Totally America

it’s so cute how icland is crying please give this man a hug

One meaning of "strand" (both as a noun and a verb) is "beach" in English as well. The noun is rather archaic/poetic, but it's English.

@Doghouse Tell her to find me an acre of land/between the salt water and the sea strand/then she'll be a true love of mine

And the new thing here is?
Hollywood and by extension US have used other people culture and stories that way for a long long time. Lots of the best western films are based on Japanese movies. To get money to print Mark Twain they sell lots of Dickens. Lots of famous artist that live in US are from other countries. They always adapt foreign things for the internal market. In that sense they are very Roman

@Schattensturm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_remakes_of_Japanese_films

@Juhani More like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Hollywood_trove_of_good_ideas

@Schattensturm I can make a strong argument that that more-or-less all modern "buddy cop" movies can trace their lineage back to Akira Kurosowa's 1949 movie Stray Dog.

Pretty much any movie with a younger, cocksure cop teamed up with an older more experienced cop. Bonus points if the younger cop is in trouble for something, or has an obsession with a particular killer.

@Tarmaque So Seven could be think off as a movie on a series that goes to Japan? Interesting.
Not to say nothing of the Seven samurais / The magnificent seven / A bugs life series of movies

@Schattensturm Also, A Fist Full of Dollars and Last Man Standing are obvious remakes of Yojimbo. I don't think it's correct to say that Star Wars was a remake of The Hidden Fortress, but it shares some characters and plot points.

Akira Kurosawa was a genius, and quite literally shaped cinema as we know it starting in the late 1940's. He invented certain kinds of shot composition and such things as using weather and wind as integral parts of the story, not to mention he's the first one ever to use slow motion in a death scene, early in The Seven Samurai.

@Tarmaque Akira Kurosawa is, even if people don't know, one of the best film-makers of all the times. Japanese films wouldn't be the same without him

Strand means beach in Dutch and German as well.

@Linde and English
"Definition of strand

(Entry 1 of 5)
: the land bordering a body of water : shore, beach"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/strand

Probably all done to try to be more epic and harken to olde world folklore is my guess. America has tons of Scandinavian, Dutch, and especially German immigrants who have ancestors with crazy names like Ignatz, Johannes, Franz which might sound ordinary to you. But to most Americans, give a sense of days gone by like ww2 and ww1 and earlier.

@Djanzad So, if i read right, to remember the good old days of their country the Americans remember Germany? o_O¡

@Schattensturm : Ignatz is remembered as the brick-throwing mouse in the Krazy Kat comics.

@Schattensturm Many areas of America had German heritage prior to the world wars, that they are now connecting with those times has more to do with the names fallen out of favour during those decades and being rarely used since. Names like Johannes and Franz would have been common among adults in the 1940s but almost gone by the 1990s

@hackerjack Well that is a good reason, but it really amuses me the idea that to remember back the good old times they think of things of the people that were their former enemies in the WWII. Not that WWII doesn't have anything to do with the good old times

@Schattensturm

In a way yes?
Ignatz like I mentioned is the son of a farmer near Stuttgart born in a town with barely 20 buildings. He came over in 1790 fleeing religious persecution. The two sons of Ignatz fought for different sides of the civil war. Not necessariky the "good ol days" but legendary types of tales.

@Djanzad Not necessarily the good ol'days indeed. Still the civil war is something that the US too look back a lot. In a certain way no matter if they were good great times or bad great times, as long as it have left it's mark the US keep looking to it time to time

I just realized you could translate Sam Strand's name to any Nordic language and it's still understandable. Well ib Finnish it would be Sami Ranta, but still.

@Swinnish Sami Ranta in Triggerhappylainen

I assume its because Japan learned all of its Geography from America.

*Blackships roll in "Alright here is what you need to know. East of you is the Old West. Thats America. East of America is the west, older than the old west, called just the west, thats Europe. And that everything anyone needs to know about the entire planet."*

Iceland being between Europe and America was a coin toss onto whether it was America or Europe.

@Humility Naw, the Japanese have this fascination with Germany and Scandinavia. It's like the Americas but somehow even more exotic!

@Humility I know nothing of this game, but Iceland has been part of Europe since those Norwegan men sailed from Norway, dropped in at those slave markets in England, Wales and Ireland were they bought workers and household women to "sleep" with and then moved to Iceland...i.e. from 874 onward. The fact that the 1/3 most western part of the island is actually on the American plate has nothing to do with it. Greenland is 100% on the American plate... and 100% European.

The story in the game is interresting. But I personally am not a fan of the whole walking/hiking simulator.

you mean "strand"?

@SchrodySweden
#9825249
Before you go on with more puns, I gotta say that one was based on a typo. Humon actually meant to write Strand.

@EricTheRedAndWhite @DanishPride Well, that's a first in these pun STRANDS