Genuine Icelandic-made goods, including previously impossible-to-get woolens, food items, and even liquor, are now available online through the expanded internet retailer Nordic Store.
The popularity of Iceland as a hip travel destination has been growing steadily for the past ten years. Tourists are attracted by the island’s pristine nature, exciting nightlife, and vibrant artistic and cultural communities. The country has also seen a sharp rise in business and industry to support its affluent, intellectual populace. All of this seems to create a sense of enchantment in anyone who visits.
Where visitors have been disappointed with Iceland has been in their ability to find products to keep the enchantment alive once they have gone home. While fishing exports are well established, Iceland doesn’t export many of its popular goods and crafts to the world market.
Internet retailer Nordic Store hopes to bridge this gap by making some of the country’s most popular goods available online. While the site offers some standard tourist-trap fare, it also contains a surprisingly large selection of handmade items and high quality craft goods. Additionally, there are products made available on the site that are literally impossible to find outside of Iceland’s shores.
The site is well designed, giving shoppers the option of browsing every available item or narrowing their search to the most popular objects in a given category. Goods are also grouped into themes, including Vikings, Runes, and Icelandic Horses. People familiar to Iceland will find the helpful spirit of the locals echoed on the site, as customer service and security are emphasized. If they don’t carry an item of interest, the operators offer to track it down and ship it out.
The site can be found at www.nordicstore.is . If nothing else, it offers a unique look at some of the items produced by this enchanting island in the North Atlantic.