R E Y K J A V Í K

One of the most impressive things about this highly progressive country, with some industries government-supported by necessity, is the public support for art. In what seemed to be the oddest places in the country, some of them nothing less than bleak -- a sculpture or installation, funded by the government, would turn up. For a lightly populated country, its art and architecture skew to the modern while harking back to more than a thousand years of history.