Valuable insight into the experience of people that want to live in a more slow-paced community

Rannveig Ágústa Guðjónsdóttir, a postdoctoral researcher on the project, has been collecting interviews with families from around the country. In early summer, she drove around Iceland to interview people, but she has also taken shorter excursions to the countryside.

During her drive around Iceland, Rannveig usually conducted several interviews per day, as the project aims to gain insight into the experiences of different types of families in different places.

The highlights of the trip, Rannveig says, are the nature, incredible hospitality and impressive people.

"In a few places I was filled with reverence and felt small against the magnificent nature. I felt a real humility. The mountain views and the country's harshness made me feel like I understood my place as a tiny human creature in this land. Descriptions of family life in these places were also more beautiful than I had expected, as I had prepared myself for stories about living far away from community services. Instead, I heard about the privileges of living in the countryside."

Rannveig says she gained valuable insight into the knowledge and experience of people living outside the capital city of Reykjavík: living a more sustainable, slower-paced life, living in a stronger community, and even having a more accessible school system. She also says that she often found it regrettable that this knowledge and experience were not put to better use in the capital.

Rannveig adds:

"There are so many resourceful people doing their best and paying for it financially and by taking on more workload because they want to live in a slower-paced community and because they want things to be sustainable. Even if it is hard and their kids have to sit on a school bus for many hours a day, and they are far from all kinds of services. Even if they have to send their teenagers away to get schooling and pay high prices for flying to Reykjavík for sports events."

The data collection has had an obvious impact on Rannveig, who says she is "tired but grateful".

"It has taken a lot of drive, in all senses of the word. But it also has been extremely interesting to meet these impressive people in this expressive country."

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