Erika and I first visited Iceland for SQL Saturday 2019, and returned again in 2020. We had such a good time and loved the place so much that we started making plans to go for longer and longer periods of time.
In mid-2020, we realized that the coronavirus situation was going to get a lot worse before it got better. I decided not to do any in-person client engagements or conferences until we could both be vaccinated, and that wasn’t going to come around quickly. There was no vaccine on the horizon, and even if one came out, we wouldn’t be the first ones eligible to get it. We’re not old enough, not vulnerable enough, and certainly not critical enough to the nation to merit getting early access.
So we thought, screw it – let’s just move to Iceland for a while in early 2021.
Why Iceland?
Iceland’s climate is interesting year round. We both love Mexico and we’d love to live down there, too, but it’s insufferably hot in the summer. Reykjavik’s average weather is way the hell colder, but it’s really interesting. Deep winter days have just 4 hours of daylight, and in the summer, the sun sets at midnight and rises again at 3AM. I don’t know if we could stand that for a decade, but we’re excited to see it for a few seasons at least. We’ve already been over there a couple of times during winter, and we loved it.
Iceland is just so gorgeous. From the Game of Thrones filming locations to the obsession with hot springs, there are so many beautiful places to see. Here’s the part we love the most, though: most of these can be seen without hiking long distances. Erika and I like seeing the sights from an SUV, with relatively short hikes.
Iceland has a reputation for being expensive, but it’s really not that bad compared to, say, San Diego. The cost of living in Reyjavik is about the same as San Diego, assuming you rent, and if you’re willing to go outside of Reykjavik, it’s much less expensive. We’re going to be living out in the countryside to enjoy the views and isolation. Erika and I are kinda weird: we both share a love for super-dense urban areas where we can walk to everything, but we also love complete isolation in the middle of nowhere – as long as we have fast Internet.
Iceland has great Internet infrastructure. Most of Iceland’s homes are connected with gigabit fiber, making it easy for me to continue to teach training classes. That sounds like an odd thing to lead with, but it really does dictate my travel. If I’m going to teach a class remotely, I need an absolutely bulletproof and fast connection, and hotel wi-fi ain’t gonna cut it. Many corporate offices can even struggle to upload a 1080p stream for hours on end. And this is really surprising because…
Iceland’s population is really, really spread out. Iceland is about the same size as Ohio, but Iceland has about 350K people compared to Ohio’s 12 million. Their population density is the lowest of any European country: just 3.56 people per square kilometer (US: 34), 9.2 per square mile (US: 87.)
Iceland’s people make smart decisions. They take advantage of their natural resources with almost all of their electricity & heat coming from the earth. 100% of their electricity is provided by geothermal and hydropower, and 85% of houses are heated with warm water from the earth. This earth-and-people-first mentality shows in how they treat their people, too: their labor laws favor the worker with things like universal healthcare and a minimum 24 weekdays of paid holiday leave per year.
I’m not saying any of this stuff to denigrate the US by any means – we still love the US. I’m just sharing this stuff with you because I think you’ll find it interesting to compare & contrast the countries.
How we’re getting permission to reside in Iceland
In normal times, US citizens can come to Iceland for tourist or business purposes for up to 90 days.
These are not normal times.
Right now, US folks aren’t allowed in, and even if they were, we’d have to leave & re-enter every 90 days. International travel adds coronavirus exposure risk, plus you have to quarantine upon entry to Iceland. We wanted a longer-term option.
For centuries, governments have approached residence permits with the mindset of, “Ah, you want to come to our country to work for a specific company here? We’ll get you set up with a residence permit to let you work for that company. If your employment ends, you’ve got X weeks to find another job, but if you don’t find one, you gotta leave the country.”
Most governments aren’t yet ready for digital nomads, people who can work from anywhere, at any time, for any company in the world. Even if you run your own company, the governments eye you suspiciously because they assume you’re trying to set up shop in their country to service their country’s companies.
Iceland’s work permit choices don’t have a long-term option for digital nomads. Japan is an interesting exception: Japanese citizens can get a working holiday visa that allows them to work for Japanese companies while they’re in Iceland. Americans, not so much.
For me, especially with tourists being denied entry, the easiest solution is to get a job in Iceland. Iceland offers a residence permit requiring expert knowledge, which means you’re doing a job with very specific, deep expertise – hey, I have that! The Iceland Directorate of Labour has a nice writeup on the kinds of experts who can get in. The application process involves a few hours of paperwork and legwork, like requesting an FBI identity check, getting fingerprinted at the post office, and wiring the application fee to Iceland.
If you’re interested in pursuing something similar, and if you’re on a short timeline, there are immigration attorneys who specialize in this kind of thing. (I’m doing it with the help of my upcoming employer – more about that in a while. I’m still going to be teaching training classes, don’t worry.)
