The Icelandic Quota System

It should come as no surprise that when One lives in a country with a small population, such as Iceland, One would, over the course of an average lifetime, become acquainted with a vast number of One’s fellow citizens. Just think of all the people you meet in various social settings – a wedding, a confirmation, an organized hiking excursion, a weekend workshop, a package holiday, various work-related functions, and on and on, ad infinitum. I think it’s safe to say that if you lived your whole life in the Greater Reykjavík Area, over the course of a few decades you’d have met a substantial percentage of the population, which if you’ve just joined us is currently around 170,000.

Which is why those crafty Icelanders have come up with an ingenious solution: The Quota System. No, it has nothing to do with fisheries management, and I would even venture to say that it is so intricately woven into the fabric of Icelandic society that most people don’t even know they use it. But they do.

It works like this: Say you meet someone… maybe at a party. You may have a few drinks and you may even get to the place that the Icelanders call trúnó – short for trúnaðarstig, or ‘confidentiality level’. Or perhaps you just meet someone in connection with your work… say someone you have to interview for a magazine, or that you get chatting to at a cocktail party. You spend a nice couple of hours and you learn something about that person and, perhaps, that person learns something about you.

You then go your separate ways, with no specific plans to continue the acquaintance. However, the population is small and inevitably you will run into that person, and perhaps repeatedly. Therein lies the difficulty: imagine the discomfort of having to say hello or – worse – talk to everyone you’ve ever met in your life. [Particularly if the trúnó went a tad too far.] You’d do nothing else! You’d walk around turning your head left and right, saying ‘hello’ ‘hello’ ‘hello’ to every other person you meet. Which would just be plain exhausting.

Which is why the Quota System was devised. You see, Icelanders have a specific length of time during which they will recognize somebody. Ingenious, I know. Just how long the quota lasts varies from person to person, but 2-3 years seems to be common, although I’ve met people whose quota is a lot shorter [although most of them were snobs and I suspect had I been, say, silly old Björk Guðmundsdóttir, their quota would have been Very Substantially Extended]. And when the quota expires, the person with whom you were once so amiably acquainted will suddenly walk past you on the street without so much as a glance of recognition.

This can be a tad confusing for some people, particularly those who weren’t raised with the Quota System and therefore are totally clued out. Like our YT for instance.

Case in point: once when I’d lived in Iceland for about two years, I took part in an Icelandic cultural festival in Germany. I travelled there with a bunch of luminaries, including some of Iceland’s most prominent writers, filmmakers, etc., and for about five days we hung out and basically had a blast. On returning home, the Quota System kicked in. The first few months were fine – I’d run into one of my fellow participants on the street and we’d exchange a few casual words and maybe a laugh… until one day I met one of the writers I’d been so happily acquainted with and to my surprise he completely ignored me. The same then happened with the rest of the group, one after the next. It was quite baffling.

It took me a while to click in to the existence of the Quota System. When I did I was both relieved [oh, so I don’t have BO, phew!] and kind of awed [because you have to agree it is pretty clever].

That said, I have to confess that I still prefer a society without quotas. And I always get a warm fuzzy feeling when that guy I interviewed more than a decade ago still greets me with a smile and a ‘hi’.

SO HAVE WE FILLED OUR QUOTA OF RAIN?
Not quite, it would seem. However we’re not complaining [much] – AprilshowersbringMayflowers and all that [although it’s now May so shouldn’t we be seeing some flowers?]. Looks like we’ll have yet another day of showers… but after that we’re in for a treat: weatherman sez sunny days coming up with highs near 20°C. Yowsa! Currently 8°C and the sun came up at 04.43 and goes down at 22.08, though nightfall isn’t until 23.26. And last night at midnight when I went to bed, there was even a glimmer of light still in the sky. Here comes the midnight sun!

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