Iceland's armed police force is called the "Viking Squad"
Police in Iceland have shot dead a gunman - the first time armed police have killed someone in the country. In a BBC News Magazine feature originally published on 16 May, 2013, US law student Andrew Clark asked why Iceland, awash with guns, has one of the lowest violent crime rates in the world.
Even though I grew up in New England, there was something novel about seeing an Icelandic blizzard. It was paralysing, with epic wind gusts that made snowflakes feel like razors.
As I dragged my bags along Reykjavik's snowy pavement, an older man in a Jeep pulled alongside me.
"You want to get in?" he asked.
It sounded crazy. Why would I ever get in a stranger's car?
Despite everything I was taught about riding in cars with strangers, I climbed in the backseat. And I knew nothing bad was going to happen to me.
After all, I was in Iceland for a week to study the nation's lack of crime, my second trip there in six months.
I had spent the last three years in Boston at Suffolk University Law School, where I was studying international law.
Before my first visit to Reykjavik in August 2012, my law school thesis was settled - a study of cyber warfare and the Geneva conventions.
But a week in Iceland changed my perspective. I was pleasantly flummoxed by what I saw.
Violent crime was virtually non-existent. People seemed relaxed about their safety and that of their children to the point where parents left their babies outside and unattended.
I'd spent time in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, but those countries now appeared plagued with crime by comparison.
Once I got back to America, I changed my thesis topic.
I wanted to know what Iceland was doing right.
Frankly, there is no perfect answer as to why Iceland has one of the lowest violent crime rates in the world.
According to the 2011 Global Study on Homicide by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Iceland's homicide rate between 1999-2009 never went above 1.8 per 100,000 population on any given year.
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