Unlike New York or Shanghai, Reykjavík has no delusions of grandeur. It’s a city that knows its place in the cosmos, knows it’s an insignificant place, and is comfortable with that. Icelanders thrive on this provisional nature of life. It keeps them on their toes, fires their imaginations. Most of all, it reminds them of the fragility of life. Big cities feign immortality, deluded that somehow their sheer size, their conquest over nature, will forestall death. In Iceland, a land where nature always gets the last word, immortality is so obviously a joke that no one takes it seriously.
