Hi Can’t help but asking, have you lived in Iceland all your life? Do
you like it there? Did you learn english as a second (third) language
in school? Is it hard to live in a small area with people who, one
assumes, know one? Why did you learn jewelry arts? Thank you, Kat
I’ll assume this question was for me unless there are others on
this list living in Iceland? 
The Jewelery arts are an offshoot of my artistic tendencies,
interest in Lapidary and influences from the growing Handcrafts
movement here. I prefer to work on a small scale and with metal
and, being culturally “American” I have a wealth of reference
materials available to me that the average Icelander does not
(due to the language and lack of reference materials here), this
list for one and Lapidary Journal etc,… But, I have not come
very far yet…
I am teaching myself silver work as it is almost impossible to
get an apprenticeship with a Master here. The Master Goldsmiths
here accept apprentice’s from within their own families and I
only know of two advertisements, in the last 10 years, for an
apprentice or assisstant goldsmith. Virtually everyone, who wants
to learn the jewelery arts here, has to go to Denmark or Finland
and then return to set up shop.
I grew up in Canada (34 years), and moved here 6 years ago (my
Grandparents emmigrated from Iceland), Icelandic being my third
language actually. English is no. 1 and American Sign Language
(ASL), no.2. French was the official second language in School in
Canada but I have forgotten it all, C’est la vie! The funny thing
about learning a highly inflected language, like Icelandic, later
in life, is that the first 20 years are the hardest! But,
seriously, it was not pretty learning to speak it. Most
foreigners living here either refuse to start or enter into it
with a fear of failure mentality and tend to keep their original
accent. Speech production speed tends to be much slower than
native speakers and is very hard to aquire. That is always a dead
giveaway. Some of us master the sounds and speed quickly but we
are the exceptions. My archillies heel is the grammer…grrr!
Icelandic youth start to learn english formally when they are 12
years old, in school. But because of the incredibly strong
cultural influences from America (ie: Movies and Basketball
etc,.), they can often correct the teachers by that time! Living
in a fishbowl is not comfortable for me. My home town, Edmonton,
in Canada, is around 750,000 people. One could be invisible
there. Iceland as a whole is 250,000 people. It is always a small
world here. Gossip is a National sport here and one has to learn
to live with it. ):
Hope this answered your questions and my appologies to the list
for using so much bandwidth…
Peter