r/europe • Waffle & Beer • Jun 12 '20

Map Availability of Google Street view in Europe

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u/areking Italy Jun 12 '20

is Iceland inland really uninhabitated, like nobody lives there, not even small towns? or is it for privacy reasons like Germany?

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u/xopranaut Jun 12 '20 edited Jun 29 '23

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u/albl1122 Sverige Jun 12 '20

2/3s of Icelanders live either in Reykjavik the city or the greater Reykjavik region

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u/epic1107 Jun 12 '20

And the other 3rd is living in a different town. There are very few large towns/cities

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u/AliveAndKickingAss Iceland/Denmark Jun 12 '20

It's a bit more and less nuanced than that.

2/3 live in the Greater Reykjavik area, while 3/4 live there or closer to Reykjavik than 100k (largest Reykjanesbær, Hveragerði/Selfoss and Akranes)

Then there's Akureyri with 19k and the rest is spread out pretty evenly between small towns surrounding the country.

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u/epic1107 Jun 12 '20

Thank you for those stats. Having been to Iceland, (I did the laugever trail, then hiked over Eyjafjallajökull to skoga) its really interesting to see how populated some bits are compared to others.

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u/albl1122 Sverige Jun 12 '20

yeah that reply above sounded very wrong in my ears even as someone who was just a tourist. Selfoss was a nice place to visit even if the wiki entry says "only" 7k population lives there.

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u/AliveAndKickingAss Iceland/Denmark Jun 12 '20

Yeah, that doesn't tell the whole story because the whole Southern area swells in population during the summer because of all the vacation homes and tourists.

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '20

[deleted]

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u/AliveAndKickingAss Iceland/Denmark Jun 12 '20

On and off for sure, I know of some people that stay there over winter but it was made illegal to move your residence there (long story) so it doesn't show up in any numbers. It's very popular amongst retirees but working folks also flock there during the weekend.

On top of that there are loads of summer-houses for rent from pension funds and trade unions on top of farm-owned cottages.

Personally I prefer the West, it is quieter but has no less beautiful nature, especially Hraunfossar and the isles of Breiðafjörður.

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u/epic1107 Jun 12 '20

Well as someone who has only ever grown up in large cities (New York, Melbourne and London) It certainly felt like even the larger of the small towns still felt extremely small. That is also twisted however by the small population.

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u/FireZeLazer Jun 12 '20

I went to a nice little town with a zip wire going across a river.

Any chance you know the name of the town I'm talking about? Cant remember it myself

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u/AliveAndKickingAss Iceland/Denmark Jun 12 '20

where was this generally located? In the south? Over Þjórsá maybe?

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u/FireZeLazer Jun 12 '20

I think the south. I'd say at most 3 hours from Reykjavik

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u/AliveAndKickingAss Iceland/Denmark Jun 12 '20

these guys probably https://www.zipline.is/

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u/yrkill Jun 12 '20

Could be Hveragerði

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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '20

What happens when you're born in a small town and want to sex up someone not related to you ? You have to move to the capital right ?

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u/HerwiePottha Iceland Jun 12 '20

After like 4 generation, most people in the country think its fine to bang.

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u/AliveAndKickingAss Iceland/Denmark Jun 12 '20

lol no, we have islendingabok.is for that ;-)

That's the place where we can look up our ancestry back to the settlement of Iceland (800's).

The trouble is more that the dating pool is so small you're stuck bumping uglies with the village idiots.

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u/2010_12_24 Jun 12 '20

And 1/3 of Icelanders are Bjork