- 18 hours ago
The Infinite Explorer with Hannah Fry - Season 1 Episode 5 -
Iceland
Iceland
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00the islands. There's boiling water billowing out of the ground. This is not normal. You don't just
00:06live on the land here, you negotiate with it. It just spurts up and releases into the sky.
00:14Oh, that timing! At which point it immediately turns into steam! Oh no, it doesn't!
00:21My name is Professor Hannah Fry, a mathematician and writer with a lifelong habit of following
00:33my curiosity. Especially when things are deeply, deliciously interesting. Kitchen yoga for you!
00:43Yes! Dionysus would approve. Some people travel to see the world.
00:51I travel to question the forces that shape entire nations.
00:55Welcome to South Korea. I wanted to come here for their optimal urban planning.
01:00It sort of feels quite chaotic, I'll be honest with you.
01:04I want to meet the people with unexpected stories to tell.
01:08I cannot imagine going through that as a young boy. No.
01:12And dig up the peculiar and wonderful treasures that reveal what a country is made of.
01:18I'm looking at it and thinking, what beautiful geometry.
01:24This is my way to make sense of what makes our world go round.
01:29Marooned in the North Atlantic, between North America and mainland Europe, Iceland feels like
01:45the edge of the world. A stark, treeless wilderness, born afire and sculpted by ice.
01:55This island is less than 20 million years old. It's basically a geological toddler.
02:03But humans are newcomers to this story. Just over a millennium ago, a few thousand Vikings
02:09and Celts began to carve out the beginnings of a nation.
02:14As far as the planet goes, Iceland is just this total anomaly.
02:17It's basically what happens if you take a bunch of people, stick them on a floating lava field
02:21and then just leave them alone for a thousand years. It definitely shouldn't work.
02:25Yet this island of roughly 400,000 people punches well above its weight on the world stage.
02:32Drawing millions of visitors each year, pioneering clean energy and rewriting the rule book with its progressive politics.
02:40Here they are, not just thriving, but exporting their culture, their high-end technology, even their yoghurt, to the rest of the world.
02:51What is it about living on an exploding rock in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean that has made Icelandic people this way?
02:58And that question brings me to the Reykjanes Peninsula, where that volcanic temperament is quite literally bubbling to the surface.
03:09Even the name of the place comes with a warning. Reykjanes means smoking point.
03:14This stretch of land straddles the boundary between two tectonic plates, making it home to no less than five active volcano systems,
03:23with an ocean of lava sitting just beneath the surface.
03:27Those plates are pulling apart at around two centimeters a year, and the landscape is scarred with the evidence.
03:34Except they're not drifting gently and politely.
03:38Movement builds up stress in the rock, which holds tension for centuries and then rips apart.
03:46So, for the residents in the fishing town of Grindavik, that sits on top of the boundary, life is mostly quiet.
03:55Until it isn't.
03:59So did you have a good flight?
04:01It was, yeah, very, I mean the landing was, you know, windy.
04:05Windy yesterday, yeah. It was actually a yellow warning.
04:08Local engineer Horne knows firsthand what can happen when the earth opens up without a warning.
04:14Perfect, thank you very much.
04:16She's working with her colleague Jon inside the local sports hall, where, on the 10th of November, 2023,
04:22it wasn't football that provided the drama.
04:28Yeah, I've got down, I think.
04:29Oh my gosh.
04:30Should we have a, have a look?
04:34Oh, wow.
04:35Wow.
04:36That's something.
04:38You can really see how it's like the earth being ripped apart.
04:41Exactly.
04:43The chasm, around 20 meters deep in parts, opened up in less than 24 hours.
04:50What actually happened then?
04:51Like, there was a day when this was just a normal sports hall.
04:54Yeah.
04:55Not very long ago.
04:56Most people just describe it as they were sitting the whole day on the top of a, of a boiling pot on a stove.
05:03So it was constant rumbling.
05:05You're so chill about this.
05:06You're so like, sorry, a hole opened up in the middle of the earth.
05:11That's what's happened when you have a country that is constantly being spread apart.
05:15Eventually you have to open up a hole.
05:17Over the course of three days, cracks and holes appeared all over town.
05:24Smaller earth movements aren't unusual here, but this was something else entirely.
05:29A sign that the region had entered a far more volatile phase of seismic activity.
05:34For 800 years, they filled up all this tension.
