A like to blog About my Contry Iceland.

iceland is in Atlantic Ocean and a total area of 103,000 km?
Iceland is a modern European economy with strong economic foundations in fisheries, natural renewable energy sources and human capital that will allow Iceland to overcome the economic difficulties it is going through, like so many other countries around the world.

Iceland's population is around 320.000 of which the vast majority or around 2/3 lives in the capital, Reykjavik, and surrounding areas.

Iceland is a republic, has a written constitution and a parliamentary form of government. The president is elected by direct popular vote for a term of four years, with no term limit. Most executive power rests with the Government, which is elected separately from the presidential elections every four years.

Iceland was the last European country to be settled, mostly by Norsemen in the 9th and 10th centuries. They came mainly from Norway and elsewhere in Scandinavia, and from the Norse settlements in the British Isles, from where a Celtic element was also introduced. The language and culture of Iceland were predominantly Scandinavian from the outset, but there are traces of Celtic influence in some of the ancient poetry, in some personal names and in the apperance of present-day Icelanders.

In environmental terms, Iceland is unique. Iceland is a large country (103,000 km?, about the same surface area as Ireland or the State of Virginia), but is sparsely populated, with only 3 persons per km? living mostly along the coast. The interior of the country contains stunning contrasts. It is largely an arctic desert, punctuated with mountains, glaciers, volcanoes and waterfalls. Most of the vegetation and agricultural areas are in the lowlands close to the coastline.
Althingi is a legislative body of 63 members elected for a term of four years by popular vote. Anyone who is eligible to vote, with the exception of the President and the judges of the Supreme Court, can stand for parliament. After every election, the President gives one of the parliamentary leaders of the political parties the authority to form a cabinet, usually beginning with the leader of the largest party. If he is not successful, the President will ask another political party leader to form a government.

A cabinet of ministers stays in power until the next general election or a new government is formed. The ministers sit in Althingi, but if they have not been elected, they do not have the right to vote in parliament.

Judicial power lies with the Supreme Court and the district courts.

Icelandic is the national language and is believed to have changed very little from the original tongue spoken by the Norse settlers. English and Danish are widely spoken and understood. German and French are taught in grammar school and other upper secondary level schools, so many can speak these languages. Icelandic has two unique letter-characters of its own, ?/? and ?/?, which were used in Old English. "?" is pronounced as "th" in "thing" and "?" is pronounced as the "th" in "them".
Icelandic is one of the Nordic languages, which are a sub-group of the Germanic languages (Germanic languages are traditionally divided into North Germanic, i.e. the Nordic languages, West Germanic, i.e. High and Low German including Dutch-Flemish, English and Frisian, and East Germanic, i.e. Gothic, which is now dead).

The Germanic languages are in the family of Indo-European languages together with the Celtic, Slavonic, Baltic, Romance, Greek, Albanian, Armenian and Indo-Iranian languages, in addition to several language groups which are now dead. Accordingly, Icelandic is more or less related to all these languages. Linguistically it is most closely related to Faroese and Norwegian.
Iceland was settled in the period 870-930 AD. Most of the settlers came from Norway, especially Western Norway, a few of them from Sweden and some from the British Isles, including Ireland. The language which came to prevail in Iceland was that of the people of Western Norway. It is commonly agreed that a considerable part of the immigrants were of Celtic stock (estimates, based partly on physical-anthropological studies, vary from 10 to 30 percent). However, the Icelandic language shows only insignificant traces of Celtic influence. The only evidence is a few Celtic loan words and a few personal names and place-names.

Icelandic and Norwegian did not become markedly different until the 14th century. From then onwards the two languages became increasingly different. This was for the most part due to changes in the Norwegian language, which had in some cases begun earlier in Danish and Swedish, while Icelandic resisted change, no doubt thanks in part to the rich Icelandic literature of the 12th and following centuries. Resistance to change is one of the characteristics of the Icelandic language, which explains the fact that a 12th-century text is still easy to read for a modern Icelander. However, Icelandic has undergone considerable change in its phonetics. Another characteristic of the language is its uniformity, i.e. absence of dialects.As in so many other countries, Latin script followed in the wake of the adoption of Christianity in Iceland. This took place in the year 1000 AD, by an act of Althingi. (Although the oldest Icelandic manuscripts preserved are from the second half of the 12th century, it is likely that the first attempts at adapting the Latin script to the Icelandic language were begun not long after the conversion). Today, the alphabet of the Icelandic language is the same as that of English, with the following exceptions:

?a) Icelandic has four letters which are not used in English: ?,? (similar to th in gather), ?,? (similar to th in thirsty), ?,? (like i in like) and ?,? (similar to u in fur);
?b) The letters c, q, w and z are used only in marginal cases;
?c) Except for ? and ?, each vowel letter appears in two forms, with or without an accent mark: a, ?, e, ?, i, ?, o, ?, u, ? and y, ?. However, the accent mark does not mean that the vowel is stressed, but marks it as different in quality from the unaccented vowel.
It is more common in Iceland than in many places abroad to invite guests to one?s home instead of to a restaurant. Many Icelanders customarily remove their shoes in the hallway before entering a home.

A common courtesy when invited for the first time to an Icelandic home is to bring along a bouquet of flowers or some other small gift, or send flowers the day after with a card. If invited to a birthday party, it is customary to bring a gift. Gifts are brought to wedding parties, and at christenings a gift is given to the child.

Cuisine in the larger hotels and restaurants is similar to European cooking. Raw materials are excellent. There are many species of freshwater and saltwater fish. The most common meats are lamb, pork, beef, poultry and game birds such as ptarmigan, goose and sea birds. Considerable quantities of vegetables are raised in greenhouses warmed with geothermally-heated water. There are a number of traditional Icelandic foods, smoked lamb, singed sheeps heads and meat soup with vegetables. Dried-fish or cured shark meat are sometimes served as appetizers. Skyr (similar to yogurt) with sugar, cream and sometimes blueberries is a popular dessert. Beer and soft drinks are produced in Iceland, but wine is mostly imported