It Was a Dark and Snowy Night ... Icelandair Cools Beverages With Ancient Glacial Ice

About a thousand years ago, when Vikings ruled the seas and settled new lands, there was a great glacier on top of an island known as Iceland. It was the 11th century, long before the industrialization of our planet, and layers upon layers -- millions of tons -- of unpolluted snow fell to earth. Under this enormous pressure, a unique kind of ice was formed.

As Europeans have never been known to fill their glasses with ice the way Americans are prone to do, the early settlers of that land probably never even thought of trekking up the mountain to secure some of that pure frozen snow.

So it just remained there. For centuries. Clean, untouched. Until now. Sliding slowly down the mountainside, the glacier eventually reaches the edge, where huge icebergs break off and tumble haplessly to complete their journey to the sea.

Today, the purest of these icebergs are carefully cut into perfect cubes with high-tech ceramic saws. Sparkling, transparent and dense, this thousand- year-old ice has become known as the diamonds of Iceland. Now there has been talk of changing the name of this country. People thought it didn't sound hospitable. But Icelandair started filling glasses with these pure gems from this pollution-free environment and the answer is obvious. Iceland. It's a pretty good name, after all.