05:38And then you get this period where the tension was released.
05:41I mean, now in that period, and that will take like, you know, three to four hundred years.
05:46But it's not continuous throughout.
05:50The signs of Iceland's explosive temperament aren't hard to find.
05:55So Horn is taking me three kilometers north across the ancient lava fields for a closer look.
06:01It's sort of almost extraterrestrial, this landscape.
06:07Yes, incredible.
06:09Like the cracks in Grindavík, this lava is the handiwork of Iceland's 800-year-old mood swings.
06:16This is lava from the last period, the period from 1210 to 1240.
06:24As the tectonic plates slowly pull apart, cracks form, some breaking the surface while others open underground.
06:32Shifting pressure drives magma upward, widening the cracks until the ground gives way and lava bursts through the surface.
06:41I don't know if you can see the steam that's coming off the landscape back there and then the spout that's right next to it.
06:50So a few months ago, that opened up and it was spewing out hot lava from the earth.
06:57The latest cycle of volcanic activity started in 2021, and the peninsula hasn't had much of a breather since.
07:0412 eruptions and counting, which is a bit of a problem given that this area is the most densely populated region in the country.
07:14Do you want to have any hope of understanding how that lava is going to flow down this terrain?
07:21You need some very delicious physics models and equations to be able to do that.
07:25It is Horn's job to calculate where and when those eruptions are likely to start and what the impact of them might be.
07:35No easy task, but because red hot molten lava moves like a liquid, she can borrow equations used to model how rivers flow with a few volcanic tweaks to forecast where lava might travel.
07:48And in November 2023, Horn's model put Grindavik at risk of being buried by lava.
07:56So she designed a network of defensive barriers, shielding the power station, protecting the town and also the world famous Blue Lagoon Spa, heated ironically by the same magma that was threatening to destroy it.
08:11The construction started in November, but then the first eruption was in December. It was basically a race against time when we were doing this.
08:24They worked around the clock, moving two and a half million cubic meters of soil, rock and old lava to build over 12 kilometers of defensive barriers.
08:34But they were up against over 150 million cubic meters of lava.
08:45Look at that. It goes over the road.
08:49Everyone that was going to the Blue Lagoon before this happened drove this road.
08:54Six eruptions in nine months left huge swathes of the peninsula swamped in lava.
09:00In some places piling up to 35 meters thick.
09:05You can really get a sense of the crust on the top that formed and called and then cracked like a big slab of it there.
09:11You kind of got the layers where some bits have stayed liquid for longer.
09:15And here you can see this right here has been squeezed out, making this very beautiful swarm.
09:21But that also must be part of what makes it difficult to predict if it's like sort of solid, sort of liquid.
09:26Exactly.
09:27There's no guarantees.
09:28No.
09:30Each eruption gave Horn more data to refine her lava flow models.
09:36You can see here the fissure.
09:38Okay.
09:39And we can see the simulation.
09:41And you can see the outlines, that is the actual outline of the...
09:45Where it ended up?
09:46Yes.
09:47No way!
09:48But this is...
09:49Your model's amazing.
09:50Yeah, it is.
09:51When you say, okay, this is where the barrier needs to be.
09:54This is how high it needs to be.
09:55This is where it needs to go.
09:56Mm-hmm.
09:57Is everybody just like, okay, yeah, on board?
09:59In the beginning, we didn't know exactly what to expect.
10:02Many people thought that the lava wouldn't reach this far.
10:05The wonderful Blue Lagoon want to have their hotel and the Blue Lagoon open and everything.
10:10And they understand that.
10:12In November 2024, the earth split just four kilometers away, sending lava surging towards the iconic beauty spot, destroying everything in its path.
10:22Within 24 hours, it had reached the car park.
10:26Some buildings were damaged, but Horn's barriers held.
10:30The flow was largely contained.
10:32You saved the Blue Lagoon from being gone.
10:33Yeah, basically, you know, it would have passed through, yeah.
10:35So, yeah.
10:36Did you feel a little bit like going?
10:37I told you so.
10:39I'd be down there being like, thank you!
10:40Thank me!
10:41Yeah, but I haven't said anything.
10:43Even with people like Horn helping to minimize the damage, there are probably centuries more eruptions on the cards.
10:58Everyone here knows they're just going to have to keep their shovels handy.
11:03The thing about this patch of earth is that it is giving these regular, quite violent reminders of our place in the world.
