I moved to Iceland and earned £25,000 more than I would have in the UK

Heather Allansdottir was part way through her PhD at Oxford University when she began to look for academic positions, and realised UK salaries could be easily beaten abroad. She was particularly drawn to those in Iceland. “They had amazing research facilities and really, really high pay,” she says. Heather, whose academic background is in law, said, for a lecturer in the UK, she would have been looking to earn a salary of about £45,000/US$61,000. In Iceland, however, salaries were more like £70,000/$95,000 a year, a figure she was eventually able to earn – some £25,000/$34,000 more than in Britain. (Photo: Bifröst University)

Higher costs - but higher wages to match

Heather moved to the Nordic island nation from Oxford, living there from ages 33 to 36, residing in both Reykjavik – the capital (pictured) – and a town about an hour away, while working at Bifröst University. The now 40-year-old says the cost of living was far higher in Iceland, but the extra pay compared with the UK more than made up for it. A one-bed apartment cost her around £1,750/$2,380 per month – more than the British average of £1,067/$1,451, according to the Office for National Statistics in the UK, but the luxuries afforded were correspondingly higher as well, creating what she says was a better quality of life. “The cost of living is high, but if you live there and you’re being paid Icelandic wages, it’s really, really fine. The quality of living is also so much higher. I had free underfloor heating in my apartment because they just redirected a nearby hot spring. Everything was just so clean and calm and quiet. It’s also the safest country in the world.” (Photo: Travelpix Ltd/Getty)

A lack of supermarket variety

She said there were some negatives, for instance a lack of variety of products – in such things as food – when compared with the UK. She also said that she did see relatively high taxes, which some Nordic countries are famed for. Yet, she said: “Even with this, the salaries are far, far higher.” (Photo: Julien Behal/PA)

A lot of cultural similarities

Heather eventually returned to the UK in 2022, after everything started opening up following the Covid lockdowns. But, she adds, the move was primarily because she missed family and friends in the UK. Heather has lived in a wide variety of countries throughout the world – ranging from North America to eastern Europe – and particularly recommends the Nordic nations as a destination for Brits considering moving abroad. “There’s not a huge language issue, there are a lot of cultural similarities and they are very, very tolerant countries overall,” she adds. (Photo: AP/Kin Cheung)

Name change

Finally, on her name, Heather says she changed it when moving to Iceland, having been born Heather McRobie. It fits in with Icelandic naming convention, where most women have the suffix “dottir” on their surname, meaning “daughter of”. “I did it for various reasons – I thought it would speed up residency. But I want to make it clear to anyone thinking of moving that you don’t have to do that,” she explains. So why does she still keep the name? “It was meant to be temporary, but I liked it so I kept it,” she says. (Photo: KeongDaGreat/Getty/Stockphoto)