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Chances are that somewhere on the internet you’ve heard the “fact” that Iceland
was named Iceland by its viking settlers to stop their enemies from coming to the island.
Well, that fact is about as wrong as pineapple on pizza.
The truth is that the first norse settler of the island was feeling a little bummed
out upon arrival since his daughter and livestock died en route so he just stayed for the winter
before returning to Norway and, since the particular area he stayed in happened to be
icy he figured all of the island was icy and therefore called it Iceland.
Of course that’d be as absurd as, you know, seeing that the sidewalk was flat and deciding
the whole earth must be flat, or something.
Iceland is cold and has plenty of snow and ice during the winter but as a whole, the
country is fairly green.
Still, for such a northern and wintery country the idea that it imports ice is pretty absurd.
Nonetheless that is reality but Iceland’s ice importation has a surprisingly rational
explanation.
Now, taking ice from one place and selling it in another is nothing new.
El Chapo was great at it but as it turns out, centuries ago people’s refrigerators didn’t
have ice dispensers.
For the majority of history people just dealt with having warm drinks like cave-people but
when the 19th century rolled around that all changed.
An entrepreneur named Frederic Tudor started taking ice from cold places like Maine and
selling it in hot places like Cuba.
Genius, right?
Only problem, ice melts.
Frederic understood this and insulated his cargo with sawdust and, with enough ice, at
least some of it would make it through the 1,600 mile journey from Maine to Cuba.
At first Frederick received a frosty reception from the hot place people as they were doubtful
that they needed ice so Frederic channeled his inner drug dealer and gave them their
first bit of ice for free to get them addicted.
Soon, business was booming.
Now, places like New York and DC get too cold in the winter for people to want ice but in
the summer, they too get swelteringly hot so Frederic wanted to make a way to be able
to sell ice in the mid-Atlantic summers.
Really the only solution was to take a whole lot of ice, put it in an insulated building,
and hope some of it lasts until summer and, crazily enough, that worked.
Most of North America started to rely on ice so it was time for Frederick to take the ice
trade intercontinental.
The rest of the world also had hot places like India so Frederic Tudor set up a regular
shipment of ice to Calcutta, India which became hugely popular with the rich English colonialists
who were used to cooler temperatures.
Amazingly, he had the process refined so well at that point that the ice from New England
was selling in India for, adjusted for inflation, only $1 per pound.
Soon after, ice from New England was shipped and sold in London, in Rio de Janeiro, in
Cape Town, in Hong Kong, the New England ice even reached as far as Sydney, Australia where
it sold for only $2 per pound.
So, was it a coincidence that the climate starting rapidly warming only a century after
the world’s elite started using ice shipped from the other side of the world by steamship
all so they could have a chilled beverage?
I’m not saying the ice trade singlehandedly caused climate change, but it certainly didn’t
help.
Of course, with time artificial refrigeration became cheap and widespread but not before
making Frederic Tudor a very rich man.
Iceland today, despite what some may think, is not some backwards heathen society that
shuns the use of refrigerators.
Its importation of ice has to do with something else—economics.
You see, Iceland is a very expensive place.
Like many isolated, northern counties, Iceland relies on imports for many things like oil,
wood, wheat, and other food.
It just doesn’t have the ability to produce these items domestically due to its geography
but shipping to Iceland is also relatively cheap since its economy is export-driven.
While fish is Iceland’s biggest export this is mostly shipped by plane but the country
also has an enormous aluminum industry thanks to its low electricity cost.
Aluminum, along with most everything else Iceland makes, is exported by ship which means
that there’s demand for shipping from Iceland.
That means that ships are already coming to Iceland to bring items elsewhere so its relatively
inexpensive to fill those ships with other goods to bring to Iceland.
At the same time, the average Icelander makes about $57,000 per year, it’s one of the
highest income countries in the world, so that means making things in Iceland, in most
cases, is expensive.
If you go and check your handy dandy Icelandic schedule of tariffs, though, you see that
water, ice, and snow have no import duty if imported from the European Economic Area.
Therefore, Iceland imports ice from other less expensive countries in the EEZ such as
Scotland and the only additional cost is the cheap shipping.
While there are plenty of other countries that don’t charge import duties on ice,
there are few that have the mix of high domestic labor costs and cheap inbound shipping that
make it worth it for Iceland to import ice.
That’s why Iceland’s grocery stores are stocked with this imported ice from hundreds
or thousands of miles away as it ends up being about 40% less than Icelandic ice.
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