Foreigners at the end of the fjord: Inhabitants of foreign origin in Akureyri

Abstract

Between 2000 and 2011, the number of foreigners living in Akureyri increased from 200 to over 450 and seems to be constantly rising. With the increasing number of foreigners, the community of Akureyri will face new challenges and experience from other Nordic countries has shown that these changes can lead to a series of problems. In the autumn of 2012 a total of 194 foreigners living inAkureyri participated in a survey answering a range of questions on their living conditions and attitudes.This study looked into the language skills of the foreign population in Akureyri in order to find out if the knowledge of Icelandic is the essentialcriteria for successful integration. The results show that the vast majority of the respondents are satisfied overall living in Akureyri with 36% saying that they are very satisfied and 46% that they are rather satisfied. Somewhat surprisingly the knowledge of Icelandic does not correlate with happiness and general satisfaction. However, gender seemed to play a much bigger role defining differences in the foreign community of Akureyri. Language is often named as an essential tool for a successful integration and the key to enter the community.