11:13And I think that Icelandic people just feel that more than the rest of us.
11:19There is something about this mindset that runs deep.
11:22After all, the last big volcanic cycle began only a few hundred years after the first settlers arrived.
11:29And luckily for us, we don't have to guess what they made of it.
11:33Because the Icelandic are the sort of people who like to write things down.
11:42A thousand or so years ago, this freezing rock in the middle of the Atlantic,
11:46far from any other civilizations, somehow had a certain appeal.
11:52There was land to claim, seas to fish, and a strategic base from which to go forth and explore the rest of the world.
12:00In short, enough to tempt thousands of Viking settlers from Scandinavia in the 9th century.
12:08They stopped off in Ireland and Scotland, abducting and enslaving women and some men to take to their destination.
12:16And of all of the places they discovered, there was one that held particular significance.
12:2380 kilometres north-east along the dramatic fault line that splits the country in two, is Stingville.
12:31You have to imagine all of these Viking men and Celtic women coming across this incredible site.
12:36They thought it was trolls that had been frozen in time.
12:40Legends and trolls aside, what they did next was surprisingly democratic.
12:46This is a group of people outside of the rule of Europe.
12:50And so after they'd been here about 60 years or so, in 930 A.D.,
12:55they decide they're not going to appoint a king.
12:57They're going to have a whole bunch of chieftains instead.
12:59The chieftains had a yearly gathering known as the Ulfing, where they settled disputes and declared new laws.
13:07And as for where to put their parliament, they put it here.
13:11Because it acts as this perfect, natural amphitheatre.
13:15Hello!
13:17All those in favour, raise your axes!
13:20Most of medieval Europe ran on monarchy, bloodlines and the occasional beheading.
13:25But Iceland, left to its own devices, chose something different.
13:30Debate, law, collective rule.
13:33And what's even more surprising than the existence of the Ulfing is how much we know about it.
13:39Even though the site itself was left almost entirely unmarked,
13:44the stories survived, passed down and written out generation after generation.
13:50Which makes a lot more sense when you get to the capital Reykjavik, 40 kilometres away.
13:57It is home to around 140,000 residents, a rich Viking heritage,
14:02and enough bookshops to make a librarian weep with happiness.
14:07I think that 50% is the stuff in my house is books.
14:10What I'm looking for are copies of the Icelandic sagas.
14:15A series of 42 manuscripts that tell the lives and adventures and dramas of the island's early settlers.
14:22Some are quick little fables, others hundreds of pages.
14:27And they are unlike any other books of the time.
14:30All of these sagas, they were written down in the 13th and 14th century.
14:36And this was the time when the rest of Europe was, you know, busy copying out the Bible or writing other religious texts.
14:43But because Iceland was relatively isolated from all of that,
14:47they were just free to write down stories about normal people in Norse rather than in Latin.
14:53The old thing is brought vividly to life with descriptions of how each summer,
14:58people trekked miles to camp at the rock and hear laws being recited.
15:03And then, of course, there's the drama of daily life of those early settlers.
15:08The sagas are stories of honour and of revenge and of land disputes and blood killings.
15:14You know, it's sort of like if Game of Thrones was set among sheep farmers.
15:17That's the sort of vibe.
15:18There was almost certainly some creative license, but most of the sagas were grounded in real events.
15:26One describes a volcanic eruption so vividly, ash blanketing the sky for almost a year,
15:33that people thought it was a punishment from the gods.
15:37And because these tales and Icelandic lore were recorded in the local language,
15:42an unusually high number of people also learned to read.
15:45But these aren't just stories from the past, they're still shaping how Icelanders see themselves.
15:52And if you want to understand that legacy, it helps to meet someone who lives it.
15:57A real-life modern Viking, or at least someone who dresses like one.
16:02Local tour guide Hordor wants to show me his view of the country.
16:05So this is going to be your horse.
16:08This is a Yolbur.
16:10Which is absolutely beautiful.
16:12Hordor's horses are the direct descendants of those brought over by Iceland's earliest settlers.
16:18Good boy.
16:20So I'm going full Viking.
16:22Can I have a cape as well?
16:23I mean, if we're going to do the service, we're going to do it properly, right?
16:29So now I'm going to take you to the most beautiful place in Iceland.
16:33Yeah? Yes.
16:35I mean, I'll be honest with you, that is a tough ask, right?