Working as an expert offers two big advantages: Erika could be included (but not work), and after four years, we’d be eligible for permanent residence permits.
We’re starting to plan logistics
Leaving San Diego is the easy part because we don’t have a lot of ties. Erika and I have been renters for years. We built a house in Houston around a decade ago, but after we sold that, we decided to avoid home ownership for a while. We really like the flexibility and peace-of-mind that renting gives us, and for us, it’s worth the added expense over a mortgage. Our San Diego apartment lease is up around January 2021, so it makes for good timing. We’ll hire movers, put our stuff (including Helmut) into storage, and then fly over to Iceland. We’ll only bring clothes and laptops – we’re not shipping everything we own.
The first big decision is where to live. If I still wanted to travel internationally to conferences or onsite clients, then we would have to live near the capital, Reykjavik. 1/3 of Iceland’s population resides there. It’s a very pretty city, but it’s at the southeast tip of Iceland, and it’s not a great home base for adventuring around the country.
We looked at rental houses all around the countryside, and we ended up picking one in North Iceland, a beautiful, isolated area with lots of sights. We worked with the house’s owner to get gigabit fiber installed ahead of time, and she even went so far as to run bandwidth tests and send us pictures. It’ll work well for my classes, fingers crossed, and we’ve got classes scheduled out through May.
The second big decision is what to drive, and we’re car people, so we’re totally obsessing over that one. In the past, we’ve rented Toyota Land Cruisers, but renting one of those doesn’t make financial sense if you’re going to be there 6-12 months. Stay tuned for our decisions on that one – I’ll blog more about that as go-time gets closer.
Continue reading: January 2021, we made it to Iceland.
32 Comments.
Good on you!
My partner and I we did the same and we lived 5 years in New Zealand. We now live in Switzerland and we are maybe planning to go back to New Zealand in a few years.
Switzerland is beautiful! Delightful country. I bet it’s a good time to be there, too – although New Zealand’s doing pretty well lately as well.
Sounds like fun!
Europe won you two
HA! That’s a neat way to think of it, heh.
well, since you’re in Europe, kinda waiting for those trainings that we could never purchase because of gdpr…
Calin – I hear ya, but just because I would be living in Iceland, that doesn’t make complying with the GDPR any easier. I’m really looking forward to the day when the EU does make that process easier, but there’s still no cost-effective way for me to do that given my business’s size and our relatively small number of EU customers.
Fun fact: I tried to report a GDPR infraction as my inbox was target of several coupons campaign; it turns out there is no website you can use to report a GDPR infraction.
The only companies that are punished by GDPR are big fish like British Airways and Marriot, and they shouldn’t because they are actually the victims of an hack.
You and I we are not protected and we cannot report a GDPR infraction because “is too small”.
Once again EU made an idiot law…
You said it, not me. 😉
Whoa! This is incredible, have fun 🙂
Excellent move! My hubby and I are planning our return to Europe as well. Wish it could be Iceland also, but who knows. Might see you there in a couple years!
Wow, amazing! I will extend Calin’s ideea – at least you will be in Europe, in an easy to reach country (for us, european people). You can create an SQL Saturday Event there, for us to attend 😀 (really like mixed city breaks – attend sql saturday and visit the city before and after the event). Good luck with the logistics and we are waiting for lots of pictures from Iceland!
Hmm, if my goal is to do social isolation, I don’t know that a conference would be a great idea, eh? 😉
Congrats, Brent! That is a very exciting developing chapter for you. Iceland is one of the few places I haven’t been, and has always been high on the list – it just went up a few spots now that I know someone that will be there! 😁 It has been on my bucket list to fly myself to Reykjavik (a world-famous pilot destination from the US mainland as a conduit to the European mainland). I’ll hit you up when I’m going to be in the neighborhood around this time next year or early the following year. As for your vehicle choice, there is only one choice- a Tesla, duh (best-selling car in Iceland in fact). And you can use my referral code. 😄
Definitely will do, man!
I dunno about the Tesla though – we’re going to be out in the sticks, and the supercharger network isn’t quite there yet.
Shame on me for my lack of assuagement. It’s been too many moons since I remember having the same notions about range anxiety that are all too natural before actually owning one. Here’s the reality. Unless you’re doing a 500 mi plus drive in one go, or 700-800+ mi in a single day, you won’t ever use them. You don’t even think about it anymore than you think about charging your phone on a daily basis (actually far less frequently than charging your phone in reality). It is definitely a fundamental shift in one’s mindset. I’m happy to answer any questions or chat your off about it should you have any. I will warn you, however. Once you’ve owned one, all other cars will seem just as antiquated as the dinosaur juice they run on. I think a model X performance edition will hit the spot perfectly for you. 😁
I hear you, but we’re talking 200+ mile day drives in subzero temperatures with stretches of 1-4′ deep snow. Last year in the Land Cruiser, I pulled/pushed cars out of snow several times. The Model X isn’t really an SUV for those kinds of conditions, especially when we don’t have access to a charger. We’re at a rental house, and they don’t have a charging station.
