The future of Greenland’s remote settlements has come under scrutiny after the Democratic Party’s Palle Chritiansen questioned the feasibility of villages with fewer than 100 residents. Read the full story

Around 2,300 homes stand empty in the Reykjavik region and a further 900 are nearing completion. Due to a glut of new housing and the reduction in the number of capital region residents, there are already enough homes to keep up with demand in coming years. Read the full story

Numbers of primary school students in Iceland have gone down since last school year, numbering 43,511 students in autumn 2008. There were also 135 children in classes for five year-olds at five schools (Icelandic children start compulsory education at age six and remain in ‘primary school’ until the age of 16).

There were 330 more primary school students in autumn 2007, which equates to around 0.7 percent – but the number of staff members working at primary schools has increased in that time. Read the full story

According to the Resident Register at the National Registry Office of Iceland, the population of Iceland was 319,368 on 1st January 2009, up from 315,459 a year earlier. That equates to a 1.2 percent increase over 12 months, mbl.is reports. Read the full story

Frettabladid reports that two young residents of Iceland’s Westman Islands, Sunna Georgsdottir and Anna Mary Gudmundsdottir found four pufflings Sunday evening and took them for weighing at the Westman Islands Museum of Natural History.

Everyone who finds pufflings wandering the islands should take them for weighing as part of the Puffling Survey – scientists’ way Read the full story

Figures charting current population growth and population trends for the next 40 years show that Iceland will keep its pensioner population in balance while other European countries are faced with the problem of dependent ageing populations.

Many countries, such as Germany, Italy, Portugal and Greece, have reported significant increases in the number of dependents over the past 10 years. The numbers of dependents in these countries is likely to double by 2050.

Many of the EU’s newer members, including smaller states like Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia and Estonia, also showed large increases and the trend is not likely to change in the coming years.

Iceland and other Scandinavian countries on the other hand have shown slow growth rates in the number of dependents, which is likely to leave the total population proportion unchanged over the coming decades.

In Iceland, 17.9 per cent of the population are presently dependents, up from 17.3 per cent ten years ago. Figures from the European Union Public Health Information System, predict that this figure will remain largely unchanged in coming decades