Iceland lies in the North Atlantic Ocean. It is the second largest island in Europe. The country has a total area of 103,000 square kilometers and a coastline of about 6,600 km. The island is 300 km wide from north to south, and 500 km across from west to east.

From 1262 to 1944 Iceland was ruled first by Norway and then by Denmark. Centuries of foreign rule, and such things as volcanoes(火山) and the weather, made life very difficult at times for the Icelanders: there was lots of hard work and little change. The situation began to improve during the nineteenth century. Then in 1944 Iceland became an independent republic; since that time it has become a quite rich country where the people enjoy having cars, modern houses and lots of electrical equipment. If you look at the kind of products that Iceland exports today—fish, meat and wool for example—it’s easy to see that both the sea and the land are important to Icelanders. This has been true in fact since the time of the first Icelanders—Vikings from Norway who arrived in AD874.

Some things in the lives of the Icelanders have changed very little—the Icelandic language, for example, 700 years ago the stories called Sagas were first written down, these can still be read in the old language without much difficulty by Icelandic speakers today.

What brings a nation together? Of the four choices—shared values, language, history, and religion (宗教), it’s shared values. In our latest poll (民意调查), 7 out of 16 countries chose values as the greatest factor bringing a nation together, and six preferred language. Both choices scored high in the poll, suggesting that our values and how we express them are closely connected. Still, history was not forgotten in some countries, especially in Mexico and Russia. Even Canada and the United States chose national histories as the second-most important factor that united their people. The biggest surprise? Not one country picked religion as its top choice.

Church and state

Most people who were polled do not connect their religious beliefs to their national pride. Religion ranked last in 13 countries—with France scoring it at 1%, the lowest of all.