Who Are the Happiest People?
[1]They live on a windswept island surrounded by glaciersand volcanoes. What makes them so content?
[2]In a poll of 18 nations, The Gallup Organization discovered that Icelanders are the happiest people alive. All 267,809 of them. Eighty-two percent are satisfied with their personal lives. The United States ranked fifth at 72 percent; Japan came in seventh with 42 percent.
[3]Some people would say that happy Iceland is a statistical fluke. This is a country so all, an ordinary citizen can make an appointment to see the president.
[4]True, Iceland is no utopia. Icelanders are big boozers, with a fishing tradition of binge drinking. Almost a third of the births are out of wedlock. But that’s what makes the Gallup study so interesting. Icelanders have problems like the rest of us, yet they are happy with their lot. So what gives?
[5]Consider Thorir Hlynur Thorisson, 28. For his vacation, he spent a month working 16-hour days, seven days a week, as a fishing guide. It was “heaven on earth,” he says. Then after a single night off, he was back at his regular job—on a fishing boat, working six hours on, six hours off, around the clock.
[6]We would call Hlynur a workaholic, but so are most of his compatriots. It pays off. With a per-capita gross domestic product of $19,905 (the U.S. figure is $27,541), Icelanders are among the wealthiest people on earth. Their tax dollars buy them excellent education and medical care. Iceland has the lowest infant mortality rate in the world, and almost the highest longevity.
[7]The dour Swiss have a well-run state and all their material needs met, too, yet no one could accuse them of a cheerful outlook.
[8]Sociologist Thorolfur Thorlindsson of the University of Iceland believes the secret lies not in his country’s comforts, but in its age-old discomforts. They have taught Icelanders to enjoy what they have.
[9]Isolated in the cold North Atlantic, buffeted by a hostile sea, condemned to 20 hours of darkness each day in winter, the people have for centuries lived on the vagaries of the fish catch. “Our culture is colored by the harshness of nature,” says Thorlindsson. “That’s why Icelanders have a tolerant attitude to the problems of life. They don’t expect the same sort of stability often expected in other nations.”
[10]And so it seems. Americans are considerably better off by material standards than ever before. Yet we seem less happy, less contented with our lot.
[11]Like Icelanders, Americans are individualists. Where we seem to differ is in our sense of community. Iceland, known as the land of “fire and ice,” is about living with opposing forces. It is one of the most active volcanic countries on earth, but has 4536 square miles of glacier—heat and cold, co-existing. No surprise them that its society can reconcile another set of opposing forces: individuali and the needs of the community.
[12]Anyone who thinks Americans invented rugged individuali has only to visit Iceland. This nation has an ancient respect for independence. Way back in the tenth century, Iceland was a commonwealth; today Icelanders still place high value on their freedom.
[13]But here’s the paradox: this individuali exists with a sense of community. For years I have known an Icelandic family that embraces a family drunk and an illegitimate child. This family never let them drift, like human flotsam, to be beached at some government institution. “Icelanders have strong systems of support,” says Thorlindsson.
[14]Tolerance is not hollow phrase in Iceland. The word for “stupid”is heimskur, which roughly means “comes from home” — or as we would say, provincial or narrow-minded. Icelanders believe only a dolt is unable to see the other fellow’s position. In this sense, they might find some of what passes for political debate in the United States absolutely heimskur.
[15]Most Icelanders travel out into the world as young s. They learn that theirs is not the only way of doing things. Yet this doesn’t translate into contempt for their own land and its history.
[16]The 12th-century Icelandic sagas , studied at universities the world over, are revered at home. Turn on the radio and at the top of the charts is Bubbi Morthens, a troubadour.
[17]Last summer in the lava fields of Iceland’s interior, accountant Sigmar Bjornsson pointed out to me a cave where thieves had hidden. He showed me where they stored their weapons, where the villagers attacked, told me how one of the thieves, who had only one leg, walked on his hands to the glacier on the horizon.
[18]“When did they hole up here?” I asked.
[19] “About 900 years ago” was the answer. Nearly a millennium, and the myth is still alive.
[20]How many Americans have that kind of familiarity with their nation’s past, its myths, its history? How many even care?
[21]I wish America’s multiculturalis and historical revisionists would grasp what Icelanders understand: trashing your nation’s myths is the wrong way to create a better society. “A nation has to be tolerant of newcomers,” say psychiatrist Niel Micklem. “But if it loses its myths, it loses its center.”
[22]Maybe I’m wrong. But I suspect that this loss of “center” is what makes so many Westerners unhappy amid their affluence .
