Ice cream in Iceland

I thought today of the character of the Icelandic people and what ideas Icelanders generally seem to share. Today I went to the local soft-serve ice cream parlour on my street and wondered why they are so popular in my country. I feel that the Icelandic national character is one that could be called very contradictory at best and absurd at worst, an example of it’s absurdity are these ubiquitous ice cream parlours.

Icelanders flock to buy soft serve ice cream in a country where the sun practically never shows its face during the long winters and temperatures rarely exceed twenty degrees Celsius in the summertime. Summertime in the capital is especially rainy and cloudy but this does not stop new ice cream parlours from popping up. I can attest to the popularity of these parlours because I enjoy the mixed blessing of living close to one. The upside of living close to the establishment is that I can have soft-serve ice cream pretty much whenever I want, the downside is that so does everybody else in the neighborhood. The resulting in heavy traffic on my street can be annoying, especially on Saturdays which is the busiest, I dread for the onset of summer and the coming season of HBO’s Game of Thrones, no doubt resulting in increased traffic.

I researched ice cream consumption in Iceland and found out that our Scandinavian brethren share our love for the treat. A scientist or an economist would tell me that its probably the Scandinavian love of dairy products that explains the consumption. Personally, alongside Iceland’s extreme consumption of depression medication and coffee, I believe ice cream is no more than a coping mechanism to ease the pain of living in one of the worst climates in the world. I mean c’mon ice cream is better than therapy and cheaper than moving away.