Iceland’s casual sex culture is the most liberal in the world, but comes at a cost
For having a smaller population than St. Louis, Iceland is arguably the most sexually liberated country on Earth. Read any travel blog on the topic and you’ll find countless (occasionally crude) accounts of how the Viking descendants who live there are more ravenous and enthusiastic about casual sex than anyone, anywhere, with a “backwards” dating culture that begins with drunk sex and ends in … probably not much more.
Yet, while blogs and old ad campaigns like Icelandair’s “One Night Stand in Reykjavík” make it seem like Icelanders have more casual sex than a cabana boy with student loan debt, they also win points in the novelty category with their different way of dating. Instead of the “three dates then sex” narrative dispensed in the U.S., their casual sex culture has created a unique microcosm of sexuality in which the country’s more liberal “fuck first, names later” dictum sets it apart from the rest of the developed world.
“Dating before a hook-up is relatively new here,” says Sigga Dogg, an Icelandic sex writer, educator and president of the Icelandic Sexology Association. “So is the art of the more American way of chatting a stranger up, sober, in broad daylight. We are more into social media pokes or swipes or drunken gropes.”
