In most western countries you pretty much have to have a job lined up.

This is from the wiki of the Iceland subreddit: "A fair amount of posters here assume that Americans are sought after and automatically respected no matter where they are in the world. While Iceland is certainly not anti-American, moving and working in Iceland as an American is very difficult. On the website of the Icelandic Directorate of Immigration, only very specific types of visa's will count towards an applicants permanent residency here (which takes 4 years currently). Do you qualify for a skilled worker visa? More importantly can you convince an Icelandic employer to sponsor your work visa? Can that employer convince the Directorate of Immigration that they were unable to find someone just as good as you from an EEA country? Are you aware this normally takes at least 3-4 months and requires a criminal background check from every country where you've lived in the past five years?"