All Things Iceland

This might be a short episode but it is very special because I have two big announcements! As you can tell from the title of the episode, one of the announcements is that I’m giving away a handmade Icelandic sweater. The other is that Gunnar, my husband, and I have partnered up with the Reykjavík Grapevine to create an All Things Iceland box full of Icelandic goodies. The Grapevine is hosting the...

Gunnar Freyr, a talented Icelandic photographer and videographer, makes a living traveling around Iceland, and sometimes Greenland. On Instagram he is known as Icelandic_explorer and has over 360,000 followers. His images and videos capture the Icelandic landscape in such a mesmerizing way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7Rn59vlPHQ&t=3807s During the chat, Gunnar Freyr shares how he left a v...

Nichole Leigh Mosty is an American that moved to Iceland in 1999. During our chat, we talk about the challenges she faced when she first moved and her experience being the first woman of foreign origin to be the speaker in Icelandic Parliament. Nichole shares a lot of insights and definitely does not hold back about what she has experienced, especially when it comes to finding a job when she first...

Elisa is originally from the Netherlands. After falling in love with Iceland during a vacation many years ago, she decided to quit her career in media in her home country and move to the land of fire and ice. Elisa initially planned to stay for a few months. During that time she intended to travel around and work as a horse riding guide. Well, a few months turned into years and she hasn’t looked b...

Halla Ólafsdóttir , a young Icelander, shares with me why she feels that people in her generation are moving away from the Reykjavík area in favor of the countryside. Halla has a BA degree in Icelandic language and creative writing at the University of Iceland. At the Free University of Berlin, she received an MA in Visual and Media Anthropology. Halla moved back to Iceland in 2014. Even though sh...

This week, I share the fun chat I had with Mugison , a talented Icelandic artist that has been making waves on a local and global scale. We talked about the time he spent living in Africa as a child, musicians that inspire him, the impact of Icelandic nature on his music, his epic music festival Aldrei Fór Ég Suður (I never went South), and so much more.  Why I was in the Westfjords During my time...

Tyler Wacker embarked on an incredible cycling journey from California to Ísafjörður in the Westfjords.  For those of you who don’t follow me on Instagram, I am currently in Ísafjörður taking Icelandic courses. Coincidentally, Tyler is at the same school, even though he is studying something completely different than me. After working in the transportation engineering industry for six years...

Satu Rämö was born and raised in Finland, but has been living in Iceland for almost 20 years. She shares a lot about her life in Iceland with Finnish people and she has a huge following in Finland. I think it is safe to say that she is the official Finn in Iceland, as well as a creative entrepreneur, author and social media nerd. I met Satu through her husband Björgvin. He and I used to work at th...

During this week’s episode, I spoke with LK Bertram about the very large emigration of Icelanders to Canada in the 1800s.  LK Bertram is the author of The Viking Immigrants: Icelandic North Americans , and is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. Born and raised in Winnipeg, she also has family roots in Öxnadalur and is the proud parent of twi...

This week I chatted with Icelandic Geology expert Helga Kristín Torfadóttir. She is currently pursuing her PhD in volcanology and petrology, with a focus on structures of magma chambers. Additionally, she is a glacier guide, a model and drives really big cars. What an awesome combination!  I came across Helga on Instagram, where her handle is @geology_with_helga and I was instantly stunned by her...

This week I had the pleasure of chatting with James McDaniel about Horticulture in Iceland. For anyone that is not familiar with that word, horticulture is the art or practice of garden cultivation and management. Ever since learning about greenhouses in Iceland and just about different plants growing here in general, I have been looking forward to the day when I can talk to someone about this on...

June 2020  marked the 4th year of me living in Iceland and the 2nd year anniversary of the podcast. I think that with all that is going on in the world right now, I found myself reflecting on how much has changed for the podcast and in my personal life since moving to Iceland in 2016. During this episode, I plan to share some of my favorite moments during interviews this year, some of the pla...

