Why Iceland has the happiest people on earth

I visited Iceland last month on business for about a week.<p>Iceland seems great statistically because there is no national underclass. Most Icelanders would be considered "middle class" today in the United States: some college, literate, aspiring to home ownership, and employed in services.<p>In every other country, the national statistics are skewed by some underemployed, undereducated, and often foreign "labor class" (or worse, welfare class). There is no "ghetto" in Iceland (though strangely, graffiti is everywhere). Why?<p>Because every modern nation was at one time "industrial," and industrial countries must import/create/preserve a labor class to work factories and plantations. But Iceland went from "frozen rock" to "modern service economy" in about 70 years.<p>I assure you that it's not a magical fairyland where everyone is happy. It's more like an American suburb of 250,000 (maybe in WA) where everyone is white and employed in an office... and a glacier/volcano/wind storm has trimmed away the unpleasant urban and rural elements and plunged them into the Arctic ocean.<p>Icelanders have the same hopes and strifes one would expect in such a suburb.

This is cool, though I worry that people will conclude (as the Icelandic president has) that Iceland has "blended the best of Europe and the United States here, the Nordic welfare system with the American entrepreneurial spirit".<p>There are a lot of policies that work well with an ethnically homogeneous society of 313,000 people but completely fail on a larger scale. This scaling problem is the perennial defect of socialism. (Well, one of them, anyway.) In contrast, free markets appear to scale indefinitely, naturally finding the right business unit sizes along the way. (For example, for gourmet restaurants, it's ~1 restaurant; for fast food restaurants, it's a national or global branded chain.)<p>I suspect that the natural business unit size for much of Iceland's 'Nordic welfare system' is approximately 313,000 ethnically homogeneous people.

Iceland also has the most discos per capita out of any country in Europe.<p>I've been to Iceland many years ago. The people I met during my brief stay there seemed as happy as anywhere else. Then again, I didn't meet many people because it was too cold to go out most of the time.<p>BTW, don't be fooled by this whole "iceland is warm and greenland is cold" thing. Iceland is very, very cold. There's nothing to break the wind on the volcanic lava...it was the coldest I've ever been.

And here I was thinking the Icelanders were so happy because they know they can take over the world with relative ease ala the Iceland strategem in Risk.

"Paternity leave is the thing that made the difference for women's equality in this country."<p>That's surprising, and intriguing. I've never thought of that, but it's quite plausible. I wonder if it's right...

I kinda want to move to iceland after reading that. I've always seen pictures and wanted to visit, but It'd be fun to go and do research there or something.

Good social development statistics doesn't mean the people are happy with their lives. As I see, the article takes the results for granted without any doubt and then speculates and searches for the reasons. I'd at least search for the polls that ask if the people are optimistic/pessimistic, consider themselves happy/unhappy.<p>Though, I believe, standing far from the noisy Europe, maybe far from the consumption rush, they may feel calm, happy and optimistic. That's great.<p>&#62; "The study was lent some credibility by the finding that the Russians were the most unhappy."<p>Yes, if you assume the myth that life in Russia very unpleasant, the study gets credibility. On the other hand, in the year the study was made, other studies showed Russian population to be the most optimistic in the history, thanks to fast economic growth and, I think, to breaking the pessimistic soviet mentality.

'Paternity leave is the thing that made the difference for women's equality in this country.'<p>this makes such a huge difference, this is a not socialist vs. capitalist comparison - it is simply a matter of putting peoples needs before corporations.

<i>"The study was lent some credibility by the finding that the Russians were the most unhappy."</i><p>...and the Guardian's credibility was ripped to shreds when turns out that Russia did NOT score lowest on the UN Human Development Index report (as seen at <a href="http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/" rel="nofollow">http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/</a>)<p>Russia is number 67 out of 70 in the "highest development" section, and number 67 out of 177 total. Sorry, Guardian.

"The study was lent some credibility by the finding that the Russians were the most unhappy"<p>I've always thought most unhappy people live in China, India, Pakistan and such...<p>The statement above shows that happiness is mostly depending on culture. I personally found Russian culture and way of perceiving the world too depressive.<p>You wont be happy if you just move to Iceland. Learning Icelander's style of world perceiving is necessary. Could you?

Anyone who wants to learn a little more about Icelandic roots you should look for any books by Halldor Laxnes (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halld%C3%B3r_Laxness" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halld%C3%B3r_Laxness</a>), specifically Independent People (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_People" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_People</a>).

I'm so glad this was posted on YC. Thank you! I'm glad this place is featuring the exact same links as reddit, digg, slashdot, etc. Woohoo copycats!

Icelandic is one of the world's most difficult languages to learn

I don't know about you, but I strongly suspect Iceland needs a good stiff dose of diversity:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceland#Demographics" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceland#Demographics</a><p>It's all just a bunch of what Barack Obama would call "typical white people". There are 743 Filipinos! Can you imagine that being the largest "diverse" subset of a population in any other country? I sure can't. Perhaps the United Nations should send a commission on human rights to see what kind of discriminatory migration policies Iceland has enacted.