Hamingjan í svörtu skammdeginu

Bókin Geography of Bliss eftir Eric Weiner er forvitnileg lesning um Íslendinga, þjóðina sem mælist í sumum könnunum sú hamingjuríkasta í heiminum, samkvæmt gagnabanka hamingjunnar í Hollandi.

Weiner leitaði skýringa með því að ferðast til Íslands í svartasta skammdeginu. Hér eru nokkur atriði sem hann hjó eftir:

I'm beginning to get into this darkness thing. I'm not yet embracing it, but we're edging closer, darkness and me. Cold has its virtues. Without cold, there would be no coziness.

...

On a practical level, Icealnd's smallness means that parents needn't bother with that old bromide about not talking to strangers. There are no strangers in Iceland.   

...

Something about the smoke-filled bar, or perhaps the vodka-infused cough drop, gets me thinking about Nietzsche. Usually, Nietzsche gives me a headache. But one thing he said keeps bubbling up to my consciousness, like a geothermal spring. The measure of a society, he said, is how well it transforms pain and suffering into something worthwile. Not how a society avoids pain and suffering - for Nietzsche, a deeply troubled man himself (he went insane in his latter years), knew that was impossible - but how it transforms it. The Icelanders have done a good job of not only surviving on this odd moonscape but also transforming their suffering into something worthwhile. Happy, even.  

... 

If it is possible for language, mere words, to nurture happiness, to tickle the creative soul of an entire people, then surely that language is Icelandic.

... 

Her name is Eva, and she is drunk.

... 

In Iceland, being a writer is pretty much the best thing you can be. Successful, struggling, published in books or only in your mind, it matters not. Icelanders adore their writers. Partly, this represents a kind of narcissism, since just about everyone in Iceland is a writer or a poet.

... 

Faced with a brutal climate and utter isolation, Icelanders could have easily chosen despair and drunkenness. The Russian option. But instead these hardy sons and daughters of Vikings peered into the unyielding blackness of the noon sky and chose another option: happiness and drunkenness. It is, I think, the wiser option. Besides, what else is there to do in the dark?