Iceland From the World's Grumpiest Man

We're reading a lot about miserable people. There in fact seems to be no end to miserableness. To make one's mood worse, just yesterday President-elect Barack Obama said things will only get worse.

So I decided to consult an expert on unhappiness. Not just unhappiness -- Eric Weiner says he's a grumpy man (even though I can tell you personally that he isn't really) -- but also happiness. In The Geography of Bliss, published a few months ago, Eric ranked the world's cheeriest places.

Since then, it's turned out that the happiness in Eric's No. 1 joyful place -- Iceland -- may have been based partly on the fact that it was running as a giant hedge fund. So, with Iceland's economy in tatters and relying on the IMF, I asked Eric how the Icelanders were holding up.

Here's his response:

People I've spoken with there are certainly anxious and bumming. But they're not, by and large, miserable. The Icelanders are remarkably resilient people. If you lived on a small, cold isolated island in the North Atlantic, you would be, too. Icelanders (like all people, really) derive their happiness from their relationships with others. Not just family and friends, but strangers, too. And, from what I can tell, those relationships remain intact, despite the financial hardship and, in a way, because of it. Here's what Karl Blondal, deputy editor of the main newspaper in Iceland, said to me in an e-mail.

Right now Icelanders are in a state of shock, and not sure how this will turn out - has Iceland been catapulted back into the stoneage - and where things will stand once the dust has settled. A lot of individuals have been hit really hard, pensioners have lost their lives' savings, etc. But there is also a lot of communal feeling, people address each other in a more caring way in the morning, neighbours inquire how each other is doing. One thing about living in a small community is that everyone you know, family and friends, is within reach - those who lose their jobs are not isolated, the risk of estrangement is not the same as it would be in bigger societies. But there will be a lot of anger, living standards will not be as luxurious, but this was an economic disaster, not a natural disaster. The infrastructure is intact, houses are standing, life will go on. As for happiness? Now we can wipe the slate clean. Who knows - this might just as well be an opportunity to forge a better, more open society where power is more diffused, and the old vested interests and economic blocks have been cleared out of the way.