What is astonishing and illuminating is that, between cups, no Icelander talks much or at all about the most obvious thing about the compulsive coffee-drinking – that it is a triumph of trade. The beans have had to come from very, very far away to fuel what one proud Icelander called “this barren and isolated little island,” with considerable difficulty and at what must have been at times immense expense. As best as I can discover, the coffee trade to Iceland began in the late eighteenth century and has never really ceased, surmounting all the difficulties of long voyages and iced-in harbors. According to the Nordic Coffee Culture blog, coffee arrived in Iceland precisely on November 16, 1703, “when Árni Magnússon – a scholar and collector of many highly valuable Nordic manuscripts – acquired a quarter of a pound of coffee from a friend.” (How Árni acquired it, or what the friend was doing with it, is unexplained.) By the mid-nineteenth century, it was central to the country’s sense of itself. Martha finally found her holy grail, the ideal café au lait, in a cozy old coffee house called Tiu Droppar.