You can’t get around them. They litter the streets like locusts on the crops. Babies, Iceland’s full of them.

This isn’t unusual as such; Iceland has always been a fertile place with a longstanding seat as the holder of some of the highest fertility rates in Europe.

Since the economic crash, however, Icelanders have taken their proficiency at making babies and multiplied their efforts to reach the Mensa heights.

So far this year, 3,080 babies have been born at Landspítali National Hospital in Reykjavík. In 2008, 3,386 babies were born at Landspítali—up by 7.8 percent from 2007—and it is almost certain that the record will be broken before this year is over.

“We will probably have reached the same number as last year around mid-December,” Gudrún G. Eggertsdóttir, senior midwife at Landspítali’s delivery room, told Morgunbladid.

The numbers look unimpressive out of context, I know. I mean, it’s estimated that 216,000 babies are born daily around the globe (that’s almost Iceland’s entire population, by the way) so really 3,386 babies in one year seems like a single cob in a cornfield.

Looking at Iceland’s population, though, more than 3,000 new people each year in a country with only about 320,000 people, makes a big impact.

I see them everywhere, heavily pregnant women waddling around campus, studying well into their third trimester. I see women with a backpack hanging on one shoulder talking to classmates about school projects while they push prams with their newborns. I see them feeding their well-behaved little babies while they discuss work assignments around tables in the various group study areas on campus.

Earlier in the term while working on a group project my classmates and I took a table across from a toilet. We counted 11 different pregnant young women use the toilet.

Honest to God I was shocked. My friends were so blasé about it, “Oh that’s how it’s always been in Iceland,” one of them explained, “why shouldn’t women be young mothers if they want? The daycare here is so heavily subsidized that Icelandic families can easily pursue a double income lifestyle or an education while still having kids. It’s not even thought twice about, Icelandic women can do it because we have a support system that works. Also Icelandic mothers are really friggin’ organized.”

Even so, I pointed out, the amount of pending babies seemed unusually high and they agreed, then blamed the kreppa. The “kreppa kids,” as they have now been affectionately named, refers to the babies conceived in the aftermath of the economic crash.

Suddenly in the fray the Icelandic people started to bump uglies, irresponsibly. Now we have a massive wave of pregnancies. You would think that in a time where fiscal frugality is hailed as a necessity people would avoid taking on the one of the most expensive ventures life has to offer: parenthood.

Looking back at history, baby booms aren’t uncommon. In fact, it happens a lot, namely after great catastrophic events where a sudden dip in the population leads to procreation.

For example, after either of the World Wars, after natural disasters or times riddled by disease or bouts of starvation that lead to a significant drop in population figures.

But Iceland didn’t lose three quarters of its male population in battle or to some unforgiving plague, no bombs have dropped and no volcanoes have erupted.

Yes, some people are struggling and, yes, unemployment figures aren’t exemplary but we can still go to the hospital when we get sick, we can still afford condoms (and yet…), universities still don’t have tuition fees and people are still plump and round, so food shortage isn’t an immediate danger.

What’s interesting, though, is that in the mind of Icelanders, something primitive clicked into place. In their brain the collapse of the economic system was so cataclysmic that the instinct to procreate awoke with a blaze in their bodies. Baby fever doesn’t play around and no one is safe from it.

Even I have started to smile uncontrollably at the sight of their pudgy little hands and fluffy booties. It’s so primal I can’t seem to fight it but then, they’re so cute!

Nanna Árnadóttir – nannaa@hotmail.co.uk