Iceland

Iceland straddles the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and the gap between the North American and Eurasian plates opens as long cracks across the land. Volcanoes such as Hekla, Katla and Grímsvötn erupt every few decades, some beneath ice, melting glaciers and sending floods across the black sand plains of the south. Vatnajökull, the country’s largest ice cap, covers much of the south-east. Geysir, a hot spring in the south, lent its name to every geyser, and the North Atlantic Current keeps the coasts milder than their latitude suggests.

Norse settlers began arriving around 874, with Irish and Scottish captives. In 930 the chieftains founded the Althing, an open-air assembly at Þingvellir, and in 1000 it voted to accept Christianity. The sagas, written down in the thirteenth century, retell the settlers’ feuds. Iceland accepted the Norwegian king in 1262–64; Danish rule followed. The Laki eruption of 1783–84 poisoned livestock, and the famine that followed carried off roughly one Icelander in five. The republic was proclaimed at Þingvellir in June 1944.

Most Icelanders use patronymics, so Jón’s son is Jónsson and his daughter Jónsdóttir. Halldór Laxness received the Nobel literature prize in 1955, and Björk took Icelandic music abroad. Midwinter Þorrablót feasts serve fermented shark and singed sheep’s head. Fishing for cod and capelin built the economy, defended against British trawlers in the Cod Wars of 1958–76; hydro and geothermal power drew aluminium smelters, geothermal water heats most homes, and tourists come for the northern lights.