LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Iceland: Countries
built 203 days ago
Travelling around Iceland and its amazing landscape can be an unforgettable experience, but a good trip can end awfully if you are not careful when driving in new and unknown conditions. It is really important to be aware of all the dangers on the Icelandic country roads, because the circumstances can be very different from other countries. Rashness can cost your life and the life of others in the traffic. Gravel roads, narrow bridges, blind rises, big rivers, farm animals and volatile weather are some of the things that you have to be aware of before you depart. When travelling in the countryside there are a lot of gravel roads, which can be very dangerous if you are not cautious. Many accidents happen where the road changes from a paved road to a gravel road because the driver drives to fast and isn't prepared for different conditions.
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Iceland is a large island in the North Atlantic close to the Arctic Circle and includes islands to the north and south. The landscape is wild, rugged and colourful, with black lava, red sulphur, hot blue geysers, grey and white rivers with waterfalls and green valleys, its coastline richly indented with bays and fjords. The whole of the central highland plateau of the island is a beautiful but barren and uninhabitable moonscape; so much so that the first American astronauts were sent there for pre-mission training. Five-sixths of Iceland is uninhabited, the population being concentrated on the coast, in the valleys and in the plains of the southwest and southeast of the country. More than half the population live in or around Reykjavík, the capital. Iceland is one of the most volcanically active countries in the world.
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Iceland has no train transportation, so motor vehicle traffic is important. The country has more than 128,000 registered cars, or about one vehicle for each two people, which is almost as high as the ratio in the United States. A highway parallels the coast, but heavy traffic occurs only in the area of greater Reykjavík, which has morning and evening rush hours.
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Iceland has energy to spare, and the small country has found a cutting-edge way to reduce its oil dependency. Volcanoes formed the island nation out of ash and lava, and molten rock heats huge underground lakes to the boiling point.
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Iceland suffers from some main difficulties in risk management which afflict most countries, yet when a problem is tackled, the Icelanders quickly produce excellent results. The example of avalanches illustrate this situation. Because Iceland is a country with steep mountains and much snow, it is obviously prone to avalanches. Furthermore, many settlements are coastal, built at the bottom of slopes. The lack of strong vegetation to support snow on a slope creates an obvious avalanche hazard for these urban environments. Nonetheless, prior to 1995, little support for avalanche loss prevention existed.
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Geologically speaking, Iceland is hardly out of playschool, since it only began to rise from the North Atlantic seabed about 25 million years ago, the product of volcanic eruptions that are still going on today. Parts of the country are still so rugged that American astronauts chose Iceland as a training ground to prepare them for landing on the moon. And Iceland is still taking shape before peoples eyes: the newest land is Surtsey, an island which rose from the sea during an underwater eruption off the south coast in 1963.
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