 I had the pleasure to speak with Kristín Loftsdóttir , a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Iceland. Her research has focused on migration, whiteness, gender, racism, Nordic exceptionalism, postcolonialism and crisis, basing on work in Iceland, Niger and Belgium. Published Work by Kristín Loftsdóttir is currently leading the project Creating Europe through Racialized Mobility (CE...

This week’s episode is focused on giving you some insight into my experience as a Black American female expat in Iceland. Along with that, I share how Iceland has responded to the gruesome killing of George Floyd by a police officer in the United States. As one might expect, everything that is happening right now in the United States is deeply personal for me. My Experience As A Black Americ...

Lydia and Jonas  are fellow U.S. expats in Iceland that host their own podcast called “ The Raisin at the Hot Dog’s End ”. Lydia is a writer and artist, and Jonas is a writer and translator. As you listen to the chat we had in my living room, you’ll get to hear the stories of how each of them ended up in Iceland. While we did talk about a variety of topics, I feel like the exchange we had about ra...

This week’s episode is an update that details how Iceland has successfully flattened the COVID-19 curve. On April 1st, I published a podcast episode that detailed the steps Iceland took after authorities found out about the virus in late December. I walked you through all of the restrictions put in place, but the timeline for those updates ended in mid-March. If you haven’t already,  I recomm...

I know this seems like a really random topic but I have been fascinated by this story ever since I learned about Björn Pétursson (Axlar-Björn) some months ago. The Iceland we know of today has been ranked as one the most peaceful countries in the world since the Global Peace Index was launched 13 years ago. However, this country definitely has had some gruesome murders in its past. Many of those m...

This week I am sharing the lovely chat I had with Mike Dell. He is a former U.S. Air Force officer that was stationed in Iceland during the 1990s. We talked about what it was like for him to live in Iceland as a military officer, how he was treated by Icelanders, what he enjoyed about the country and more. Similar to my last episode , I was connected with Mike in a rather unusual way.  I use...

I had the pleasure of sitting down with the awesome and very knowledgeable Icelandic herbalist Anna Rósa Róbertsdóttir .  She specializes in the use of Icelandic medicinal herbs and has been providing her services to people in Iceland for several decades. Before jumping into her interview, I have to mention the funny way in which Anna Rósa and I ended up becoming connected.  One day, I w...

After posting in the Away From Home: Living in Iceland Facebook group that I was looking to speak to expats in Iceland about a variety of topics, I received a decent amount of responses. One of those people included Sæþór Benjamín Randalsson. Sæþór responded by writing the following comment,  “I could talk about moving here as a gay man, or living through the 2008 crash, or the foster system,...

It is a little hard to believe that it is almost the one year anniversary of the bankruptcy of Wow Air. This low cost Icelandic airline went bust on March 28th, 2019. On that date last year, everyone was shocked when the airline suddenly ceased to operate. During this episode, I will go over why and how the airline skyrocketed to success, what it was like during its heyday, what caused WOW Air to...

A few days ago I posted on the All Things Iceland Instagram and Facebook pages that I do plan to give a rundown of how the Coronavirus is spreading in Iceland and what the government has been doing to control it. I do not plan to give updates every few days about the virus. I think it is important to talk about it. However, I mainly created All Things Iceland to share about Icelandic culture, hist...

I had the pleasure of interviewing Gísli Pálsson for this episode of the podcast in his office at the University of Iceland. He recently retired, but he has served as a professor and Director of Institute of Anthropology at the university. He has written several books, including “The Man Who Stole Himself”, the story about Hans Jónatan , who was the first black citizen of Iceland. To get a good ov...

Icelandic sheep are a mix of adorable and fascinating. During the summer, you can find them roaming freely around the country. For months they are on what seems like the ultimate Icelandic summer vacation – eating, sleeping, and walking wherever they please. Before winter sets in, they are rounded up by the farmers that own them so they can be sheltered from the harsh Icelandic weather. Rega...

To get a better understanding of the Icelandic education system, I sat down with Arnór Guðmundsson for this episode of the All Things Iceland podcast . In his role as the Director of the Directorate of Education , his agency focuses on testing and producing textbooks for schools in Iceland. We discussed many things. Some of them include the different levels of education in Iceland, how the Iceland...