7 ms·

The Icelandic Art of Swim Lessons

51 points by janandonly 3y ago

paul7986 3y ago
Iceland's communal swimming and hot bathing especially in the government run bathhouses were the best part of Iceland for me (traveled solo). I met locals (now friends) and scheduled & met/dates there thru dating apps. I did go to the Blue and Sky Lagoon , which for me are the Disney of bathhouses. They are worth checking out at least once.
RandallBrown 3y ago
The US doesn't have compulsory swim lessons for little kids, but I do remember it being a part of my high school education. (Probably only 1 or 2 kids in my gym class couldn't swim though.) Community pools are very much a thing all over the US as well. I imagine COVID changed them pretty dramatically but it was very much a part of my childhood, even though I had neighbors with pools. Just look at the movie The Sandlot. The community pool was a major part of the story.
- CBLT 3y ago
  The US had significantly more community pools before desegregation. Once they were required to allow all swimmers, construction of new public pools stopped and many existing pools were drained. This is the reason private pools are so popular in the US. https://www.marketplace.org/2021/02/15/public-pools-used-to-be-everywhere-in-america-then-racism-shut-them-down/amp/ https://www.marketplace.org/2021/02/15/public-pools-used-to-...
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  > The US doesn't have compulsory swim lessons for little kids Is that true across all states?
  - RandallBrown 3y ago
    Probably? This kind of thing would be done through school and as far as I know very few elementary schools have swimming pools.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      It depends what you mean by "compulsory" - e.g, like public school is compulsory (can't graduate), or just that everyone gets the chance to do it (required class). The local public school system here has a deal with the recreation center to do swimming lessons during the school year. But that's going to be a very local thing unless a state mandates it.
- patrakov 3y ago
  This shows a disconnect. MIT requires swimming skills for those who try to enroll. https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3f3kph/til_that_mit_students_must_pass_a_swim_test_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3f3kph/til_t...
nkurz 3y ago
Along these lines, in a recent interview with the First Lady of Iceland, she recommends that tourists who want to meet real Icelanders should visit a swimming pool: "They say if you want to meet a Brit, go to a pub; if you want to meet a French person, go to a cafe. And definitely here in Iceland, you go to a swimming pool, because that’s where you can meet people — morning, afternoon or evening. And I recommend that visitors try different pools, because they all have their own character and personality and you can meet different types of people. They’re clean and affordable, and it’s something that all the locals do." https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/01/travel/iceland-tourism-eliza-reid.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/01/travel/iceland-tourism-el...
- euroderf 3y ago
  This is especially true during the Airwaves festival in the autumn. You meet people from all over the world in the city pool. (Municipool?)
thebooktocome 3y ago
[flagged]
- tnel77 3y ago
  How prevalent is this though? I come from a small rural part of the country that voted about 98% for Trump in 2016 and 2020. I remember going to the community pool and no one doing or saying anything negative to the non-white swimmers. I won’t pretend that there is no racism, but this notion that large swaths of the country are just itching to break out the noose is rude and just plain false.
  - golemiprague 3y ago
    [dead]
  - thebooktocome 3y ago
    Excuse me, but I didn’t say anything like “large swaths of the country are just itching to break out the noose.” You’re being hyperbolic and oversensitive. When I’m talking about “some corners of our country”, I’m talking about corners that I’ve personally seen myself. It’s not subtle when, e.g., the pool attendant lets me in the municipal pool without a second glance but stop the black mother behind me and pointedly demand she prove her residence.
  - eesmith 3y ago
    There are two or three different prevalences in your question. Outright racial discrimination at a community pool is illegal. "Just itching to break out the noose" isn't really a thing. What happens instead is something more like https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/black-family-kicked-out-historically-black-pool-highlighting-lasting-impact-n1235532 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/black-family-kicked-out-... where a white woman asked for the police to come because two black swimmers were talking to each other across her lane. I don't know how to measure that prevalence, in any useful sense. There are also confounding factors as the history of segregation means black parents - who didn't learn to swim - don't think it's fun to take the kids to the pool, nor can teach the kids to swim. It's certainly not low enough that it can be