Here are seven interesting tidbits about Iceland:
1. There are 40 publishing houses in Iceland, making its people among the most literate in the world. On the other hand, who else will publish a book in Icelandic if they don’t?
2. A local newspaper, the Reykjavik Grapevine, reported that one way to measure Iceland’s fall from financial hotspot to recession-plagued recovering nation is that the number of Range Rover registrations plummeted from a high of 259 in 2007 to 4 in 2011.
3. The mayor of Reykjavik is an actor.
4. Due to the downslide of the Icelandic krona against the dollar, it’s about 25 percent cheaper to visit Iceland than it was before the 2008 recession.
5. Iceland had 277,000 tourists in 2002. In 2012, about 700,000 visited the country. This year, it might hit 1 million, a government official said.
6. In summer, nightclubs really get busy only after midnight. But the sun is still up.
7. Americans built the original international airport at Keflavik during its military occupation in World War II, bringing American culture and influence to Iceland.
— Ellen Creager, Detroit Free Press