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Mid-Atlantic Ridge and adjacent plates. Volcanoes indicated in red.. In geological terms, Iceland is a young island. It started to form in the Miocene era about 20 million years ago from a series of volcanic eruptions on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where it lies between the North American Plate and Eurasian Plate.
Southern Iceland is hit by two earthquakes, the first 6.6 M L and the second 6.5 M L. There were no fatalities but a few people were injured and there was some considerable damage to infrastructure. 2004: 2 June: The president of Iceland, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, refuses to sign a bill from the parliament for the first time in the nation's ...
The oldest known source which mentions the name "Iceland" is an eleventh-century rune carving from Gotland. There is a possible early mention of Iceland in the book De mensura orbis terrae by the Irish monk Dicuil, dating to 825. [9] Dicuil claimed to have met some monks who had lived on the island of Thule. They said that darkness reigned ...
Norsemen landing in Iceland – a 19th-century depiction by Oscar Wergeland. The Sagas of Icelanders say that a Norwegian named Naddodd (or Naddador) was the first Norseman to reach Iceland; in the ninth century, he named it Snæland or "Snowland" because it was snowing.
With the probable exception of hermitic Irish monks known as Papar, Iceland was an uninhabited island until around 874. The Icelandic Commonwealth had a unique political system whereby chieftains (goðar) established a common legal code and settled judicial disputes at the Althing, a national assembly. [1]
Much of the history of Iceland has been recorded in the Icelandic sagas and Edda.The most famous of these include Njáls saga, about an epic blood feud, and Grænlendinga saga and Eiríks saga, describing the discovery and settlement of Greenland and Vinland (now the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador).
The geology of Iceland is unique and of particular interest to geologists. Iceland lies on the divergent boundary between the Eurasian plate and the North American plate. It also lies above a hotspot, the Iceland plume. The plume is believed to have caused the formation of Iceland itself, the island first appearing over the ocean surface about ...
Iceland history-related lists (11 P) A. Archaeology of Iceland (1 C, 1 P) Archives in Iceland (3 P) E. Historical events in Iceland (12 C, 1 P) F. Former populated ...