Elisheva asks about infant mortality and feeding practices in Iceland.  I
don't know that it lasted hundreds of years, but feeding practices in 18th
century Iceland were life-threatening to infants and mortality was very high
as a result.
From 'Boken om amming' (The book about BF, ISBN 82-05-22652-0) by Elisabet
Helsing (my translation):
"Iceland- saga island where only the strongest survived?
(A Danish physician, Biarne Poulsen, reported in 1772 that)...the mothers
there did not BF their babies.  Babies were cared for by neighbors or older
relatives, who fed them fresh cow's milk, masticated fish, and meat dishes.
The wealthiest families used cream and butter.  This led to a monstrous
infant mortality.  A mother had to figure on giving birth to 10-15 babies to
have 3 survive.  Even though 'late abortion' may have been an underlying
motivation for many, it can not possibly be the whole explanation, and one
wonders that such a massive distrust of women's own product can have been so
widespread.  People obviously had certain ideas that those who survived this
brutal treatment grew up to be especially big and strong.
That such attitudes are amenable to change then, as now, is shown in a
report written 70 years later, by the physician A. Schleisner, also referred
to... He worked for some years in Iceland, and later wrote of his
impressions, and he tells that it is still usual to foster out the newborns,
giving them cow's milk and the like to drink, but a midwife educated in
Copenhagen had in fact succeeded in convincing mothers in Reykjavik and the
other trade centres to breastfeed, naturally with a much better result for
childrens' health."

I know very little about current BF practice in Iceland but they have a
midwifery-based system of maternity care, and an excellent school of
midwifery so I bet it's better than in 1842!
Rachel Myr
Norway

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