How Many People Speak Icelandic?

If you fly Icelandair (yes Kathy), you can stopover in Reykjavik for free.  The stop is free, but Reykjavik is not an inexpensive place.  We spentTuesday there.  Here's a glimpse.

Jonas Hallgrimson is the Bard of Iceland.  We didn't know that when we saw a statue of him in the park, or when we went to the church named for him.  But I found out as I was checking up on the photos and who the people were.








Here's the organ inside.

Bertel Thorvaldson was the subject of another statue in that same park.  The two statues were of a poet and and artist - not war heroes.  What a pleasant surprise.









And there were flowers in the park.  I'm not sure what these are, but the remind me of the false sunflower we saw in the Anchorage garden tour - but those had variegated leaves.










We stopped in one of the many coffee shops for a snack and wifi.

This blue bike was being used as a gate to block cars from this street.


The Art Museum offered some interesting contemporary Icelandic artists.  This is  Erro's Bureau of Propaganda Fucky Strike








The artist who paints with birds is Helgi Porgies Fridjonsson. (There are some Icelandic letters in his name that I didn't try to duplicate here.  The passengers are getting off the plane we're taking to Paris and I don't know how much time I have so I'm just going to get as much up as I can.)


[I couldn't find anything useful about either of these contemporary Icelandic artists.  Maybe I needed to use the Icelandic alphabet when I googled them.]

The art museum is in a former storage building for fishing boats.  It sits on reclaimed land.  This is and exterior inner court.

There's a lot of construction going on in downtown Reykjavik.  But like Anchorage, they probably have to get as much done in the summer months as possible.




















And finally on the bus back to the airport.  They said this was a lava field.



How many people speak Icelandic?  I'm not sure.  Iceland has  329,000 residents.  Wikipedia says says 93% of them speak Icelandic.  And then there Icelanders who have emigrated to other countries. But it can't be much more than 349,000.