Just grabbed a sample video to show you what I mean:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B91MINUBWR3/?igshid=ms53gaieem97
Wow yeah that’s Cybertruck territory (I have a tri-motor pre-ordered myself). I think you’ll find though that an X, having microsecond resolution electric motors with 100% torque at 0 rpm – one on each axle, fares extremely well in this environment especially given its non-offroad mission, since it doesn’t have the constraints of a mechanical powertrain. Check out this guy in CO https://youtu.be/JFiQTO52gag – There also is a channel dedicated more or less to stress testing Teslas in harsh winter environments; here is an episode where he does his best to exceed limits, get stuck, and even goes toe to toe with a Land Cruiser – https://youtu.be/cuxkwLccmEY (LC is last quarter or so). Of course you could do much better with better tires and the like than what’s in these videos – I would agree though you would probably want to stay on open roads for the most part.
Right, I’m aware of all that, but we’re in a rental house on an unplowed road. I totally hear your enthusiasm, though. 😉
I hear you – thanks for your engagement nevertheless! 🙂 One last thing about home charging and I promise I’ll quit forever. 😉 I don’t have any chargers installed at any of my properties at present. At my condo in Santa Monica? I charge from a standard 110 outlet, believe it or not. More than enough for all my commutes and road trips. My house in Big Bear has 50 amp service, which is customary in those parts, installed by owners for RV service – it’s a standard NEMA 14-50 240V outlet. Similarly, I use the appropriate adapter for my portable charging cable to charge there. I’ll likely get a charger installed at some point as an airbnb amenity more than anything I need. The bigger circuit is helpful at the top of the mountain after an 8000′ climb from Santa Monica so I can get fully recharged in a couple hours even after a *very* spirited drive up the mountain. Returning to SaMo from Big Bear isn’t as much an issue since after going downhill all the way, I have almost a full “tank” when I arrive. I hope you’ve found some value in all this geeky banter (what’s not to like – it’s a perfect storm of two of my lifelong passions: cars and bleeding edge tech). Your current situation reminds me of when I moved to London in 2001 and stored my 996 Cabriolet while I was overseas. My 911 suffered a horrible fate, however – fully submerged under 15′ of water from tropical storm Allison. I trust Helmut will fare much better in Socal storage. 🙂
I think it is really cool that you and your wife are taking this leap. You have the freedom and flexibility and you are utilizing it, not just talking or thinking about it. Very interesting country, but I hear it is invested with fairies. They aren’t bothering anyone, so no biggie. Congrats on taking the leap and doing the kind of thing most of us only talk about doing.
Thanks sir!
I am excited to see if the vehicle you are thinking of is electric considering the green-ness of Iceland’s electricity supply.
I’m a huge Tesla fan, but to there’s quite a few nice vehicles coming out now.
What an awesome adventure. I hope you don’t mind if I live vicariously through you during this crazy lockdown time with your future blog posts 🙂
Awesome! Excited to hear more and how it goes for you!
Congrats!!!! Love following your adventures! *Hugs*
Fantastic choice! Iceland is my soul-country. Enjoy it to the fullest and do take part in their lovely cultural quirks. Like books. Lots of them. And I mean LOTS especially at the time of Jolabokaflod. I wish you and Erika the most exciting adventures for the following year(s)!
Have a great time over there. And enjoy the hotsprings.
Up North the car choice should be a 4×4 for sure.
Congrats! Welcome to Europe! 🙂
A Tesla anything is silly here. If the dude wanted something expensive and impractical, then the Porsche would be coming along. For remote areas, you want vehicles with mechanical components, not electrical. A mechanical cooling fan and not electric, etc. Change a belt, not an electric fan or a fan and radiator, etc.
Any vehicle used in this endeavor is more utility than anything else. Not a status symbol or investment. Utility-only.
Got it. I’m glad you’ve cleared that all up for us. https://fortune.com/2018/05/09/elon-musk-iceland-tesla/
https://thenextweb.com/shift/2020/04/02/tesla-becomes-most-popular-car-brand-iceland-one-batch-deliveries/
Ok, I’m going to go ahead and close the comments on this post.
Just a note for other folks who own Teslas – this gets really, really old fast, and it’s the opposite of endearing.