Iceland's Water Cure
nytimes.com
Iceland's Water Cure
1–10 of 39 posts
Re: Iceland's Water Cure
#2Can the secret to the country’s happiness be found in its communal pools?
If you use suicide rate as an indicator, Iceland doesn't seem to be so happy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...
Re: Iceland's Water Cure
#3Can the secret to the country’s happiness be found in its communal pools? If you use suicide rate as an indicator, Iceland doesn't seem to be so happy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...
Iceland gets next to no sun November-February, leading people to depression, drinking, etc. It would likely affect you much more than the winter you know from other countries.
If anything, the social aspect of going to a hot pool in the winter is likely to keep people from committing more suicides.
Re: Iceland's Water Cure
#4Can the secret to the country’s happiness be found in its communal pools? If you use suicide rate as an indicator, Iceland doesn't seem to be so happy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...
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Re: Iceland's Water Cure
#5I'm an Icelander and I quite like this article, it is one of the better written pieces I have seen on a cultural phenomenon I relate with - and it is no exaggeration, swimming pools are quite central to our culture. I have two young kids and I take them to an outdoors swimming pool nearly every week, also in the wintertime. Since I live in the capital area we have a few swimming pools to choose from and we rotate between them.
The title hints that this is the reason for the country's high score in happiness surveys such is this one: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/denmark-happi... . While I don't think it's that simple I can forgive the author, the title "A survey on Icelandic swimming pool culture" just doesn't have the same ring to it. Usually when I see these surveys the first question that pops up is "How do they measure that?" and it seems journalists generally are not to keen on pursuing that question.
My point is that isolating one thing from a culture and pinning that down as a "cause for happiness" seems a bit silly to me. But apart from that the article is pretty accurate.
Re: Iceland's Water Cure
#6I've been to Iceland and tried the pool, and it was one of my favorite experiences (well, pretty much the whole trip was a favorite experience, Iceland is amazing). It was very invigorating to stand up from the 35 C water into the 2 C air and back.
If you haven't tried it, you need to.
Re: Iceland's Water Cure
#7Can the secret to the country’s happiness be found in its communal pools? If you use suicide rate as an indicator, Iceland doesn't seem to be so happy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...
Iceland gets next to no sun November-February, leading people to depression, drinking, etc. It would likely affect you much more than the winter you know from other countries. If anything, the social aspect of going to a hot pool in the winter is likely to keep people from committing more suicides.
Should be remembered too that cultural taboos have a big impact on whether suicides will actually be reported as such.
Re: Iceland's Water Cure
#8Can the secret to the country’s happiness be found in its communal pools? If you use suicide rate as an indicator, Iceland doesn't seem to be so happy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...
Iceland gets next to no sun November-February, leading people to depression, drinking, etc. It would likely affect you much more than the winter you know from other countries. If anything, the social aspect of going to a hot pool in the winter is likely to keep people from committing more suicides.
This explanation of little sun => suicides doesn't work, at least as directly as most would think:
Research on seasonal effects on suicide rates suggests that the prevalence of suicide is greatest during the late spring and early summer months, despite the common belief that suicide rates peak during the cold and dark months of the winter season.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_effects_on_suicide_ra...
Re: Iceland's Water Cure
#9Can the secret to the country’s happiness be found in its communal pools? If you use suicide rate as an indicator, Iceland doesn't seem to be so happy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...
It's likely that countries that experience the most depression have also developed and iterated through a range of cultural cures. We can all learn something from them.
Re: Iceland's Water Cure
#10I'm an Icelander and I quite like this article, it is one of the better written pieces I have seen on a cultural phenomenon I relate with - and it is no exaggeration, swimming pools are quite central to our culture. I have two young kids and I take them to an outdoors swimming pool nearly every week, also in the wintertime. Since I live in the capital area we have a few swimming pools to choose from and we rotate bet…
I did car trip around Iceland few years ago in may, having most of inner part still unreachable due to metres of snow. Running tiny Chevrolet Spark in places like Western fjords on their dirt roads with meeting car overy 1-2 hour, good memories. Communal pools could be found in most small villages around, I recall a big one in Akureyri, second largest city (population 18,000). Definitely part of the culture and considering overall ridiculous prices there, pretty cheap.
But all pools are standard treated clean water although whole island has natural hot springs with bluish hot water coming straight form he ground all over it (it's basically like a big volcano all over). Very few places to enjoy those. I guess tourists want to have different experiences than those living there.