ignored. There's almost certainly research papers which address your question, if you go looking for them. The third prevalence, which thebooktocome points out, is how public pools closed down, to prevent mandatory desegregation. Instead, whites started or joined private clubs, where racial discrimination is legal. How many private pool are in your small rural part of the country? Even without explicit racial bias, are the membership fees high enough that the strong correlation between race and income results in an implicit racial bias? For a deeper coverage, see "Still Drowning in Segregation: Limits of Law in Post-Civil Rights America", https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1195&context=lawineq https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=... , which starts with this example: ] The absence of swimming pool access in many cities throughout the nation explains why in 2009 the Philadelphia-based Creative Steps Day Camp paid the Valley Swim Club, a private facility in Huntington Valley, Pennsylvania, a $1,950 membership fee for weekly access for their campers to the club swimming pool." According to newspaper reports, when some of the approximately sixty predominately black and Hispanic day campers "got in the pool[,] all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool."9 Some day campers reported overhearing "club members asking why so many black children were in the pool ... [and] using racial slurs while they were swimming." ] ... The swimming pool at issue in the Valley Swim Club incident, however, was private. After Brown and the closing of government-operated pools, many whites fled to privately-run pools. That specific case was settled: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-settles-race-discrimination-case-against-pennsylvania-country-club https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-settles-ra... . The pool went bankrupt. Still, that's one of the corners thebooktocome mentioned, and that paper should be a good starting point for you to find research on the prevalence. Another might be "Navigating Rough Waters: Public Swimming Pools, Discrimination, and the Law" at https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1445&context=ijare https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=14... . Oh, right! and the 2007 book "Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America". I had forgotten about that one. Google Scholar has some 380 papers citing the book. The book is at https://archive.org/details/contestedwaterss0000wilt https://archive.org/details/contestedwaterss0000wilt .
heywhatupboys 3y ago
> Iceland is the only place in the world with universal swim literacy. absolutely false, and I am getting tired of the constant Iceland propaganda their tourist industry wants you to believe
karaterobot 3y ago
Curious why swimming is considered a required skill for people to have in Iceland, and why swimming lessons until age 14 are compulsory, as the article says. It does seem like swimming pools in Iceland are a bit different than the U.S., being geothermally heated. That answered my first question, which was "wouldn't it be too cold to swim for most of the year?" and may also offer an explanation for why they become community hubs: a place to be outside during winter without freezing to death. Just a guess on my part; would love to visit Iceland but haven't yet. We have plenty of community pools in the U.S. (about 309k of them, according to a quick Google search), but the vast majority are private. We had a swimming pool at my house growing up (I consider it a miracle, since we were fairly poor), but I also spent a lot of time at the community pool. Growing up in a hot climate, our pools were never heated, geothermally or otherwise, and served mainly as a way to cool down in the 10000 degree heat. That may be partly why there are so many private ones in the U.S.: you would jump in them to cool down, then after a few minutes you'd get out and go play somewhere else until you got hot again. Oh, the other purpose for private pools is teenage skinny dipping, which you wouldn't do in a community hub (I assume).
- cm2012 3y ago
  Every tiny small town in Iceland has at least one amazing swimming pool. With the free geothermal energy its just part of the culture. I loved it when I visited!
  - euroderf 3y ago
    The flip side of this is that all hot water taps give off a faint odor of sulfur. Kinda cool tho.
- fastasucan 3y ago
  >wouldn't it be too cold to swim for most of the year? On the contrary. The ocean in Iceland have a surprisingly even temperature. And even if it is a cold period its a big thing to be swimming during winter in nordic countries. In addition to that, its not like you can control when you might fall in water. >a place to be outside during winter without freezing to death. Thats extremely hyperbolic, the avg temperature in december in Reykavik is -1.2 celsius.
daneel_w 3y ago
"Iceland is the only place in the world with universal swim literacy." Sweden also mandates swim lessons for grade school students, though not all schools manage to live up to the requirement.
- thebooktocome 3y ago
