Iceland

Iceland was among the last large habitable lands of Europe to be settled. According to Íslendingabók, the Book of the Icelanders, written about 1130, and the Landnámabók, the Book of Settlements, the country was discovered and settled by Norse people in the Viking Age, with the age of settlement, the Landnám, falling roughly between 870 and 930. Tradition names Ingólfr Arnarson as the first permanent settler, who came from Norway around 874 and made his homestead at a site he called Reykjavík, the 'smoky bay'. The Book of Settlements goes on to enumerate hundreds of settlers who came with their families, servants and slaves; most sailed from Norway, but many came by way of the Norse colonies in the British Isles, bringing a Celtic strain into the new society. Both sources record that before them Irish monks, the Papar, had lived on the island and departed.

Within about sixty years the habitable coasts and valleys had been claimed, and a society of independent farmers and chieftains, the goðar, had taken shape. It had no king and no central executive. To resolve the disputes such a society inevitably generated, the settlers created, around the year 930, a general assembly, the Althing (Alþingi), which met each summer on the lava plain of Þingvellir, the 'assembly plains', some forty-five kilometres from Reykjavík. There the lawspeaker recited the law from the Lögberg, the Law Rock, holding the whole code in memory and reciting it in thirds over three years, while the legislative council, the Lögrétta, made and amended the laws. The Althing of 930 is reckoned one of the oldest functioning legislatures in the world.

This was the Icelandic Commonwealth, or Free State, a polity that endured for more than three centuries on consensus and law rather than monarchy. Þingvellir during the assembly became a kind of summer capital, a centre of social and commercial life that drew labourers, traders and even the envoys of foreign princes. The arrangement was distinctive in medieval Europe: power lay with the chieftains and the assembly, and the law was the highest authority. It produced both a remarkable legal culture and, in time, the literature that would make Iceland's medieval centuries famous.

Turning points

1. c. 870–930Peoples & Migration

   The Landnám (Age of Settlement)

   Within roughly sixty years hundreds of Norse settlers, many by way of the Norse colonies in the British Isles, claimed Iceland's habitable land, as recorded in Íslendingabók and Landnámabók.

   ↗See the data

   [3] [1]

2. c. 874Peoples & Migration

   Ingólfr Arnarson settles Reykjavík

   By tradition the first permanent settler, Ingólfr Arnarson, came from Norway around 874 and established his homestead at the site he named Reykjavík, opening the age of settlement, the Landnám.

   ↗See the data

   [2] [3] [1]

3. 930Formation

   Founding of the Althing at Þingvellir

   The settlers established a general assembly, the Althing, on the plain of Þingvellir, where law was recited from the Law Rock; it is one of the oldest parliaments in the world and the centre of the Icelandic Commonwealth.

   [4] [5] [3]

4. 930–1262Politics & Power

   The Icelandic Commonwealth

   A stateless society of chieftains and farmers governed itself for over three centuries through the Althing and its law council, without a king or central executive.

   [4] [1]

Figures of the era

Around the year 1000 the Althing faced a rupture that elsewhere in Europe would have meant war. Missionaries, backed by the Norwegian king Olaf Tryggvason, had won converts, and the assembly split into pagan and Christian parties, each threatening to live under its own law. The dispute was referred to the lawspeaker, Þorgeir Ljósvetningagoði, himself a pagan, who withdrew for a day and a night and then announced from the Law Rock that, to keep one law and one people, Iceland should adopt Christianity, while older private practices might continue for a time. The conversion was thus achieved by compromise and vote rather than by the sword, an episode Icelanders have remembered ever since as a triumph of law over faction.

Christianity brought writing, and writing made the Icelandic centuries that followed extraordinary. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Icelanders produced a body of vernacular literature unmatched in medieval Europe: the family sagas, the kings' sagas, and the mythological and poetic learning of the Eddas. The towering figure was Snorri Sturluson (1179-1241), chieftain, twice lawspeaker of the Althing, and author of the Prose Edda, a handbook of poetics that preserves the legends of Norse mythology, and the Heimskringla, a history of the kings of Norway. Through Snorri and his contemporaries Iceland became the keeper of the Norse world's memory.

