Liz: Even though I was beginning to think that Iceland was an ideal place to be a single woman, I was also starting to realize, it wasn’t perfect.
Female: How about you, are you looking for love or enjoying being single?
Liz: I’m looking for an Icelandic husband.
Female: People don’t get married here. You get like listed as you live together and like it’s kind of the same thing as marriage, you get the same benefits.
Female: One here at the –, three or four hundred weddings but the same year, the divorces, they were more.
Liz: Why is it that marriage is not such an important part of life?
Female: We don’t believe in God that much. It’s like, it’s not a big deal to get married.
Liz: Religion does not play a large part in people’s lives here in terms of organizing with it. No.
Helga Braga Jonsdottir: No, but spirituality is really important for me.
Liz: Yeah.
Helga Braga Jonsdottir: You know, the elves and the troll and all the nature spirits that you do have all around us.
Liz: So you believe in elves?
Helga Braga Jonsdottir: Well, yeah.
Liz: Yeah. Like—what do they look like?
Helga Braga Jonsdottir: It depends, they are part of nature.
Female: I was once got married in the nature, under a glacier. We went into this cold sea; that was out marriage, married in nature.
Liz: Now where is marriage been into your view point.
Helga Braga Jonsdottir: For me personally, commitment is important.
Liz: Yeah, yeah.
Helga Braga Jonsdottir: Marriage? Not so much.
Liz: Yeah.
Helga Braga Jonsdottir: The marriage is in our hearts.
Liz: Right.
In the end, Iceland was one of my favorite places to visit and one of the best places I think to be a single woman. The women there are beautiful, strong, independent at every stage of their lives and a lot of them believe in elves. What is better than that?
I think that there is a sad single elf down here that needs my help. —I did that in purpose because I knew that would be fun.
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