16:38Because the bar is high.
16:40We are starting at Landegersendul, a stunning 80 kilometers of volcanic black sand.
16:49This is beautiful.
16:50No one here.
16:52No tracks, nothing.
16:53It's incredible.
16:56There's a lot of reference in the Cyrus about reading into nature, animals.
17:04A lot of that is, of course, lost in our modern life, etc.
17:07But I like to think that we are distilled here.
17:11I mean, you sort of are living quite a similar life.
17:14I know you've got Wi-Fi.
17:16Of course, the sagas weren't just about nature or volcanic doom and gloom.
17:22They also included those stories of the traditional Viking pastimes of raiding and murder.
17:28The clan of families, they gather 99 riders and they come riding down the river that you just rode.
17:35Right.
17:36This farm was more or less built like a fortress so they could defend themselves, resulting in that the attackers put fire on the farm.
17:46Well, they burnt it down.
17:47Yes.
17:48With them inside.
17:49Yes.
17:50So that's, of course, the most cowardless way a Viking can kill anybody.
17:55It might not look like much, but then again, neither did the parliament, and that didn't stop it shaping a nation.
18:01What is your connection to these stories, like emotionally?
18:06You know, I am very appreciated to be sort of part of this even today.
18:10We do not have the palaces here, we do not have the bridges, but what we do have, we have our sagas.
18:17Like the stories are your castles.
18:19Yes, exactly.
18:20Yeah.
18:21Exactly.
18:22That's true, actually.
18:23Because there aren't these ancient ruins like you find in other places.
18:25No, no.
18:27But you do have the stories.
18:28Yeah.
18:29Iceland's literary legacy continues.
18:33This is a country where writing novels is practically a national sport.
18:39It has been said, one in ten Icelanders will publish a book in their lifetimes.
18:44And their habit of storytelling, to explain, connect and imagine doesn't just fill bookshelves.
18:50It has helped to steer their country through some turbulent times.
18:53times. Iceland might be a land of fire, but it is just as much a world of ice. One-tenth of the
19:10country is buried beneath glaciers. The largest ice cap of all is Vatnajurko. It spreads for
19:18thousands of square kilometers, and near the mouth of the ocean, the ice slowly breaks into
19:23a frozen lagoon that tells a story of modern Iceland. Over a million people visited the glacier
19:32last year, which is quite a feat, given that the whole of Iceland only had 300,000 visitors two
19:40decades ago. Let me take you back to 2008. The global financial crisis has just happened,
19:46and Iceland is not doing well. And that is because, at the time, Iceland's economy relied
19:54heavily on banking and financial services, and they fell hard. Three national banks go under,
20:01and their GDP drops by 7%. As the corona collapsed, import costs rose, and even more businesses
20:10folded. And then, just two years later, that volcano that no one can pronounce erupts, shutting
20:17down all of air traffic across Europe. Iceland is right there, present, on people's televisions,
20:24in people's minds, and not in a good way. But rather than bailing out the banks, as many other
20:31countries did, Iceland let the system collapse, and then used the rubble to build something new.
20:37And that is the moment that they decide to do one of the best PR jobs in history.
20:43It's amazing, really. Have a look at this, yeah?
20:47They start putting out adverts featuring real Icelandic people, and their slightly wry,
20:53slightly unusual sense of humour, demonstrating the beauty of their landscape in order to encourage
21:00tourists. By today's standards, these videos might seem quaint. But back then, they were a revelation.
21:06They lit up the internet. The whole country played along, and it became one of the very first things
21:12to go viral, in the days when social media was still just finding its feet.
21:18It totally works. We know that you want to experience it all like a local.
21:25These clips are often credited with kick-starting the Icelandic tourist boom.
21:29Awesome. By 2024, visitors outnumbered the locals nearly six to one, and tourism supplied almost
21:3940% of export earnings. Which, by the way, is about five times more than any other European
21:46country. Tranquil local oddities like this glacial lagoon are now world famous. But the crowds
21:54aren't the only new thing around here. The lagoon itself didn't even exist a hundred years ago.
22:00Hello. Hello. That's so cool.
22:04And park rangers Susanna and Thorhatlur are witnesses to these latest changes.
22:09This gigantic hunk of ice that's just bobbing around. And that's because it's melting as it's going, right?
