With the growth of the fisheries and commerce there began to spring
up towards the end of the nineteenth century a number of trading
villages in different parts of the country. Reykjavík, the only
municipality of fairly long standing and by far the biggest one, had
at the turn of the present century a population of only between six
and seven thousand--now about eleven times that number. We catch
glimpses of these small trading stations at the beginning of the
twentieth century in A Dry Spell and Father and Son.

Nowadays, four fifths of the population live in villages and
townships--where some light industry has sprung up--and, in
Reykjavík alone, more than two fifths of the population are
concentrated.

In the last fifty years, the occupations of the people and their
culture have changed from being in many respects medieval, and have
assumed modern forms. The earlier turfbuilt farmhouses have now been
replaced by comfortable concrete buildings which get their
electricity from a source of water power virtually inexhaustible.
Many of these,--e. g. the majority of houses in Reykjavík--are
heated by water from hot springs, so that the purity of the northern
air is seldom spoilt by smoke from coal-fires. The reliable
Icelandic pony--so dear to the farmer in New Iceland, and for long
known as "a man's best friend"--has now for the most part come to
serve the well-to-do who can afford to use it for their joy-rides,
its place in farmwork being taken by modern agricultural machinery.
As a means of travel it has been replaced by a host of motorcars,
and by aeroplanes, which in Iceland are as commonly used in going
from one part of the country to another as railway trains in other
countries. In fact, it has not been found feasible to build railways