fire and ice, he shared the stories and myths of a nation. These are some of the key Icelandic stories that stuck in my American brain:
1) With an oral and written history over a thousand years old, Icelanders still read and hold in high regard ancient sagas that inform future steps/decisions. Imagine that, they don’t disregard history but heed it, and use it.
2) For centuries, tribal leaders from across the country gathered annually at what is now Thingvellir National Park to peacefully mete out judgments and mediate disputes. The last act of capital punishment was a beheading in 1830. Violent crime is almost nonexistent. Between 2000 and 2012, there were only 25 murders in the entire country.
3) In the year 1000, Iceland was being forced by the King of Norway to convert to Christianity. Violence and bloodshed were imminent if Iceland remained pagan. In response, the heathen Porgeir, one of Iceland’s most trusted and wise chieftains, threw all of his pagan gods into a waterfall. Deciding between civil war and peace, he chose peace.
Beyond all of this, of course, Iceland is one of the most beautiful, other-worldly places on the planet with black sand beaches, waterfalls, volcanoes, mountains, glaciers, sulphuric hot pools and piercing blue glacial lagoons. And to boot, endless North Atlantic and Arctic ocean views abound, never far from any given spot.
If it were not for my teenager (who still needs me on rare days) and a life 4,000 miles to the west and south of the great Nordic nation, I might have never left that land of never ending days and never ending nights.
And yet, with every win by the Trump machine, endless days and nights are looking like the only sane end in sight.
About the author – Nancy Corbett, a corporate public relations professional by day, navigates motherhood, some days better than others, under the aging 1930s roof with a teenager, a husband 14 years her senior, two hound dogs and her own midlife perimenopausal madness.
2 Comments
Unfortunately this author comes across as the mean bully who doesn’t appear to be informed on world politics and governments. This is a hysterical offensive hit piece on Trump. I’m disappointed BluntMoms would even post it!
Go ahead and leave and take all those foolish celebrities with your point of view.