A student exchange has been established. Over 30 University of Iowa faculty members and administrators have traveled to Iceland to work, and roughly the same number from Iceland to Iowa. Gudmundur Magnusson, Sigmundur Gudbjarnason, and Sveinbjorn Bjornsson, Rectors of the University of Iceland have visited our university. Everybody who has gone to Iceland from Iowa was prompted by reasons of the strategic import of Iceland as a research site and as a fruitful locus for collaboration. The Matter of Smallness Iceland is considered small and somehow, as a result, non-representative.
Most countries are small.
The Matter of Isolation I could not count the number of times I have heard the source of skepticism resulting from some notion of Iceland's isolation, be it physical, linguistic, or, recently, in terms of political posture toward the European Community. Crucial in the explanations we provide to such skeptical questions is the information that these very features add to the strategic importance of the country as a research site and model political economy. Having kept its language intact since the 11th century makes it possible to learn modern Icelandic and then move backward in time though this vehicle of an essentially continuous natural language. Being so isolated, and often having to deal with material, environmental, and political problems alone, lends us an astonishing store of records that they have felt obligated to maintain and an extraordinary pattern of successful cultural and national problem solving against daunting political and environmental pressures. It is not surprising that for the Icelanders, their favorite book is still Halldor Laxness' Independent People .