Paradise

American writer Eliot Weinberger argues that the ideal state on Earth has already been created, just didn't pay attention to it.

Iceland has created the most perfect society on earth — is something that the rest of the world is nothing to learn. As this unlikely Utopia — a happy accident of history and geography, which is impossible to beat, impossible to reproduce anywhere else. Outside of South Pacific there is not a single ethnic group, which would be so small, and which would thus its own fully independent nation-state. The population of this country is only 304 thousand, of which 190 thousand live in the suburbs or in the capital of Iceland Reykjavik. Akureyri, the second largest city in Iceland — the locals call it Barcelona, is famous for its cultural life and nightlife. It has a population of 16 thousand. The rest of the country is sparsely populated, it is devoid of trees and empty spaces with volcanoes, waterfalls, strange heaps of stones, steaming plateau of hardened lava, geysers, glaciers and icebergs — space, similar to the edge of the land, as if, crossing the border of Tibet, you go to the beach.

What else is modern society so thoroughly it covers the landscape in which it lives? Where else can the middle class still keeps its memory?

They baked bread in the land; they prefer to eat rancid shark meat. They don't know pesticides. Almost all women give birth to their first child before the wedding. They don't allow dogs in the capital. Their eyes are the same pale blue, the same color as the icebergs. They believe in Hidden People. Their horses in the winter grows long hair, and they sleep lying down. I've never seen so many different kinds of moss.

From myself I want to add that it is good there where we are not. But looking at these pictures in my head for some reason immediately sweeps the tune and the words to "I want North to Iceland"...