Snorri's own violent death foreshadowed the end of the Commonwealth. From the 1220s the concentration of power in a few great families, the Sturlungs chief among them, plunged Iceland into the Age of the Sturlungs, decades of feud, raids, killings and burnings in which chieftains intrigued at the Norwegian court for advantage. Exhausted by strife and pressed by King Haakon IV of Norway, the Icelandic chieftains accepted the Old Covenant, the Gamli sáttmáli, between 1262 and 1264, swearing fidelity to the Norwegian crown. After more than three centuries the free state was over, and Iceland had a king for the first time.

Turning points

1. c. 1000Religion

   The Althing adopts Christianity

   Faced with a split between pagans and Christians, the Althing entrusted the decision to the lawspeaker Þorgeir, who ruled that Iceland should become Christian; the conversion was achieved by compromise, without bloodshed.

   [6] [1]

2. 1179–1241Culture & Ideas

   Snorri Sturluson and the sagas

   Chieftain and twice lawspeaker, Snorri Sturluson wrote the Prose Edda and the Heimskringla, central works of the saga age that preserved the mythology and history of the Norse world.

   [7]

3. c. 1220–1262War & Rupture

   The Age of the Sturlungs

   Rivalry among a few powerful families, above all the Sturlungs, brought decades of feud, killing and burning, fatally weakening the Commonwealth's institutions of consensus.

   ↗See the data

   [8] [1]

4. 1262–1264Politics & Power

   The Old Covenant (Gamli sáttmáli)

   Worn down by civil strife and pressed by King Haakon IV, the Icelandic chieftains swore allegiance to the Norwegian crown, ending the independent Commonwealth and beginning centuries of foreign rule.

   [8] [1]

Figures of the era

After 1262 Iceland was governed for the Norwegian king, and when Norway, Denmark and Sweden were joined in the Kalmar Union and the Scandinavian crowns consolidated, Iceland passed under the Danish crown, where it would remain for centuries. Distant and poor, dependent on the sea and on a few exportable goods, the island had little leverage over the policies decided in Copenhagen. The medieval Althing continued to meet at Þingvellir, but real power lay with the crown and its officials.

The sixteenth century brought the Reformation, imposed from above. King Christian III of Denmark moved to make all his subjects Lutheran, and Iceland's Catholic establishment resisted. Jón Arason, bishop of Hólar and the last Catholic bishop in Iceland, led the opposition until he and his two sons were beheaded at Skálholt on 7 November 1550; with their deaths the Catholic Church in Iceland effectively came to an end and the country became Lutheran. In 1602 the crown imposed a trade monopoly that confined all Icelandic commerce to a small group of Danish merchants operating from licensed posts. The monopoly, which lasted until 1786, kept prices high, returns low and the island chronically short of goods, and is remembered as a long economic stranglehold.

Above all, Iceland's history under Denmark was shaped by the violence of its own land, which sits astride the Mid-Atlantic Ridge where the North American and Eurasian plates pull apart. The greatest of its disasters began on 8 June 1783, when the Laki (Lakagígar) fissure erupted, pouring out some 14.7 cubic kilometres of lava over eight months and releasing vast clouds of poisonous gas. Fluorine-laden fallout killed the majority of the country's livestock, and the famine that followed, the Móðuharðindin or 'famine of the mist', is reckoned to have killed roughly a fifth of the Icelandic population. The eruption's haze spread across Europe and beyond, and it stands as the worst catastrophe in Icelandic history.

Turning points

1. 7 Nov 1550Religion

   Execution of Bishop Jón Arason

   Jón Arason, bishop of Hólar and the last Catholic bishop in Iceland, was beheaded with his two sons at Skálholt for resisting the Danish-imposed Reformation, after which Iceland became fully Lutheran.

   [9] [1]

2. 1602–1786Economy & Trade

   The Danish trade monopoly

   The Danish crown confined all Icelandic trade to a small group of licensed Danish merchants, depressing prices and returns and impoverishing the island for nearly two centuries.

   ↗See the data

   [1] [11]

3. 8 Jun 1783Catastrophe

   The Laki eruption

   The Laki fissure erupted for eight months from June 1783, producing about 14.7 cubic kilometres of lava and immense quantities of toxic gas that poisoned the land and spread a haze across Europe.