22:18Yeah. Yeah. So the ice is kind of blue when it's really compact. And then when the sun is shining on,
22:23it makes like these holes that it's melting. Oh, yeah. So a lot of this has come from the glacier itself?
22:29Yes. The glacier was at its biggest at 1890. And after that, it started to retreat. And the lagoon,
22:38yeah, formed in 1930. It looks like it's melting. Have you guys worked out how long it will be there
22:46for? At this rate, they are melting right now. It's going to be around 100 years. Wow.
22:51How do Icelandic people feel about the losses, the glaciers? They're pretty sad, of course. Also
22:59because the glaciers, they put a lot of pressure on the land. And we have volcanoes under the ice cap.
23:07And then when we lose the ice cap, then there is more eruptions. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of
23:14like activity. Yeah. So yeah, that's what people are worried about. Is there something like a tiny bit
23:22ironic about us sitting on this lagoon and talking about the effects of climate change and the retreat
23:27in Glacier? And then there's being boatloads of tourists getting on sort of arriving in their diesel
23:31powered coaches. Yeah. There was this presentation that we used to do when we were talking to people
23:39like, what can we do? Nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something. And then we kind of
23:44ended it with like, it's really good to travel less. But also please come to Iceland. Yeah. Yeah.
23:53Climate change is an unsentimental foe. But the Icelandic response begins with a well-known phrase,
24:00something that demonstrates their characteristically humorous way of coping.
24:06We've always had to just get on with it. No matter what situations we are in volcanoes,
24:14weather, just, I don't know. Just figure out a way. Yeah. Basically.
24:18Do you think that that's part of this story? Yeah. Yes. That's everybody's mantra.
24:26Everything will work itself out. No one here pretends to have a solution to climate change.
24:33They're just doing what has, by necessity, become a bit of a habit for the people who live here,
24:39learning to outlast trouble. I think there is something quite Icelandic about that. You know,
24:46like dealing with the hand that you've been given and trying to make the most of what you've got.
24:52Getting through hardship shows grit, but there is another test of character for the people of this
24:57country. What do you do when the resources keep coming?
25:05Iceland isn't the easiest place to call home. And not just because of the eruptions,
25:10the earthquakes and glaciers. In winter, the temperature here drops to well below freezing
25:17and daylight lasts barely four or five hours. And that's the good bit.
25:22Almost everybody in Iceland, they live around the edge of the country. And that's because in the middle,
25:29the soil is so porous, this volcanic rock, right, that the rain just drains right through it and
25:35nothing can grow. That leaves three quarters of the country as practically inhospitable. But what lies
25:44beneath the rock is far more welcoming. This is Hengetler, where a massive power station plugs straight
25:52into the planet's heating system. Normally when you see big plumes coming out of a power station,
25:57you're like, oh, that looks like terrible pollution. But here it's just water. Well, 99.63% of it.
26:05And what they're doing here is they've drilled down three kilometres into the earth, where is this giant
26:12reservoir of water? Extremely hot water because of all of the magma that's moving along underneath it.
26:19And when they drill that hole, this water then comes up under high pressure. And as it emerges at
26:25the surface, turns into steam in a flash, which is what they use to power the steam turbines,
26:32giving them free unlimited electricity. Maybe not free, but definitely very cheap.
26:38Until the 1970s, Iceland ran almost entirely on imported oil. But then global prices skyrocketed,
26:46and they had a rethink, and turned to geothermal and hydroelectric power to warm itself instead.
26:52Fast forward to today, and 100% of Iceland's electricity comes from sustainable resources.
26:59You can find crops thriving in huge greenhouses, and geothermal water heats 90% of homes.
27:06In Reykjavik, the leftovers are even directed under the streets to keep them ice-free in winter.
27:13Call it underfloor heating for an entire city.
27:17But it turns out that abundant energy changes habits as well as heating bills.
27:23And apparently, the farm next door is a case in point.
27:26All right, we're all set.
27:28Even though Kiddy, who runs operations here, is not exactly your typical farmer.
27:34We're going to go and look at Godzilla and King Kong.
27:37Yeah, because they're absolute monsters.
27:40And here they are. They're pretty cool, right?
27:44Really cool.
27:46Godzilla and King Kong are tanks filled with algae.
27:50Hundreds of kilos of it, mixed with salt water and infused with carbon dioxide bubbles,
27:56supplied by the power station next door.
27:59So is the algae in here?
28:01Yeah.
