I was recently speaking with a friend about the joys of traveling around Iceland and the incredible emptiness of the rugged landscape. These NASA satellite images of the island nation do a much better job illustrating my point than I could. As the images demonstrate from night time lighting, the human population of Iceland is gathered in the southwest corner of the country around Reykjavik. In fact, more than half of the residents live in the capital region. That other bright spot in the north is Akureyri. The nation’s second largest city with a population of less than 20,000 residents.