A new survey released by the Office of Human Rights indicates that most
Icelanders find discrimination based on ethnicity to be common, and
nearly half believe it’s increasing.
When asked, “How common or uncommon do you find it that people are discriminated against based on their race or nationality?”, 56.9% described this as a common practice. 49% believe this type of discrimination has grown in the past five years, and 26% say that they have witnessed said discrimination happen to someone within the last 12 months.
Some other results which came to light were that 93.4% believe that in the event that two applicants for a job are equally qualified, the one with poor Icelandic comprehension will have a negative impact on his or her chances of being hired. Following this was age (85.9%), handicap (80%), and physical appearance (70.1%). Strangely, the sex of the applicant ranked far below any of these, at 49.4%.
When asked “On a scale of 1 to 10 – 1 being ‘very uncomfortable’ and 10 being ‘completely comfortable’, how comfortable or uncomfortable would you feel to find that your neighbor was older, handicapped, gay, of another religion or of another nationality?”, most respondants were the least comfortable with a neighbor of a different nationality – with an average rating of 9.1.
The entirety of the survey can be read here (in Icelandic).