The number one idea we need to borrow from Iceland is their traffic lights. Such a simple thing and so useful. Two seconds before a red light turns green the yellow light joins the red light. No honking when the guy in front is caught off guard because he isn't. On the downside it would have some drag racing appeal but I can live with that.
If you go to the "Blue Lagoon" hot springs -- which every tourist must do -- do not go on the weekend. We went in the middle of the week and the water was bathtub warm and trip-to-the-hospital hot depending on how close you were to the hot water output (I'm told it was turned into a giant concrete swimming pool ten years ago to tame the vagaries of nature). The hot end was so hot we never got all the way there and we couldn't even see the end through the steam. The springs are between the city (there is only one city, Reykjavik, also the capital) and the airport so we hit it again on Sunday on our way out of town. There was no steam rising from the water and to find hot water you had to get so close to the outlet a wind gust would blow boiling water and sulfur steam into your face (not recommended). It seems they turn down the temp for tourists so if you want more than luke warm go on an off day.
The municipal hot water is pumped directly from the ground. This volcano nation has plenty of free hot water so they use it unfiltered. One week isn't enough to get used to the sulfur stink but apparently a lifetime is. The only reason the locals even know about the smell is because every visitor asks about it. Geothermal energy is everywhere (260C liquid water has a lot of umph). Because electricity is so cheap there is a booming market in aluminum smelting. How cheap? They ship in bauxite from the Southern hemisphere and then ship out the finished aluminum to the world. Selling part of their volcano juice for export isn't terribly popular. One of the local sprinters took an hour off to attend a protest in the city/capital.
Everything over there is planned by an organ of the state. This is much less of a problem than in the US because the population of 280 thousand Icelanders is fairly homogeneous. Rousseau put the maximum population of a functioning [socialist] state at 200k and predicated even that number on everyone wanting the same stuff (the Social Contract). Iceland is much closer to that than any individual US state. The 200k number was small even back then (1760s) as the soon-to-be-free thirteen colonies had two million residents.
It is hard to say what is planned and what would have been there anyway. Downtown is a mix of commercial and residential. A ten minute walk from downtown things turn into a mix of commercial, residential, and industrial. CCP Games is in a building next to a wharf and was offered to them by the planners. The plan is to supplement some of Iceland's main but declining industry by bunching together some high tech outfits.
Beef is a bit of suck in Iceland. Because of its fragile ecology most meat imports are verboten (that's the party line but between you, me, and the locals protectionism isn't worth it if they can't get an edible steak). Sheep do much better on the stark landscape so most of the red meat is lamb. Of course most of the meat in the fishing nation isn't red meat at all. Eat fresh fish every time you can but only try the dried varieties as a tourist attraction. Cod jerky smells a bit like feet but tastes OK. Dried shark smells a lot like feet and tastes exactly like dried asshole.
Beer is a recent import to the island; less than 20 years as I heard the story. They had a bit of a prohibitionist sentiment and when the laws against liquor were repealed (1935) the laws against beer and wine weren't. No one said anything for fifty years or so. The homeland drink is "Brennivin" a schnapps that tastes of cumin. The literal translation is "burn wine" (presumably because it is 80 proof) but the airport duty free advertises it as "Black Death." It tastes of the same family as Jager and Rumplemans.
One of the CCP guys bitched about the fact that Danish is taught along side Icelandic and English. The Danes did a bit of raping and pillaging in Iceland so as a point of pride he said it is common for kids to only put half a heart into the Danish classes. I asked him if his own children were learning Danish (they are). I asked him why, if it was unpopular, he didn't get the curriculum changed. He replied that the curriculum is the curriculum, period. Such a small country! He probably either knows the president or knows someone who does and yet trying to change a thing as small as the elementary school curriculum is anathema to him. Weirder still because he is a highly dynamic and high tech guy who knows quite well how to please a constituency. I told him about home schooling and he gave me the confused dog look (angled head, though the perked ears aren't possible cross species). He asked how homeschooling could possibly work and why it was even legal. Differences of scale are hard to convey in a place where the country, state, and city are all one and the same (300M people versus 280k people). My lone home county in the great commonwealth of Pennsylvania has over one and a half times the population of the entire country of Iceland. Issues of scale indeed.
No trees. The dark days of the winter solstice offer twenty hours of black and four of twilight. Patches of stilted evergreens stand so alone that they were obviously planted. Iceland has no mosquitos so there must be an ecological cascade that prevents a full range of the critters required to spread seeds and cross pollinate genes. I expect the man made stands are homogeneous and occasionally get wiped out in a single blight.
Strip clubs? Don't bother. Our last night we did a crawl through every door that was open to us (which wasn't all of them, a small trans-continental squad of forgeners is easy to spot as foreign and about 10% of the places told us we weren't welcome). Included in the crawl was ten minutes in a strip club which was slightly less naked than a typical beach. I blame it on the fact that the smallest paper bill is about $8. Dollar coins are useless so the girls just kind of walk around for a bit in lingere. The bra is loosed as a final act as they walk offstage.
Our Icelandic hosts, CCP Games have a number of foreigners working for them which isn't surprising given the small number of locals they have to choose from. Those from more moderate lattitudes have a high washout rate. During the all-day-every-day summers the imports get a bit goofy. During the all-night-every-day winters about half of them get positively suicidal and leave.
That's all. I'm sure I missed some things but I didn't write anything down so you'll have to buy me a beer and ask a question to jog my memory to trigger other odd observances.
NB: Many thanks to CCP for providing on the ground support and local color to the sprint (EWT covered the bulk of finances which was flights and hotels but I mention CCP as this post was about local color). Kristjan was our fixer every day for every thing and put in more hours away from his wife than could be expected (best line "stay at this bar, you'll get laid here" - a polite fiction). Hilmar was more genial, talkative, and available than CEOs tend to be (that might be explained by his ex-CTO status). Thanks guys, we appreciated all of it.