  I’m pretty sure Finland does as well, though whether it’s a national mandate or just standard operating procedure I don’t know.
- wildekek 3y ago
  Netherlands too. Really grateful I'm super comfortable in water.
  - arp242 3y ago
    It's not mandatory since 1985, and apparently the number of schools offering it has declined quite a bit to about a third in 2016[1], and I wouldn't be surprised if it was even lower today but I can't find more recent figures. It's a shame, because it's both useful – potentially life-saving useful – and fun. When I lived in Asia I tried teaching some adults to swim, and even just floating on water is hard for most. [1]: https://www.sportenstrategie.nl/sportonderzoek/van-a-diploma-tot-zwemvaardigheid-zwemmen-in-cijfers/ https://www.sportenstrategie.nl/sportonderzoek/van-a-diploma...
    - _dain_ 3y ago
      Would have thought teaching everyone to swim would be a matter of national disaster preparedness for the Dutch ...
      - Ichthypresbyter 3y ago
        And not just that- 10% of Dutch traffic deaths are by drowning. I did notice when I lived there that people found swimming lessons very important, to the extent that cards to congratulate children on passing their swimming test are commonly sold.
sdwr 3y ago
I spend a decent amount of time at my local pool. It's a good space, but not as socially developed as what's described, and has a distinct authoritarian vibe. 600 yards is a solid workaday distance - daunting to the inexperienced, something I crank out pretty easily after a few years.
darod 3y ago
MIT requires all students pass a swim test in order to graduate. It's only 100 yards though
- RavingGoat 3y ago
  The Citadel used to as well. No idea if they still do but you had to tread water for a few minutes then swim the length of the pool without touching the bottom to graduate.
- MengerSponge 3y ago
  Columbia famously requires a swim test from everyone but the engineering students. The legend says "Manhattan is an island. Engineers can build boats."
CharlieDigital 3y ago
> What if Americans got together, with a similar degree of concern about the public health risk that the current barriers to learning to swim present? What if we invited more of the community to use underused private pools? What if the U.S. government incentivized the construction of more public pools to serve especially underserved populations? US used to have a lot of public swimming pools. The problem is racism and desegregation. There is a great Marketplace podcast on this [0]: > Draining public swimming pools to avoid integration received the official blessing of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971. The city council in Jackson, Mississippi, had responded to desegregation demands by closing four public pools and leasing the fifth to the YMCA, which operated it for whites only. > “Beginning in the mid-1950s northern cities generally stopped building large resort pools and let the ones already constructed fall into disrepair.” Over the next decade, millions of white Americans who once swam in public for free began to pay rather than swim for free with Black people; desegregation in the mid-fifties coincided with a surge in backyard pools and members-only swim clubs. And more reading on the brutal history of integrated public/community pools in the US [1] with an infamous photo of a motel manager pouring muriatic acid into a pool where black and white demonstrators used a pool togther: > ...those big public pools eventually became mixed-gender pools, unleashing even deeper-seated fears about what might happen if black men and white women went swimming together. "Whites in many cases literally beat blacks out of the water at gender-integrated pools because they would not permit black men to interact with white women at such intimate public spaces," A survey conducted by Northwestern University [2] found that there's a ~25% gap between Black and Latino children versus white children when it comes to swimming lessons. So there you go; the reason we can't have nice things is because we have an abundance of racists in the US that would rather sabotage a resource for the community rather than share a space with another human being who happens to have genes for higher melanin content in their skin. If you ever wonder why we can't have nice things in the US as a society, it is often the case that there's probably a reason that's rooted in either racism or classism. [0]: https://www.marketplace.org/2021/02/15/public-pools-used-to-be-everywhere-in-america-then-racism-shut-them-down/ https://www.marketplace.org/2021/02/15/public-pools-used-to-... [1]: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/06/09/412913702/who-gets-to-hang-out-at-the-pool https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/06/09/412913702... [2]: https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2022/12/racial-ethnic-disparities-in-swimming-skills-found-across-generations/?fj=1 https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2022/12/racial-ethnic-...
bitshiftfaced 3y ago
Removed
- basisword 3y ago
  Finland and Iceland are different countries. This article is about Iceland.
stuckkeys 3y ago
This was a great piece to read. Thanks for sharing.

