Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
History
Iceland is not only one of the more geologically recent places on earth, it was
also among the last to be colonized. European seafarers may have known
that something lay out beyond Scotland as far back as 300 BC, when the
historian Pytheas of Marseille wrote about “Ultima Thule” - possibly Iceland
- a northern land on the edge of a frozen ocean, where it never became dark
in summer.
It wasn't until considerably later, however, that Iceland was regularly visited by
outsiders, let alone settled, and it's still unclear who might have been the first to try.
Whoever they were, the first arrivals would have found the country much the same as
it appears today (though well forested with willow and birch), and with no large
animals.
Discovery
Much of the uncertainty in deciding who discovered Iceland, and when it happened, is
down to the lack of archeological and written records.
Roman
coins from around 300
AD, found at several sites along Iceland's south coast, provide the earliest evidence of
visitors, and suggest that ships from Britain - which was then a Roman colony and just
a week's sail away - made landfall here from time to time. These coins could have been
brought in at a later date, however, and no other Roman artefacts or camps have been
found. Similarly, the age of a
Norse
homestead on Heimaey in the Westman Islands is
disputed; archeologists date it to the seventh century, but medieval Icelandic historians
- accurate enough in other matters - state that it was founded two hundred years later.
It is also believed that by the late eighth century
Irish
monks, having already colonized
the Faroes, were visiting Iceland regularly, seeking solitude and, according to
contemporary accounts, believing that they had rediscovered Pytheas' Ultima Thule.
Oral tradition and place names link them to certain spots around the country - such as
Papey, “Monks' Island” in the east - but they left no hard evidence behind them and
were driven out over the next century by new invaders, the
Vikings
.
Vikings were Scandinavian adventurers, armed with the fastest ships of the time and
forced by politics and a land shortage at home to seek their fortune overseas through
war and piracy. They had already exploded into Britain and Ireland in the 790s, which
is why Irish monks had sought out Iceland as a more peaceful place to live. According
to tradition, the Vikings came across Iceland by accident when a certain mid-ninth-
century freebooter named
Naddoddur
lost his way to the Faroes and landed on the
eastern coast of what he called
Snæland
, or Snowland. He didn't stay long, but his
reports of this new country were followed up by the Swede
Garðar Svavarsson
, who
circumnavigated Iceland in around 860, wintering at modern-day Húsavík in the
northeast, where two of his slaves escaped and are though to have settled. At about the
same time,
Flóki Vilgerðarson
left his home in Norway intending to colonize Snæland,
860
C.860
874
930
Swedish Viking Garðar
Svavarsson sails round
Iceland
Flóki Vilgerðarson
spends the winter in
Iceland, but later leaves
Ingólfur Arnarson
builds his homestead at
modern-day Reykjavík
The population of
Iceland reaches an
estimated 60,000
