11,000 Icelanders offer space to Syrian refugees in their homes

Time reports that more than 11,000 Icelandic householders have offered space in their homes to Syrian refugees, even offering to pay for their flights to the country. The campaign began when the Icelandic government said that Iceland would take no more than 50 refugees.

Iceland’s population is 323,000 compared to Malta’s 423,000. Though the island is vast, it is largely uninhabitable, with two-thirds living in and around the capital, Reykjavík. It is also just emerging from a major economic depression caused by the collapse of its banking system.

As for those who like to frame things in a religious context, with talk of ‘Christian duty’ rather than simple humanity and civilised behavior, Iceland was the last place in European to relinquish paganism for Christianity, as late as a thousand years ago, and pagan beliefs persist in the island’s mythology.