Iceland vs United States

United States is 95 times larger than Iceland — 9,833,517 against 103,000 km². United States is 871 times more populous than Iceland — 341,784,857 against 392,404 people.

Side by side

Population density

United States is 9.1 times more densely populated than Iceland — 35 against 4 people per km². Density is where area and population interact, and it often reverses the impression the headline figures give — a large country with a small population can feel emptier than a small crowded one by an enormous margin.

Practical differences

• Different currencies: the Icelandic króna and the United States dollar.
• United States spans 6 time zones, so "local time" there is not a single answer.
• Different continents — Europe and North America.

Iceland

Iceland sits astride the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, so the North American and Eurasian plates pull apart across the country at about 2 cm a year. Roughly eleven percent of it is under glacier, Vatnajökull alone covering some 7,900 km². Almost all its electricity and heating come from hydro and geothermal sources.

United States

Third or fourth largest country in the world depending on how China's area is counted. It spans six standard time zones across the fifty states, from UTC-10 in Hawaii to UTC-5 on the east coast. Death Valley holds the highest reliably recorded air temperature on Earth, 56.7 °C in 1913, and is 86 m below sea level; Denali, 5,500 km away in Alaska, is 6,190 m.

Neutral facts only. Nothing here addresses politics, government, economics or which country is preferable in any respect — population is the one figure that dates, and it carries its year.