Culture of Iceland
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The culture of Iceland is rich and varied as well as being known for its literary heritage which stems from authors from the 12th to 14th centuries. Other Icelandic traditional arts include weaving, silver crafting, and wood carving. The Reykjavík area has several professional theatres, a symphony orchestra, an opera, and a large amount of art galleries, bookstores, cinemas, and museums.
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[edit] Social Customs and Daily Life
The inhabitants of Iceland take care to preserve their traditions and language. For example, the word for computer (an introduced object) is tölva which combines the ancient terms for number and seer. Women occupy an important place in society, prominently in the government.
Local and national festivals include the annual Independence Day, celebrating the country's independence in 1944, the Sumardargurinn Fyrsti festival which celebrates the first day of summer, and the Sjómannadagurinn which is held every June to pay tribute to the country's seafaring past.
Much of the cuisine centres around Iceland's fishing industry. Traditional dishes include Hákarl (putrefied shark), gravlax (salmon marinated in salt and dill), hangikjöt (smoked lamb), hrútspungar ( ram's testicles), and slátur (dessert made from sheep entrails). A popular dessert is the skyr made of cultured skim milk and served with bilberries in the summer time. Brennivin is a Icelandic liqour made from potatoes and caraway.
[edit] Leisure
Though changing in the past years, Icelanders remain a very healthy nation. Children and teenagers participate in various types of leisure activities. Popular sports today are mainly soccer, athletics and basketball. Sports such as golf, tennis, swimming, chess and horseback riding are also popular.
Chess is a popular type of recreation favored by the Icelanders Viking ancestors. The country's chess clubs have created many chess grandmasters including Friðrik Ólafsson, Jóhann Hjartarson, Margeir Pétursson, and Jón Arnason. Glima is a form of wrestling that is still played in Iceland, though originating with the Vikings. Swimming and horseback riding are popular as well. Golf is an especially common sport, with about 1/8 of the nation playing it [1]. Team handball is often referred to as a national sport, Iceland's team is one of the top ranked teams in the world, and Icelandic women are surprisingly good at football compared to the size of the country, the national team ranked the eighteenth best by FIFA.
Ice and rock climbing are a favorite among many Icelanders, for example to climb the top of the 4,167 foot (1,270 metre) Thumall peak in Skaftafell National Park is a challenge for many adventurous climbers, but mountain climbing is considered to be more suitable for the general public and is a very common type of leisure activity. The Hvítá, among many other of the Icelandic glacial rivers, attracts kayakers and river rafterers worldwide.
[edit] Arts
The people of Iceland are famous for their prose and poetry and have produced many great authors including Halldór Laxness, Guðmundur Kamban, Tómas Guðmundsson, Davíð Stefánsson, Jón Thoroddsen, Guðmundur G. Hagalín, Þórbergur Þórðarson and Jóhannes úr Kötlum.
Iceland's best-known classical works of literature are the Icelanders' sagas, prose epics set in Iceland's age of settlement. The most famous of these include Njáls saga, about an epic blood feud, and Grœnlendinga saga and Eiríks saga, describing the discovery and settlement of Greenland and Vinland (modern Newfoundland). Egil's saga, Laxdaela saga, Grettis saga, Gísla saga and Gunnlaugs saga are also notable and popular Icelanders' sagas.
W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice wrote Letters From Iceland (1937) to describe their travels through that country.
The first professional secular painters appeared in Iceland in the 19th century. This group of artists included Johannes Sveinsson Kjarval who was famous for his paintings potraying village life in Iceland. Asmundur Sveinsson, a 20th century sculptor, was also from Iceland. Silver working and its old traditions have been preserved.
