What if I want to move to a Third World country? I know that effectively I don't need a work permit to work or residence permit to live, because half of the population are unregistered stateless anyway... but I'm afraid I look too "eastern" to be taken as an inuk, and there are no Danish tribes... And Icelandic are assumed "extinct"... Maybe some leftovers who decided to settle down in the middle of a glacier, and are now a part of the Inuit mythology :Ð
Iceland probably remains the most homogeneous European nation to date. Even the dirty, difficult, and dangerous jobs are not done by foreigners, I'm told:-)
??? You can't be serious! Just over the past few years several Icelanders whom I've encountered confirmed to me that their country remained nearly one-hundred-percent native-born ethnic Icelandic! This change then must be comparatively recent, yes?
Statistically, 8% out of roughly 345,000 inhabitants seems terribly high, don't you think?
Quick addendum. Most foreigners in Iceland have historically been only tourists, visitors, perhaps temporary staff working on some project for a fixed period of time, thereafter returning to their country.
No. Someone who works for Iceland a few years then leaves is not an Icelander by any stretch of the imagination. Similarly the million plus Ukrainians in Poland are not Polish....
Sorry maf, I was referring to the actual population of the country, which, as I've read even in recent stats, is by and large certainly these days roughly 90% homogeneous in the very least.
Practically all Icelanders know fluent English. along with at least two or more official EU-languages, so it shouldn't be a problem at all. Interestingly, although only middling in my knowledge of Icelandic, the Icelanders with whom I still keep in contact, speak excellent Danish:-) Their English is of course what you'd expect from educated Scandinavians.