“no trees”??? I am surprised! Are you sure?

“Silver birch is distributed throughout almost all of Europe and in Asia Minor. Downy birch also occurs throughout much of Europe and in north Asia, and is one of the very few native trees in Iceland.”
http://www.treesforlife.org.uk/tfl.birch.html

Or, even better:
“…woods of Bęjarstašir in Skaftafell National Park contain some of Iceland’s prettiest, highest growing birch…”
http://www.whatson.is/whats_on/?ew_news_onlyarea=content1&ew_news_onlyposition=22&cat_id=30733&ew_22_a_id=178477

So is it just the foreigners who do this or is it just for lack of sufficient birch that the Icelanders don’t? It seems that Iceland is an increasingly popular destination for the Russians (as it also appears quite a few other countries are too in the last couple of years):

“A quarter of the increase in overnight stays came from Russian tourists, who also brought in 27% of Finland’s total tourism receipts in 2007. “Russian tourism in Finland has grown for a long time, but the growth has only been this strong for the last two years,” Marjut Tuominen, registrar at Statistics Finland, said.”
http://www.helsinkitimes.fi/htimes/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2480:russian-tourism-growing-fast-in-finland&catid=17:business&Itemid=162

I did come across some extra info today that in fact though the US had ‘left’ Iceland, they temporarily deployed F-15s to intercept and escort the Tupelov bombers that were heading to Venezuela for exercises so it is apparent that ex(?) US facilities are kept warmed over…

Aleks – sorry, you’re confusing Iceland with the Finns. Didn’t you know that Iceland has no trees?

Alda“s last blog post..How about some googlies?

I still don’t know what to make of the Robert Palmer & Alison Kraus combo. RP has categorically denied any LedZep reunion for at least the next two years…

I just came across this in a british paper:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2008/oct/10/economy-iceland

“Iceland skilfully used its cold war importance to move away from fishing and farming – too far away, it now transpires – and if Europe and the US are now too preoccupied to help, it will look elsewhere. We can only be grateful it was Russia with its not-very-good navy stirring trouble, not China, that made the loan.”

Talk about having one’s head screwed on properly! Other interesting stuff in the article too, lest us not forget that the UK used anti-terrorism legislation to freeze 4b quid of icelandic assets

P.S. Full disclosure: I hate watching ‘Lazy Town’ where Sporticus is the main character, but my nephew and niece have other ideas. It is mildly better than ‘Dora the Explorer’, but I do cheerfully respect the kiddies anarchism in ignoring whatever their parents tell them to do…