   ↗See the data

   [10] [1]

4. 1783–1785Catastrophe

   The Móðuharðindin famine

   Fallout from Laki killed most of Iceland's livestock; the ensuing 'famine of the mist' killed roughly a fifth of the population, the worst disaster in the country's history.

   ↗See the data

   [10]

Figures of the era

The recovery from the famines and monopoly of the eighteenth century coincided with a wave of national feeling that swept Europe in the nineteenth. In Iceland it drew strength from the sagas and from the memory of the Commonwealth and the Althing, and it found its leader in Jón Sigurðsson (1811-1879), a scholar in Copenhagen who became the tireless advocate of Icelandic rights, pressing for the abolition of the trade monopoly and for self-government. A royal decree of 1843 restored the Althing, which first met again on 1 July 1845, at first only as an advisory body to the Danish king. Þingvellir, the old assembly plain, became a powerful symbol of national unity, the site of nationalist gatherings from 1848 onward.

Progress came in measured steps. In 1874, on the thousandth anniversary of the settlement, Denmark granted Iceland a constitution and a measure of control over its own affairs. In 1904 Home Rule was established, with an Icelandic minister resident in Reykjavík responsible to the Althing rather than to Copenhagen, a decisive advance in self-government. The decades around the turn of the century also transformed Icelandic society, as decked fishing vessels, the growth of Reykjavík and new institutions modernised a country that had long been among the poorest in Europe.

The First World War and its aftermath opened the way to sovereignty. On 1 December 1918 the Danish-Icelandic Act of Union made Iceland a free and sovereign state, the Kingdom of Iceland, joined to Denmark only in a personal union under a shared king, with Denmark still conducting Iceland's foreign affairs. The Act was to be reviewed after twenty-five years and could then be terminated, a clause that would prove decisive a generation later. For the first time since 1262, Iceland was a sovereign state in its own right.

Turning points

1. 1843Politics & Power

   The Althing restored

   A royal decree of 1843 revived the Althing, which first met again on 1 July 1845 as an advisory assembly, reviving in modern form the institution founded in 930.

   [11] [12]

2. 1874Politics & Power

   Constitution on the settlement millennium

   On the thousandth anniversary of the settlement, Denmark granted Iceland a constitution and increased control over domestic affairs, though executive power remained with the crown.

   [11] [12]

3. 1904Independence

   Home Rule

   Iceland gained Home Rule, with an Icelandic minister resident in Reykjavík and answerable to the Althing, a major step toward full self-government.

   ↗See the data

   [11]

4. 1 Dec 1918Independence

   The Act of Union and the Kingdom of Iceland

   The Danish-Icelandic Act of Union made Iceland a sovereign state in personal union with the Danish crown, with Denmark retaining foreign affairs and the union open to termination after twenty-five years.

   ↗See the data

   [13] [11]

Figures of the era

Iceland's sovereignty under the 1918 union was barely two decades old when the Second World War transformed its position. Germany occupied Denmark in April 1940, cutting Iceland off from its monarch and the conduct of its own foreign affairs. The strategically placed island, commanding the North Atlantic sea lanes, could not remain untouched: British forces occupied Iceland in May 1940, and from 1941 the United States, by agreement with the Icelandic government, took over its defence, building up a major presence. Occupation brought hardship but also employment and money, accelerating the modernisation of the country.

With Denmark under German rule and the Act of Union due for review after twenty-five years, Icelanders moved to complete their independence. A referendum in 1944 produced overwhelming majorities to dissolve the union and establish a republic. On 17 June 1944, at Þingvellir, the seat of the Althing since 930, the Republic of Iceland was proclaimed and the personal union with the Danish crown was ended. Sveinn Björnsson became the first president. The date, the birthday of Jón Sigurðsson, fused the ancient assembly, the nineteenth-century awakening and the new state into a single national symbol.

The new republic quickly abandoned its long tradition of neutrality. Recognising its strategic exposure, Iceland joined the United Nations and, in 1949, became a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, though as a country with no armed forces of its own and on the understanding that it would not be asked to host foreign troops in peacetime. The decision was bitterly contested at home, marked by a communist-led riot during the parliamentary debate, but it was carried by a substantial majority and set the course of Icelandic security policy for the Cold War.

Turning points

1. May 1940War & Rupture

   British occupation of Iceland

   After Germany occupied Denmark, British forces occupied strategically vital Iceland in May 1940 to forestall a German move, severing Iceland's last constitutional ties to its monarch.

