Iceland: Where the World Is Still in the Making

Stanley Meisler comments in his intriguing article on Iceland (Oct. 6) that “Icelanders are proud of their climate.” True, the average winter temperature there is higher than the average in New York and Chicago, despite the name of the country! However, Icelanders have two sayings I recall about the weather there: (1) “If you don’t like the weather, just wait a minute;” (2) “In Iceland there is no weather--there are only samples of weather.”

Rain often comes at you horizontally, with winds up to 70 m.p.h. I recall a man being blown against a building and breaking his leg; another time a man was tossed into the air by the wind, landed on his head and died.

My friend Robert Ripley in his “Believe It or Not” book said Iceland has the highest percentage of pretty girls of any country in the world. Many Icelandic girls marry foreigners, but many return soon to Iceland. Icelanders like Denmark “but it’s too flat.” “Norway is nice but there are too many trees.” “New York City is nice but there are too many buildings.”

I learned some of these things while with Lockheed Aircraft at Keflavik 1949-51 in that land of strange beauty where the world is still in the making--only 13 million years old--with fire and water, volcanoes and glaciers still at war with one another.

WALDO RUESS

Santa Barbara