28:03Kiddy believes microalgae have an important role to play in the sustainability of food production.
28:10What is it that's special about algae?
28:12For agricultural food production, most of what you're growing is infrastructure,
28:19because you don't eat the roots, you don't eat the stems.
28:22A little bit of corn at the end, maybe.
28:23Exactly.
28:25Algae, they're a single cellular organism.
28:28We can use 100% of the biomass.
28:32The farm can produce up to 150 tons of microalgae a year,
28:37using up to 500 times less water and one and a half thousand times less land than traditional crops.
28:45And it's harvested year-round. No seasons, no pause button.
28:50How are you powering it?
28:52The power plant was here first, and then we created the system around everything that this power plant has to offer.
29:00The power plant supplies the cold water for the algae to sit in and the energy to run lights perfectly,
29:06tuned to the exact wavelengths it thrives on.
29:09Even the power plant's waste carbon dioxide is put to good use, feeding the algae to lock it inside.
29:18So it's unbelievably clean. It's not even carbon neutral, it's carbon negative.
29:22It's carbon negative.
29:24This is a food source with impeccable green credentials.
29:28And the spirulina algae in these tanks isn't just sustainable.
29:32It's as protein-rich as meat, packed with fibre, good fats, vitamins and minerals.
29:38There is nothing not to love.
29:40Oh, wait. Apart from one tiny thing.
29:43The problem with spirulina is it tastes bad and it smells even worse.
29:50I mean, you're really selling it.
29:53But Kitty has thought about this, and he washes his algae in pure Icelandic water to get rid of the unpalatable elements.
30:02It doesn't taste of anything.
30:03I don't. There's no taste. There's some extremely weird texture.
30:07It is like eating mud.
30:09Shall we just say there's room for improvement?
30:12For now, spirulina is a protein supplement, but one day it could be a meat alternative.
30:17Do you think there's something quite Icelandic about this endeavour?
30:24It's ridiculously Icelandic.
30:27If something goes bad, we're just going to fix it and we're going to make it better.
30:31And that, I believe, is very Icelandic.
30:35I sort of wonder where that comes from.
30:37I mean, what do you think it is about Icelandic people that makes them have that level of grit?
30:44We're a tiny little nation, but still we believe that we can do things that cannot be done anywhere else in the world.
30:54This attitude is working. Power-hungry businesses are flocking here.
31:01Like aluminium processing, where nearly 40% of the product cost comes from the electricity needed to create it.
31:08That means big profits and away from the mood swings of global fuel markets, the country is building on a stable economic base.
31:17There is something really unusual going on here. I mean, if you think, as a country, you have just unlimited access to this very clean energy source.
31:27I mean, that does really change the equation. Whereas in other countries, you'd have to worry about pollution and the expense of it.
31:35I think here you have that freedom to be a bit more creative, to try out these honestly quite wacky innovations.
31:45And that has given Iceland power on the world stage, exporting their geothermal expertise to countries like Kenya and China.
31:54But it's not only energy where Iceland is achieving where many other nations struggle.
31:59They are also making waves in shaping a fairer society.
32:10With nearly 5,000 kilometres of coastline, fishing isn't just a tradition here, it's a way of life.
32:16And here in Riff, the catch comes with a twist.
32:20If I know anything about Iceland, it's that they really like fish.
32:28And it's very cold.
32:29And that means they spend a lot of time in these little boats, absolutely freezing.
32:34Especially in winter, when it's incredibly violent, it's incredibly risky.
32:39And, to be honest, not the kind of place that you would normally expect to find a woman.
32:46But this is Iceland.
32:48Back in the 1920s, a group of fisherwomen from the town of Siglufla formed a women's union.
32:54They were known as the Herring Girls, and they didn't just gut fish.
32:58They organised marches, protests, and a historic moment that saw 90% of Iceland's women go on strike.
33:07Even housewives joined in.
33:08Many dropped the kids off at their husbands' workplaces and left.
33:13And it turns out, nothing focuses a nation like an office full of toddlers.
33:19This was the 24th of October 1975, and it was a disaster.
33:24Shops had to shut down, banks had to close, fish factories had to stop doing their work.
33:29And all the men just didn't know what to do with themselves.
33:31Sales of sausages went through the roof.
33:33And they decided to call it the Long Friday, because of how insufferable it was to live through.
33:38It was a turning point that changed Icelandic society forever.
