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grapevine

A great number of couples in Iceland are comprised of one Icelander and one foreigner, new research shows.
Vísir reports that Árdís Kristín Ingvarsdóttir, who is completing her master’s degree in anthropology, has been doing extensive research into foreign men who father children by Icelandic women.
Of the 65,432 couples in Iceland (“couples” in this case meaning either married or legally registered as living together), 3,979 are with mixed backgrounds, i.e., one Icelander and one foreigner, comprising 6% of Iceland’s couples. Árdís took a closer look at the situation.
According to her findings, most foreign women married to Icelandic men during the past ten years were from Thailand, the Philippines, Germany, Poland and Denmark. The largest ethnicities of foreign women in Iceland overall are Danish, Thai, German, Filipina and American.
At the same time, most foreign men married to Icelandic women were from Denmark, Britain, the US, Germany and Norway. The largest ethnicities of foreign men in Iceland are British, American, Danish, German and French.
While Poles are the largest immigrant group in Iceland, they were not strongly represented in this research. Árdís attributes this to a few reasons: for one, many Poles arriving in Iceland are already married, and many Polish men said they considered Icelandic women too independent.
Icelandic men who married Asian women experienced prejudice, she said, in that many looked at these men as being not good enough for Icelandic women who had opted instead to “buy” a wife abroad.