   ↗See the data

   [14] [1]

2. 1941War & Rupture

   United States assumes Iceland's defence

   By agreement with the Icelandic government, the United States took over the island's defence in 1941, building a substantial military presence in the North Atlantic.

   ↗See the data

   [17] [1]

3. 17 Jun 1944Independence

   Founding of the Republic at Þingvellir

   After an overwhelming referendum, Icelanders proclaimed a republic at Þingvellir, ending the union with Denmark; Sveinn Björnsson became the first president and 17 June became the national day.

   ↗See the data

   [15] [14] [16]

4. 1949Politics & Power

   Iceland a founding member of NATO

   Abandoning neutrality, Iceland joined NATO as a founding member in 1949, a state with no army, on the understanding it would not host foreign troops in peacetime; the decision provoked a riot at the Althing.

   [17] [14]

Figures of the era

For a nation whose wealth came from the sea, control of the surrounding fishing grounds was a matter of survival, and it brought Iceland into a remarkable series of confrontations with the United Kingdom known as the Cod Wars. In the First Cod War of 1958 Iceland extended its fishery limit from four to twelve nautical miles; in the Second, from 1972 to 1973, it pushed the limit out to fifty miles; and in the Third, from 1975 to 1976, to two hundred. Against the Royal Navy's frigates the Icelandic Coast Guard deployed only a handful of patrol vessels, but it used trawl-cutters to sever British nets and, decisively, Reykjavík threatened to leave NATO and close the American base at Keflavík, an alliance asset Washington could not afford to lose in the North Atlantic.

The strategy worked. Each time, Britain ultimately conceded: it acknowledged the twelve-mile limit in 1958, accepted an interim deal in 1973, and in an agreement of 2 June 1976 recognised Iceland's two-hundred-mile zone. The Cod Wars were among the few cases in which a tiny, militarily negligible state imposed its will on a great naval power, and they had consequences far beyond the North Atlantic: Iceland's successful assertion of a two-hundred-mile limit helped establish the principle of the Exclusive Economic Zone, later enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

In the following decades Iceland became one of the world's most prosperous societies, electing in Vigdís Finnbogadóttir (1980) the world's first popularly elected woman head of state and building a modern welfare state. Prosperity bred a reckless financial boom: by 2008 the assets of its three big banks, Landsbanki, Kaupthing and Glitnir, had swollen to many times the national economy, and when global credit froze the banks collapsed within days in October 2008, the largest banking failure relative to the size of an economy in history. The government passed emergency legislation, the krona crashed and Iceland turned to the International Monetary Fund, but the country recovered within a few years. It remains a republic shaped by its position on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where the North American and Eurasian plates drift apart and recurrent eruptions continue to test the descendants of the settlers.

Turning points

1. 1958War & Rupture

   First Cod War (12 nautical miles)

   Iceland extended its fishery limit from four to twelve nautical miles in 1958; after confrontations at sea Britain acknowledged the twelve-mile limit, the first of Iceland's victories over the Royal Navy.

   ↗See the data

   [18] [1]

2. 1972–1973War & Rupture

   Second Cod War (50 nautical miles)

   Iceland extended its limit to fifty miles from September 1972; its coast guard cut dozens of British trawl nets before a NATO-mediated interim agreement was reached in November 1973.

   ↗See the data

   [18]

3. 1975–1976War & Rupture

   Third Cod War (200 nautical miles)

   Iceland claimed a 200-mile zone in 1975; after clashes and a threat to close the Keflavík NATO base, Britain recognised the 200-mile limit in an agreement of 2 June 1976.

   ↗See the data

   [18] [17]

4. 1976Economy & Trade

   The 200-mile limit and the EEZ

   Iceland's successful assertion of a 200-mile fishing zone helped establish the Exclusive Economic Zone in international law, later codified in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

   ↗See the data

   [18]

5. Oct 2008Economy & Trade

   Collapse of the banks

   The three big Icelandic banks, whose assets dwarfed the economy, failed within days in October 2008 in the largest banking collapse relative to GDP in history; the state passed emergency laws and turned to the IMF before recovering.

   ↗See the data

   [14] [1]

Figures of the era