33:42In 1980, the nation elected Vígdís Finnbógaðr, a divorced single mother, as its leader.
33:50Iceland became the first country in the world to democratically elect a female president.
33:56They have been very good at keeping up the pressure.
33:59So on the anniversary of the great Woman's Day Off, as they call it,
34:03they demonstrate the pay gap by walking out of work at the moment when a man would hit a woman's daily earnings.
34:12In 2005, this was 2.08pm.
34:15By 2010, it got to 2.25pm.
34:18And by 2016, it was 2.38pm.
34:22The plan is, hopefully, that they'll stay for a full day by 2030.
34:26OK, it is not perfect.
34:30But for the last 15 years, Iceland has ledged the world in gender equality rankings.
34:35Lovely to meet you.
34:36And fisherwoman Dora is still pushing things forward.
34:40So have you had the same boat for years?
34:41Yeah, it's like, it's the same year as I was born.
34:45Really?
34:45It's like we have the same age.
34:4884.
34:4884.
34:4982, so I'm turning 43.
34:51That's a shock.
34:53For the last 13 years, Dora has captained her family's fishing business.
34:58And today, she's helping me find my sea legs.
35:01Oh my gosh, I'm trying to imagine being out on the ocean and this.
35:05It's like, I can imagine this being very scary in bad water.
35:10Historically, women working in the fishing industry is nothing new.
35:13But very few take on the top job of captain.
35:17There are some girls that have taken the license but haven't taken the step to go out by themselves.
35:23Yeah.
35:23And I'm always like, patting them up to do it.
35:28But finally we do it and people listen to us.
35:31And today, it is me listening to Dora.
35:34So now we are going to see if we can catch any fish today.
35:38So we need to put this one down and the hooks one by one.
35:42Okay.
35:43Are there rules about how much you're allowed to fish?
35:45I only can fish like 750 kilos per day of cut.
35:49So 750 kilos?
35:51Yeah.
35:51With just these two?
35:53No, I have four.
35:55I don't think I'm in any danger of reaching the fishing quotas.
35:59But fishing prowess here shouldn't come as a surprise.
36:02In a country that juggles volcanoes and glaciers and weather with an attitude problem,
36:08people get good at staying afloat, literally and otherwise.
36:13We are isolated.
36:14Everybody had to go out and work.
36:16We haven't stopped fighting for ourselves and like proving there are no man jobs and woman jobs.
36:23Where do you think she comes from then?
36:27Maybe from the vikings or something?
36:30The fighting in our blood, we never stop fighting.
36:34The same spirit now powers the economy.
36:3875% of women work much higher than the European average, which is 51.
36:44I think we have a fish.
36:46Yep.
36:46You have to be strong.
36:48All the way up.
36:49Today, 58% of university graduates here are women and the parliament is almost a 50-50 split.
36:55And these clubs are too big for me.
36:57Yeah.
36:57You've got to work with what you have to do.
36:59What was the phrase?
37:03Dora is one of the many women here pushing the boundaries in search for equality.
37:08You have to kiss him.
37:09I'm going to kiss him.
37:10Yeah.
37:11And let him go.
37:12Yeah.
37:15Yeah?
37:15You have to do it.
37:16Oh, God!
37:17It's a tradition.
37:22Okay.
37:22Bye then, guys.
37:23He lives to see another day.
37:26I'm not sure the fish enjoyed that.
37:28I know I didn't.
37:30Dora's version of community is all heart and hard work.
37:34And in Iceland, that spirit runs deep.
37:37Because, as it turns out, they are a nation connected in more ways than most.
37:45When the first settlers arrived over a thousand years ago,
37:48they found warm geothermal pools perfect for bathing, relaxing, and swapping gossip.
37:55And, to be honest, not a lot has changed.
37:58So, I am making a stop at Iceland's oldest swimming pool.
38:02And I'm meeting local Elma, who has spent a lot of time tracing the roots of Icelandic identity.
38:09Starting with her family tree.
38:14I've tried to trace my family history, and I can go back maybe three or four generations.
38:18But there's something different here, right?
38:20Yeah.
38:20I think my father actually traced well more than a thousand years back.
38:24A thousand years?
38:25Yeah.
38:26It's a hobby for many Icelandic people.
38:28So, I think we have a lot of registrations, church books where everything was written down.
38:34Very valuable information regarding where we come from.
