by Stephen Fox

Of all the countries in the frozen north, Iceland may be the most surprising. It is divided into distinct regions, each region with its own particular terrain and life style, and all the regions are amazing.

The northern part of the island is truly the cold and frozen part, piled with snow and ice in the winter. People in a few small villages fish or farm all summer to store up food against the long, cold winter ahead. As if those conditions were not harsh enough, the area also has active volcanoes that have been known to destroy entire villages.

The middle of the island is equally forbidding, but almost no one lives there. A flat treeless area splits the middle of the area from north to south. This is where the two continental plates of the Atlantic meet and here the island is gradually growing as more land is being created by the rolling back of the two plates away from each other. This region looks as barren as a landscape on the moon.

In the south is the capital city of Reykjavik. Life here is completely different from the rest of the island. The warm Gulf Stream touches only this southern part of the island, keeping the climate of the city surprisingly moderate. In fact, temperatures in Reyjavik in the winter are actually higher than they are at the same time in New York City or Boston. Also, the city, although it has only 100,000 people bustles with cultural events such as opera and art exhibits and offers its citizens all the latest fashions from all over the world, as well as excellent restaurants (some of which still have whale on the menu despite a world-wide ban on the killing of whales) movie theaters with the latest films.

Reykjavik also boasts five huge outdoor swimming pools that stay open all year long, even in the worst winter weather. How can that happen? Well, Icelanders have learned to make use of all the volcanic activity that created their island in the first place and still rumbles underneath their land to this day. They have put pipes down to all that underground heat and now use it for all sorts of things. All the homes in Reykjavik are heated by water run through the hot rocks below the soil - and so are the swimming pools! Even in the dead of winter, the pools are warm and pleasant. You can swim and watch the snow coming down - it melts as soon as it touches the warm fog about three feet above the pool. It never reaches the swimmers!

That same underground heat is used to run enormous greenhouses that grow everything from bananas to coffee in the frozen middle section of the island. And when the geothermal energy isn't enough, that same middle area provides hydroelectric power from its wild, rampaging waterfalls.

The people in the isolated north also benefit from the wealth and technology of the capital city, because they are kept in contact with the world by television broadcasts. And, although there are no hospitals in the north, people with medical emergencies can be brought out by helicopters flying quickly from Reykjavik.

Of course, there is one other section of Iceland, a brand new, tiny island created by a volcano right off the coast in the late 1950'. No one can survive on its rocky, lava surface as yet.

Still, some people may pioneer there someday soon. After all, some citizens have recently colonized the harsh middle ground of the main island and are trying to mine there! Icelanders love everything about their unusual land.

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