News website Eyjan conducted a survey among its Icelandic readership of attitudes towards people of other nationality, race, religion, sexual orientation and ability, and has published its results.
Working in conjunction with the call centre Miðlun, some 800 Icelanders – the standard number used in telephone surveys – were contacted to answer the question, “On this list are various and different groups of people. Choose those which you would not want to have as neighbours.”
Of those who picked anyone, topping the list, at 40.9%, was “people who are not mentally stable or are dealing with psychological problems.”
In a distant second and third – and in fact the only two other groups to rank in the double digits – were Roma people (18.9%) and Muslims (15%).
While immigrants ranked at 9.7%, more Icelanders would have a problem living next door to Jewish people than gay or lesbian neighbours, with 4.2% and 3.2% respectively saying they would not want to live near them.
However, one bright spot is that “people of other races” ranked dead last, at 2.8%, behind “people with large families”, at 3.5%. Furthermore, the largest percentage – 43.3% – said they would have no problem living next door to any of the aforementioned groups.
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