51 points by janandonly 3y ago

Iceland's communal swimming and hot bathing especially in the government run bathhouses were the best part of Iceland for me (traveled solo). I met locals (now friends) and scheduled & met/dates there thru dating apps. I did go to the Blue and Sky Lagoon , which for me are the Disney of bathhouses. They are worth checking out at least once.

RandallBrown 3y ago

The US doesn't have compulsory swim lessons for little kids, but I do remember it being a part of my high school education. (Probably only 1 or 2 kids in my gym class couldn't swim though.) Community pools are very much a thing all over the US as well. I imagine COVID changed them pretty dramatically but it was very much a part of my childhood, even though I had neighbors with pools. Just look at the movie The Sandlot. The community pool was a major part of the story.

CBLT 3y ago
The US had significantly more community pools before desegregation. Once they were required to allow all swimmers, construction of new public pools stopped and many existing pools were drained. This is the reason private pools are so popular in the US. https://www.marketplace.org/2021/02/15/public-pools-used-to-be-everywhere-in-america-then-racism-shut-them-down/amp/ https://www.marketplace.org/2021/02/15/public-pools-used-to-...
Scoundreller 3y ago
> The US doesn't have compulsory swim lessons for little kids Is that true across all states?
- RandallBrown 3y ago
  Probably? This kind of thing would be done through school and as far as I know very few elementary schools have swimming pools.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    It depends what you mean by "compulsory" - e.g, like public school is compulsory (can't graduate), or just that everyone gets the chance to do it (required class). The local public school system here has a deal with the recreation center to do swimming lessons during the school year. But that's going to be a very local thing unless a state mandates it.
patrakov 3y ago
This shows a disconnect. MIT requires swimming skills for those who try to enroll. https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3f3kph/til_that_mit_students_must_pass_a_swim_test_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3f3kph/til_t...

nkurz 3y ago

Along these lines, in a recent interview with the First Lady of Iceland, she recommends that tourists who want to meet real Icelanders should visit a swimming pool: "They say if you want to meet a Brit, go to a pub; if you want to meet a French person, go to a cafe. And definitely here in Iceland, you go to a swimming pool, because that’s where you can meet people — morning, afternoon or evening. And I recommend that visitors try different pools, because they all have their own character and personality and you can meet different types of people. They’re clean and affordable, and it’s something that all the locals do." https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/01/travel/iceland-tourism-eliza-reid.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/01/travel/iceland-tourism-el...

euroderf 3y ago
This is especially true during the Airwaves festival in the autumn. You meet people from all over the world in the city pool. (Municipool?)

thebooktocome 3y ago

[flagged]

