Europe's westernmost country began with a 874 land-take
Iceland rides the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between Arctic and North Atlantic waters—Europe's westernmost and most sparsely peopled country. Reykjavík holds about 35 percent of residents. Landnámabók dates permanent settlement to Norwegian Ingólfr Arnarson in 874 CE.
According to the Landnámabók, the Norseman Naddodd reached the island in the 9th century after losing his way to the Faroes and called it Snæland, Snowland. The Swede Garðar Svavarsson circumnavigated it in 870, proving it an island, and wintered at Húsavík; one of his men, Náttfari, stayed behind with two slaves. The present name came from Flóki Vilgerðarson, who saw an ice cap from a mountain after a hard winter. Before any of them, Irish monks known as the Papar may have lived there; a cabin at Hafnir was abandoned between 770 and 880.
Ingólfr Arnarson built his homestead where Reykjavík stands in 874, and by 930 most farmland was taken and the Althing assembly founded. Feuds of the Sturlung age weakened the Commonwealth until the Old Covenant brought it under Norway's king, and in 1380 Iceland passed with Norway to the Danish crown. Settlers found 25 to 40 percent of the land forested, but clearing for timber and grazing brought heavy erosion. The Black Death of 1402–04 killed perhaps half or more of the population.
Christian III imposed Lutheranism, and the last Catholic bishop, Jón Arason, was beheaded with two sons in 1550. Danish trade restrictions, eruptions and disease thinned the population; in 1627 Barbary pirates carried hundreds into slavery in the Turkish Abductions. A colder 19th century drove emigration to Gimli in Manitoba, while Jón Sigurðsson led an independence movement from the 1850s.
Denmark granted a constitution in 1874 and home rule in 1904, and the Act of Union of 1 December 1918 made Iceland a sovereign kingdom sharing Denmark's monarch. After Germany occupied Denmark in April 1940 the Althing took over defence and foreign affairs, and a month later British forces invaded in Operation Fork. Iceland voted to become a republic during the war; today about 395,000 people live there, some 35 percent of them in Reykjavík.
Source: Iceland
