ABSTRACT
J.S.: You were born in Iceland? S.H.: That’s right. I was born in northern Iceland, as a matter of fact. The town is called Akureyri. It was-as Iceland was at the time-rather primitive. It had around 3000 people, and yet it was the second largest town in Iceland: Iceland even now has only 300,000 people, total. And Akureyri was very isolated because there was in 1930 no passable road from Reykjavík, the capital, and the only communication was by boat or by horse. The farmers in that area brought their goods to Akureyri-milk and so on-and this was all by horse-drawn carts. So I remember very vividly horses in the town. At that time there were probably fi ve or seven private cars in town. The owners were primarily medical doctors who needed them for their practice. There was a taxi station, too. So there were some decent roads in the town. The roads in the northern part of the country were mostly one-lane gravel roads.