tnel77 3y ago
How prevalent is this though? I come from a small rural part of the country that voted about 98% for Trump in 2016 and 2020. I remember going to the community pool and no one doing or saying anything negative to the non-white swimmers. I won’t pretend that there is no racism, but this notion that large swaths of the country are just itching to break out the noose is rude and just plain false.
- golemiprague 3y ago
  [dead]
- thebooktocome 3y ago
  Excuse me, but I didn’t say anything like “large swaths of the country are just itching to break out the noose.” You’re being hyperbolic and oversensitive. When I’m talking about “some corners of our country”, I’m talking about corners that I’ve personally seen myself. It’s not subtle when, e.g., the pool attendant lets me in the municipal pool without a second glance but stop the black mother behind me and pointedly demand she prove her residence.
- eesmith 3y ago
  There are two or three different prevalences in your question. Outright racial discrimination at a community pool is illegal. "Just itching to break out the noose" isn't really a thing. What happens instead is something more like https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/black-family-kicked-out-historically-black-pool-highlighting-lasting-impact-n1235532 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/black-family-kicked-out-... where a white woman asked for the police to come because two black swimmers were talking to each other across her lane. I don't know how to measure that prevalence, in any useful sense. There are also confounding factors as the history of segregation means black parents - who didn't learn to swim - don't think it's fun to take the kids to the pool, nor can teach the kids to swim. It's certainly not low enough that it can be ignored. There's almost certainly research papers which address your question, if you go looking for them. The third prevalence, which thebooktocome points out, is how public pools closed down, to prevent mandatory desegregation. Instead, whites started or joined private clubs, where racial discrimination is legal. How many private pool are in your small rural part of the country? Even without explicit racial bias, are the membership fees high enough that the strong correlation between race and income results in an implicit racial bias? For a deeper coverage, see "Still Drowning in Segregation: Limits of Law in Post-Civil Rights America", https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1195&context=lawineq https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=... , which starts with this example: ] The absence of swimming pool access in many cities throughout the nation explains why in 2009 the Philadelphia-based Creative Steps Day Camp paid the Valley Swim Club, a private facility in Huntington Valley, Pennsylvania, a $1,950 membership fee for weekly access for their campers to the club swimming pool." According to newspaper reports, when some of the approximately sixty predominately black and Hispanic day campers "got in the pool[,] all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool."9 Some day campers reported overhearing "club members asking why so many black children were in the pool ... [and] using racial slurs while they were swimming." ] ... The swimming pool at issue in the Valley Swim Club incident, however, was private. After Brown and the closing of government-operated pools, many whites fled to privately-run pools. That specific case was settled: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-settles-race-discrimination-case-against-pennsylvania-country-club https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-settles-ra... . The pool went bankrupt. Still, that's one of the corners thebooktocome mentioned, and that paper should be a good starting point for you to find research on the prevalence. Another might be "Navigating Rough Waters: Public Swimming Pools, Discrimination, and the Law" at https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1445&context=ijare https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=14... . Oh, right! and the 2007 book "Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America". I had forgotten about that one. Google Scholar has some 380 papers citing the book. The book is at https://archive.org/details/contestedwaterss0000wilt https://archive.org/details/contestedwaterss0000wilt .

heywhatupboys 3y ago

> Iceland is the only place in the world with universal swim literacy. absolutely false, and I am getting tired of the constant Iceland propaganda their tourist industry wants you to believe

karaterobot 3y ago

Curious why swimming is considered a required skill for people to have in Iceland, and why swimming lessons until age 14 are compulsory, as the article says. It does seem like swimming pools in Iceland are a bit different than the U.S., being geothermally heated. That answered my first question, which was "wouldn't it be too cold to swim for most of the year?" and may also offer an explanation for why they become community hubs: a place to be outside during winter without freezing to death. Just a guess on my part; would love to visit Iceland but haven't yet. We have plenty of community pools in the U.S. (about 309k of them, according to a quick Google search), but the vast majority are private. We had a swimming pool at my house growing up (I consider it a miracle, since we were fairly poor), but I also spent a lot of time at the community pool. Growing up in a hot climate, our pools were never heated, geothermally or otherwise, and served mainly as a way to cool down in the 10000 degree heat. That may be partly why there are so many private ones in the U.S.: you would jump in them to cool down, then after a few minutes you'd get out and go play somewhere else until you got hot again. Oh, the other purpose for private pools is teenage skinny dipping, which you wouldn't do in a community hub (I assume).

cm2012 3y ago
Every tiny small town in Iceland has at least one amazing swimming pool. With the free geothermal energy its just part of the culture. I loved it when I visited!
- euroderf 3y ago
  The flip side of this is that all hot water taps give off a faint odor of sulfur. Kinda cool tho.
fastasucan 3y ago
>wouldn't it be too cold to swim for most of the year? On the contrary. The ocean in Iceland have a surprisingly even temperature. And even if it is a cold period its a big thing to be swimming during winter in nordic countries. In addition to that, its not like you can control when you might fall in water. >a place to be outside during winter without freezing to death. Thats extremely hyperbolic, the avg temperature in december in Reykavik is -1.2 celsius.

daneel_w 3y ago

"Iceland is the only place in the world with universal swim literacy." Sweden also mandates swim lessons for grade school students, though not all schools manage to live up to the requirement.

