Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
History
Geologically young, staunchly independent and frequently rocked by natural
(and more recently financial) disaster, Iceland has a turbulent and absorbing
history of Norse settlement, literary genius, bitter feuding and foreign op-
pression. Life in this harsh and unforgiving landscape was never going to be
easy, but the everyday challenges and hardships have cultivated a modern
Icelandic spirit that's highly aware of its stormy past, yet remarkably resilient,
fiercely individualistic, quietly innovative and justifiably proud.
History of Iceland,
by Jon R Hjalmarsson, is an absorbing account of the nation, from time
of settlement to the topic's publication in the 1990s.
Early Travellers & Irish Monks
A veritable baby in geological terms, Iceland was created around 20 million years ago. It
was only around 330 BC, when the Greek explorer Pytheas wrote about the island of Ul-
tima Thule, six days north of Britain by ship, that Europe became aware of a landmass bey-
ond the confines of their maps, lurking in a 'congealed sea'.
For many years rumour, myth and fantastic tales of fierce storms, howling winds and bar-
baric dog-headed people kept explorers away from the great northern ocean,
oceanus innav-
igabilis
. Irish monks were the next to stumble upon Iceland: they regularly sailed to the
Faroe Islands looking for solitude and seclusion. It's thought that Irish
papar
(fathers)
settled in Iceland around the year 700. The Irish monk Dicuil wrote in AD 825 of a land
where there was no daylight in winter, but on summer nights 'whatever task a man wishes
to perform, even picking lice from his shirt, he can manage as well as in clear daylight'.
This almost certainly describes Iceland and its long summer nights. The
paper
fled when
the Norsemen began to arrive in the early 9th century.
