The weird thing is, 'Game of Thrones,' people go to Iceland for three weeks, and it'd be like a small guerilla operation. 'Thor,' we went there for, like, five days, because we couldn't afford to be there any longer, because we were airlifting the entire contents of Hollywood into this country.
Alan Taylor
Seabear's love of soft folk sounds is unquestionable, but that doesn't stop the Icelandic band from infusing its music with layers of instrumentation.
Anthony Fantano
I would like to go to Iceland to see the northern lights.
Art Malik
Having grown up in Iceland and Los Angeles, gone to school in Europe and America, and lived and worked in London and New York, my insatiable appetite for travel has informed many of my life decisions.
Aslaug Magnusdottir
I'm Icelandic, from this small country where there was very limited access to fashion when I was growing up, and so, for me, it's really important to have a product that's relevant for this global customer.
I consider myself more a European director who is from Iceland than an Icelandic director.
Baltasar Kormakur
The thing about Iceland is that we are trapped there anyway, all of us. We have been trapped there for thousands of years.
In Iceland, the weather is the biggest character you deal with every day. There's nothing more relevant in your life than what kind of weather it is.
I used to sail a lot in all kinds of weather, competing on small sailboats in the ocean. And I travel a lot in Iceland on horses every summer, through the wild areas where there's no inhabitants and there are volcanoes.
I want to work with directors who can tell intimate stories in a way that feels universal and with a big enough scope and depth to travel outside of Iceland.
The winters are too long, and there's only one airline, so it's difficult to escape when you feel frustrated or claustrophobic. The audience for our films isn't very large, so it's difficult to support an industry. But, Iceland is beautiful. Sometimes it's hard to imagine living anywhere else.
People talk about Hollywood as a myth, but in reality, when you make Icelandic movies and you want to get them distributed in the U.S., you're not really working with Hollywood. The movies I've been making, the first one I made, I made it with Working Title, but it was financed through Universal, so it became a Hollywood production.
I'm the first Icelandic director who started working on U.S. movies. There are others behind me now, but it's like when Bjork opened the door for Icelandic musicians to work abroad. We're such a closed-off country, but Bjork broke the spell. And I'm glad it was a woman who did it. She showed us we could break this barrier.
I think my sweet spot is to make personal films on not-too-big budgets and also make other people's films, bringing productions to Iceland, upping the business here.
Throughout the history of Iceland, men have been lost at sea; every family in Iceland is connected to that kind of story.
When I was a teenager in Iceland people would throw rocks and shout abuse at me because they thought I was weird. I never got that in London no matter what I wore.
Bjork
There is this stereotype of Icelanders all believing in spirits, and I've played up to that a bit in interviews.
In Reykjavik, Iceland, where I was born, you are in the middle of nature surrounded by mountains and ocean. But you are still in a capital in Europe. So I have never understood why I have to choose between nature or urban.
I love hiking in Iceland most, there are lots of brilliant paths.
I love England. It's no coincidence it's the first place I moved to for a more cosmopolitan life, which is the only thing Iceland lacks.
People are always asking me about eskimos, but there are no eskimos in Iceland.
Maybe it's just a personal thing, but I get so much grounding from Iceland because I know it's always going to be there. I have a very happy, healthy relationship with the country, so it's really easy to go everywhere because I always have Iceland to go back to.
Come on, I'm from Iceland; I don't do hip-hop.
When I was a punk teenager, I rebelled because lots of people in Iceland think that foreigners are evil and that if you don't wear woolen hats and eat sheep, you're betraying your heritage.
Most Icelandic people are really proud to be from there, and we don't have embarrassments like World War II where we were cruel to other people. We don't even have an army. So it's sort of like an all-around good, innocent place.
Most people in Iceland are blonde and blue-eyed. I was nicknamed 'China girl' in school 'cos they thought I looked Asian.
I feel like the people from Iceland have a different relationship with their country than other places. Most Icelandic people are really proud to be from there, and we don't have embarrassments like World War II where we were cruel to other people.
In elections in Iceland, I have always been an abstainer. It seems like politics is such a small bundle of self-important people, who don't have much to do with things I'm interested in.
I hope the Icelandic government grants me political asylum.
The most spectacular anti-lava effort in history occurred on the Icelandic island of Heimaey in 1973.
The communities and countries best at using energy to optimize a microclimate for human life are also the ones whose people have the longest average lifespans. Canada, Sweden, and Iceland - places with inhospitable winter weather - are frontrunners in sustaining human health and life.
When I prepare, I am not messing around. I find the right places, the right people, and the right environment. Iceland is one of those places.
I have two Iceland horses, a very hairy dog called Looney, and a guinea pig.
When I'm in a place like Iceland, I allow myself to take a little more time to divert off onto other paths creatively for a while and see what comes to me.
Remember, the Arctic didn't have any ice. And the Northwest Passage was wide open. They were raising grapes in Scotland for God sakes, had a huge winery. Iceland was a farming community. As some of the glaciers retreated they found villages that were covered with ice.
After filming the first season of 'Poldark,' I went with the cast on a trip to Iceland. We started off in Reykjavik and then went into the mountains and swam in naturally heated pools.
I had this awesome tennis teacher when I was 12 who was Icelandic. He looked like a Viking: long hair, and he was built like a rock and spoke with this accent.
Palestine, as Icelanders see it, includes the Western Wall of the Second Temple, Judaism's holiest site.
I can imagine Iceland becoming a good place to run a controversial Web site. But... Iceland may find itself forced to defend controversial speech.
Most visitors to Iceland tend to spend just a few hours in Reykjavik before moving on to the geological wonders beyond. I think they are missing out.
There is a perfectly good alternative to the European Union - it is called the European Free Trade Association, founded in 1960. Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein are members. E.F.T.A. stands for friendship and cooperation through free trade.
I had been obsessed with the Arthurian legends all my life, and I knew that that would work its way into any trilogy I wrote. I was fascinated by the Eddas, the Norse and Icelandic legends, Odin on the world tree.
My dad played in Iceland and I think went over to Sweden for a couple of years.
It's something we've all been waiting to see happen to Icelandic football - to actually go to the World Cup.
Playing for Iceland, you always find the stats are against you, so I never pay too much attention to them.
Everything is expensive in Iceland, especially food, and especially healthy food.
We have very good fish in Iceland.
I was a center. I was quite athletic, I could shoot okay and I trained a lot. I played with the national team in Iceland.
We need very specific equipment to train for World's Strongest Man and it's very hard to find this equipment in a normal gym. That's why I have my own gym back in Iceland.
I've been training all my life, but probably didn't grow muscle-y until I quit doing basketball. I played for Iceland's under-18 and under-17 team, so it wasn't until probably 2007, 2008 that I start to gain a lot of weight.