thebooktocome 3y ago
I’m pretty sure Finland does as well, though whether it’s a national mandate or just standard operating procedure I don’t know.
wildekek 3y ago
Netherlands too. Really grateful I'm super comfortable in water.
- arp242 3y ago
  It's not mandatory since 1985, and apparently the number of schools offering it has declined quite a bit to about a third in 2016[1], and I wouldn't be surprised if it was even lower today but I can't find more recent figures. It's a shame, because it's both useful – potentially life-saving useful – and fun. When I lived in Asia I tried teaching some adults to swim, and even just floating on water is hard for most. [1]: https://www.sportenstrategie.nl/sportonderzoek/van-a-diploma-tot-zwemvaardigheid-zwemmen-in-cijfers/ https://www.sportenstrategie.nl/sportonderzoek/van-a-diploma...
  - _dain_ 3y ago
    Would have thought teaching everyone to swim would be a matter of national disaster preparedness for the Dutch ...
    - Ichthypresbyter 3y ago
      And not just that- 10% of Dutch traffic deaths are by drowning. I did notice when I lived there that people found swimming lessons very important, to the extent that cards to congratulate children on passing their swimming test are commonly sold.

sdwr 3y ago

I spend a decent amount of time at my local pool. It's a good space, but not as socially developed as what's described, and has a distinct authoritarian vibe. 600 yards is a solid workaday distance - daunting to the inexperienced, something I crank out pretty easily after a few years.

darod 3y ago

MIT requires all students pass a swim test in order to graduate. It's only 100 yards though

RavingGoat 3y ago
The Citadel used to as well. No idea if they still do but you had to tread water for a few minutes then swim the length of the pool without touching the bottom to graduate.
MengerSponge 3y ago
Columbia famously requires a swim test from everyone but the engineering students. The legend says "Manhattan is an island. Engineers can build boats."

CharlieDigital 3y ago

> What if Americans got together, with a similar degree of concern about the public health risk that the current barriers to learning to swim present? What if we invited more of the community to use underused private pools? What if the U.S. government incentivized the construction of more public pools to serve especially underserved populations? US used to have a lot of public swimming pools. The problem is racism and desegregation. There is a great Marketplace podcast on this [0]: > Draining public swimming pools to avoid integration received the official blessing of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971. The city council in Jackson, Mississippi, had responded to desegregation demands by closing four public pools and leasing the fifth to the YMCA, which operated it for whites only. > “Beginning in the mid-1950s northern cities generally stopped building large resort pools and let the ones already constructed fall into disrepair.” Over the next decade, millions of white Americans who once swam in public for free began to pay rather than swim for free with Black people; desegregation in the mid-fifties coincided with a surge in backyard pools and members-only swim clubs. And more reading on the brutal history of integrated public/community pools in the US [1] with an infamous photo of a motel manager pouring muriatic acid into a pool where black and white demonstrators used a pool togther: > ...those big public pools eventually became mixed-gender pools, unleashing even deeper-seated fears about what might happen if black men and white women went swimming together. "Whites in many cases literally beat blacks out of the water at gender-integrated pools because they would not permit black men to interact with white women at such intimate public spaces," A survey conducted by Northwestern University [2] found that there's a ~25% gap between Black and Latino children versus white children when it comes to swimming lessons. So there you go; the reason we can't have nice things is because we have an abundance of racists in the US that would rather sabotage a resource for the community rather than share a space with another human being who happens to have genes for higher melanin content in their skin. If you ever wonder why we can't have nice things in the US as a society, it is often the case that there's probably a reason that's rooted in either racism or classism. [0]: https://www.marketplace.org/2021/02/15/public-pools-used-to-be-everywhere-in-america-then-racism-shut-them-down/ https://www.marketplace.org/2021/02/15/public-pools-used-to-... [1]: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/06/09/412913702/who-gets-to-hang-out-at-the-pool https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/06/09/412913702... [2]: https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2022/12/racial-ethnic-disparities-in-swimming-skills-found-across-generations/?fj=1 https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2022/12/racial-ethnic-...

bitshiftfaced 3y ago

Removed

basisword 3y ago
Finland and Iceland are different countries. This article is about Iceland.

stuckkeys 3y ago

This was a great piece to read. Thanks for sharing.