THE LONG WAY ROUND — EPISODE 01 ICELAND: FIRE, FISH, AND THE COUNTRY THAT JAILED ITS BANKERS

society, culture, documentary, history · EN

Three hundred and ninety thousand people, no army, one of the oldest parliaments on earth, and a banking collapse ten times the size of the whole economy. A 35-minute deep dive into Iceland — how it was settled, how it survived Denmark and a volcano that killed a fifth of the population, how it beat the Royal Navy over fish, what it eats, how it votes, what it costs, and what daily life there is really like compared with North America. In episode one, host Marcus Vale, historian and economist Dr. Elena Reyes, and travel producer Theo Lindqvist take on Iceland. We start on an empty island in 874 AD and end at seven in the morning in a geothermal swimming pool in the snow, which is, genuinely, where Icelandic public life happens. Along the way: the Althing at Thingvellir and the world's oldest parliament; five centuries of Danish trade monopoly; the Laki eruption of 1783 and the famine that nearly emptied the country; independence by paperwork in 1944; the Cod Wars,