That is really concise and to the point, and that attitude sounds very hauntingly familiar to what I see here.
I am very grateful that I never saw teens purposefully coughing in the face of old people, but I did see a similar attitude of "How DARE you tell me what to do even if it's for the benefit of everyone around me!"
When I worked retail over the mask mandate days about half my customers would flip me off, cuss me out, scream at me, or even try to reach over the counter and harm me when I asked them to put on a mask. Pretty often I see Icelandic teens and young adults do things like, intentionally throw their trash on the ground when they're only a meter or two away from the nearest trash can and smugly strut away from their empty soda can now just sitting on the ground. It's this idea of "How DARE someone tell me where I can and can't dispose of my trash, how DARE someone tell me where and how I can cough." It's this obsession with being ungovernable and nobody getting a say in their actions or behaviors, even when their actions or behaviors are directly harming someone else.
I've had Icelanders tell me it's unavoidable to see this kind of behavior here because they believe this obsession with being ungovernable (even to the point of harming others) is grafted right onto their DNA, because the Norse people who left Norway to settle Iceland were people who wanted to live independently without being ruled or governed by the king of Norway.
For what it's worth, I don't believe in that. I don't think "self centered jerk" can be found in anyone's DNA. I think it has more to do with the fact that Iceland has been a rural agrarian society, where people lived in small isolated family farms, for most of Iceland's history. So, for most of the country's history people rarely, if ever, were interacting with anyone outside of their small close knit communities. Urban areas where people actually have to see and interact with strangers on a regular basis is a fairly new phenomenon to Iceland, so this idea of "maybe you should be considerate of other people, yes even if you don't know them" is a fairly new concept to Iceland. Some are more resistant to this than others.
An obsession with independence is also a major part of the Icelandic identity. The first and only Icelandic novel to receive a Nobel prize is "Sjálfstætt fólk" (Independent People) by Halldór Laxness. The central theme of the novel is criticizing the Icelandic cultural obsession with independence, and the main protagonist of the novel is portrayed as a very cruel, selfish man for his obsessive pursuit of total independence. But it's also very interesting to note that the Icelandic word for independent, sjálfstætt, would more literally translate to "self standing" in English, and I think it really is more accurate to many Icelander's concept of independence to have "self" right in the word.
For important nuance, of course a major reason independence is so important to the Icelandic cultural identity is the centuries long struggle for independence from Danish rule. It is right, healthy, and just to want to be free from tyranny, from unjust rules, from being controlled and manipulated by others.
However, in many western cultures, you can find this hyper-obsession with independence and being ungovernable to the point of being actively destructive and harmful to the people around you, when the obsession of being ungovernable is self obsession, me me me self self self.
However, We Live In A Society.
For anyone interested in the theme of obsession with independence and being ungovernable -> obsession with self -> cruelty and malice I do recommend reading Independent People by Halldor Laxness. That book won a Nobel prize for a reason.
