Reveal your country

People, i don't think we all realize how great an oportunity this is, we are here, united by one thing, or another, for ALL over the world. That's why, in addition to rae's Reveal yourself thread i think it would be cool if you all told us something about your country.
Lets face it, we don't know everything about everyone, unfortunately Sure you could jsut go to a library and read 50 year old books, but it's much mroe fun this way, plus, we have it live

Facts, population, currency, language and the history of your country. And don't skip the funny parts, stupid habits your nation does, and jokes about it.
If not for the others here, then for me please

Man i should have done this before my history exam..
I'll start
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Iceland

First i'd like to answer some very popular questions:
No i do not live in an igloo, and nobody here does, we don't even make them. THe kids might do it during the winter to have fun, but there are like 3 days a year when that is possible.

We speak Icelandic; It's a Germanic language, grammatic is similar to german and latin, and vocabulary very close to danish, norwegian and swedish. But it is very hard to learn, and unfortunately you can almost always hear when a foreigner is talking... even if he has lived here for 20 years.


We are currently around 290.000, and 180.000 live in the capital. This does tho not mean that i know everyone But the funny thing is you can always finda connection between two persons,"i know this one" -" oh hey so do i!" That's the beauty of it, you can know everything about a guy before you go out

Iceland is an island in the north part of Europe, very close to greenland, the biggest island on earth. So, iceland is green and greenland is ice There is not snow here the whole year around, and i have been in over 25° C here, unfortunately tho, that is the top heat i think.. or somewhere little above 30° C
During the summer, the sun can be seen all night. IF you go out in the evening, it can be bright the whole time you are out. Contrary to that is during the winter, there is very little sun. The shortest day is around 4 hours... i know, you get depressed

We have huge amount of stories about elves. THey are said to live in the stones, and if you see one for real you will never be sain again. We also have big trolls that liveinthe mountains, and little demons that try to trick you into deals, and instead they will get your soul if you loose.
However this is all old, and nobody really believes it today, except maybe some strange persons

The nature here is very beautiful, and also very untouched.. because it's not so good to live in the uplands, because there is nothign there. So the nature stays the way it is because people don't go there very often.. mostly tourists though.

The water here is however something to brag about . You can't buy water from the stores, you drink it right from the tap. It is very clean, and we don't add any chemical stuff in it to clean it, we don't have to. Electricity is very cheap too as well as hot water.. so 1 hour shower is no biggie

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That's a little summary of my country, see more on www.exploreiceland.net or jst ask me

Now come on, share with us something about your country!