The Ground Of Intense Cold Under The Pole Star

I’m thinking a lot about differences between cultures and how it can affect two people or two groups of people. It’s hard to draw a clear picture by now but it’s going better and better. Especially regarding business and differences in the way people works. In Iceland I like to say that everybody knows everybody. When you talk about a partner of yours, people are always asking "what’s his/her name". You’re at first confused and tell his/her firstname and his/her lastname. But actually they only mean what is his/her firstname, most of the time they picture the guy. "Oh that’s Sórún from the ministry" and that’s more or less all they need to know. Lastnames are useless in Iceland, a good proof is that Icelanders don’t use our worldwide? system for namings. A child doesn’t take the lastname of his father and give it to his children if it’s a boy or lose it when got married when it’s a girl. Every children take the firstname of the father + "son" when it’s a boy or + "dóttir" when it’s a girl. For example if your name is Steingrímur and you have a daughter Vigdís, her full name will be Vigdís Steingrímurdóttir. Then if you have a son and decide to name him Þór, his full name will be Þór Steingrímursson. Now you like the system or not but it’s a bunch of centuries old habit that Icelanders have taken through the ages. The only thing I find odd though is that a brother and a sister don’t share the same lastname. The big picture is that in the tiny island of the North Atlantic ocean everybody is related somehow. And that make business relations a lot more easier and effective. For me, though, taking part of a bi-lateral project with two countries, I had no clue of how things has to be led. As an example today in a meeting with 4 Icelandic partners and I, I could feel how simple things should be. First, besides what people always say about scandivian, these 4 people had troubles speaking English. Not in the way they speak or their vocabulary. But I could feel that Icelandic was waiting to explode and keeping that deep in the mouth for english instead was a bit of an hassle. Now that’s something I’m used to: I’m French. The dodgy part of the meeting however wasn’t visible nor listenable but understandable. I could feel it. Yes, Iceland is such small that people are used to work with the "best-friend’s cousin of your own uncle". Thus in the meeting I was nobody. I felt that I was the stranger. The french guy that knows nothing of the vikings culture and heritage. Therefore I felt bad the whole meeting. Icelanders do have all they need here and have money to buy what they don’t. Globalization is not a word of their vocabulary. I’m tented to say that this can be more than business relation and generalized to relation in general. They eventually would not be interested in discovering other cultures having foreigner friends because what for ? Now I don’t say such things. I need more time ;)