One way was to push tourism up the scale of importance and hope to draw visitors to pump needed foreign currency into the ailing system. According to Madeline Drexler in the Los Angeles Times, this produced a clever promotion from the tourism industry: Halfpriceland, the new affordable Iceland. And it turns out to be true. The U.S. dollar trades for almost twice the number of krona it did a year ago, making prices comparable with those in the U.S.

The question remains, though, how many visitors want to be in Iceland in the winter, with short days and cold nights. But with geothermal springs everywhere and a searing nightlife in Reykjavik, winter probably makes little difference here anyway.