38:39That is kind of extraordinary, Debbie.
38:40You have a country of people who all understand how they're interconnected with one another.
38:47On a remote island with a shared ancestry, no one asks if you're related, just how recently.
38:54I'm not suggesting that, you know, you're cousins with everybody in Iceland.
38:58But in a way, you sort of are.
38:59Yes, we are.
39:00Yeah.
39:01I mean, I'm related to my husband.
39:03Are you?
39:04Yeah.
39:04And if you do end up marrying your second cousin, third cousin, fourth cousin,
39:09does it have the same sort of stigma attached to it?
39:11No.
39:12Well, second, yes, but fourth, no.
39:15I mean, how could we?
39:19We would just all be walking in shame, wouldn't we?
39:21I mean, people check.
39:25Yeah.
39:26How?
39:27It's the Icelandinca book, the book of Icelanders.
39:33It is named after a medieval saga of family lineages, which is fitting since it now contains
39:39over a million of them.
39:40Launched in 2003, it is a publicly available database that gives Icelanders the ultimate
39:46ancestry cheat sheet.
39:49So, okay, if I just divide my husband.
39:54In a country this size, it doesn't take much.
39:57A name, a birthday, and suddenly you have mapped out a whole bloodline.
40:01So, your father, and then back one generation, two generations, but eight generations back,
40:06you share ancestors.
40:08Yeah.
40:09Wow.
40:09So, actually, in the 1800s, you shared a relative.
40:13It's not that long ago.
40:15No.
40:15But enough that you don't need to worry about your genetics.
40:18Absolutely.
40:20While being slightly related to everyone might make dating a little awkward, it does have its
40:26upsides, because as far as scientists like population geneticists Elisa are concerned,
40:31it means Iceland has a DNA dataset that is unlike anywhere else on Earth.
40:38Why does studying the Icelandic population give you more of an advantage than studying,
40:43I don't know, just like a sample of people from anywhere else?
40:46There are a few things that come together to make this a really valuable study system.
40:50Iceland has a really unique genetic history because you don't have a lot of genetic variation
40:55entering the population.
40:56Everyone's sort of come from the same source.
40:58Because they all have the same history.
41:00Yes, exactly.
41:01I see.
41:01Because the Icelandic population has endured famine and natural disasters,
41:06you have this series of contractions in the population that then leads
41:11to this genetic homogeneous-ness where everyone's
41:15very similar to each other, and so the differences really stand out.
41:18So, is it almost like the Icelandic population sort of acts as its own control group?
41:23Yeah, yeah, exactly.
41:25And with this natural control group, it is much easier to link specific genes to different diseases.
41:32One of the main goals is to find variants that give us clues into how we can treat diseases.
41:38So things like Alzheimer's or heart disease or schizophrenia.
41:43So you might take a bunch of families where Alzheimer's is not present and compare them to a
41:50group of families where Alzheimer's is present and try to find variants that are in higher frequency in one group than in another group.
41:56This can accelerate the speed of discovery for diseases like Alzheimer's, genes linked to which
42:03have already been found in the Icelandic population.
42:06If we can target the product of a gene that we know is connected to Alzheimer's,
42:13then we have a treatment for this condition.
42:17A treatment not just for people here, but all around the world.
42:21I mean, this is quite an altruistic, I mean, it's sort of a gift that Iceland's giving the world in a way.
42:27Yes. Yeah, it is. A big proportion of the population is participating.
42:34In most countries, large-scale DNA studies struggle for volunteers.
42:39In Iceland, over half of the adult population said yes.
42:42I think there's something really interesting about an entire population of people who are willing to
42:48be the petri dish for the world, you know, like there's a real generosity to that.
42:52Icelanders don't just share a landscape, they share a bloodline, one vast ongoing family history.
43:00And I think you can sort of feel that kindred bond between everyone.
43:07Whatever the hardship, there is an unspoken solidarity, a collective determination.
43:17But then on top of that, whether it's in the way that they approach creating energy or
43:22growing food or, you know, in social issues and how progressive they are,
43:26I think you can really still feel that sense of them forging their own path.
43:32And you can sense that that gives rise to that tetaretes, right, that, that, that,
43:37that sanguine nature that everyone here has.
43:42And I think when you sum up all of those bits, I mean, every country in the world feels unique.
43:49But I think Iceland is kind of unique in its uniqueness.
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