What the Oz paper states as fact about Iceland...

I thought it was a good article but that bit made me gigle!

Btw - how on earth all you Oz posters end up here :-)

Cheap fares with Air Reykjavik I expect.

I have been to Finland, but according to purists, that's not Scandinavia. Is it included in this branch?

At least as much as Iceland, yes. The most fundamentalist purists will tell you that Scandinavia is only Sweden and Norway, with a tiny part of Northern Finland included. In normal speech, Denmark, Finland and Iceland are also included. There are some wannabe purists who try to squeeze in Denmark but still not Iceland and Finland, but those half-purists are quite rare. Guide books to "Scandinavia" almost always include all five countries.

All the Scando languages are same same - (apart from the Finns) - those who claim different are merchant bankers. Iceland could do with some of them - it's been declared bankrupt n'est-ce pas? No cod?

I was there in summer (all 2 weeks of it), on the way to Istanbul, and we plunged naked into freezing cold lakes in lieu of the snow. The birch switches are good for raising the blood closer to the surface. I think the national love affair with dairy products and bbq sausages is to promote insulating layers of blubber.

Nah, sarcasm means nothing to me. Goes right over my head.

A place to feel thin in then, ryb?

All the Scando languages are same same - (apart from the Finns)

Don't forgot that large parts of the Finnish coast is between 75-95% Swedish speaking, you'll hear more New York than in some of those areas.

That's the whole reason behind the Scandinavia idea, a Scandinavian language is official in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. And yeah, they are all the same except for Icelandic which is pretty different.

The buggers (wherever they live) still eat little bloody dead herrings on funny bread ... where is the culture in that? Nowhere.

The tongue of Sven is the second official lingua of Finland.

This is an impressive fact I learned from wikipedia: Icelandic is the only living language to retain the runic letter Þ.

Which is nice.

Icelandic has had no linguistic improvement or inovation since Leif Erikson was doing real estate deals in Greenland Heights. No wonder the poor miserable buggers still eat cod and put dirt and cowpats on their roofs.