Word: iceland
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...first snow of the season was already swirling down from Iceland's granite skies, softening the roar of the large, dark cargo jets descending over the treeless, volcanic landscape. Some, decorated with the silver stars and blue insignia of the U.S. Air Force, taxied past the familiar F-15s and AWACS surveillance planes stationed on the vast NATO base at Keflavik. Others, boasting the red star of the Soviet Union, looked jarringly out of place. Red and blue alike, the cargo planes thudded down on the asphalt and roared to a halt on Keflavik's 10,000-ft. runway, disgorging...
...since the highly publicized 1972 chess match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky in Reykjavik has Iceland (pop. 240,000) been the focus of such intense superpower attention. The summit, proudly wrote an editorialist in Morgunbladid, the island's largest daily newspaper, "puts Iceland in the spotlight as firmly as it has ever been...
...centuries Iceland has been far from the vortex of global affairs. Even the story of its founding illustrates its distance from the rest of the world. In 874, so the legend goes, the Viking chieftain Ingolfur Arnarson tossed some wooden pillars out to sea, vowing to settle the land wherever they washed up. They apparently came to rest in a western bay of Iceland, where Arnarson soon established the small fishing village of Reykjavik (meaning Bay of Smoke, after the numerous geothermal springs that supply the city's heating and keep its streets ice-free in winter...
...year 930, the islanders had established the Althing, a republican legislature that endures to this day as the oldest parliament in the world. Their isolation kept them proud and self-reliant, and Iceland's language remained pure; it still is very close to Old Norse, and a committee monitors all neologisms. An idiosyncratic literature has developed based on the Viking sagas, which relate the nation's early history. Today Iceland has a 99.9% literacy rate, one of the highest in the world, while maintaining some curious folk traditions: a survey by the University of Iceland reported that nearly...
Although its people think of themselves as neutral, Iceland has been a NATO member since 1949. The country has neither an army nor a navy, but the Keflavik base, which monitors Soviet ship traffic in the crucial North Atlantic sea-lanes, is staffed by some 3,000 U.S. military personnel. When Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze was discussing the summit, he told reporters that his delegation knew they would be safe in Reykjavik. Why? "You (Americans) have a very big base there," he said, smiling...