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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.
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 ...
The United States Army abandons the military base in Keflavík, thus ending a 55-year U.S. military presence in Iceland. [citation needed] 2008: 29 May: A doublet earthquake strikes southern Iceland with a composite magnitude of 6.1 M W. [39] September: Iceland faces financial crisis following the collapse of the country's three major ...
Nevertheless, written Icelandic has changed relatively little since the 13th century. As a result of this, and of the similarity between the modern and ancient grammar, modern speakers can still understand, more or less, the original sagas and Eddas that were written some 800 years ago. This ability is sometimes mildly overstated by Icelanders ...
The ridge marks the boundary between the Eurasian and North American Plates, and Iceland was created by rifting and accretion through volcanism along the ridge. [69] Many fjords punctuate Iceland's 4,970-km-long (3,088-mi) coastline, which is also where most settlements are situated.
This created a unique structure. [4] [dubious – discuss] The most powerful and elite leaders in Iceland were the chieftains (sing. goði, pl. goðar). The office of the goði was called the goðorð. The goðorð was not delimited by strict geographical boundaries. Thus, a free man could choose to support any of the goðar of his district.
Litla-Hérað (Öræfasveit) was completely destroyed and few seem to have escaped. The group was called Öræfi when it started to rebuild and the glacier Öræfajökull. Most of the ash was carried east to the sea, but destroyed much of Hornafjörður and Lónshverfi along the way. Jökulhlaup to Skeiðarársandur and out to sea.
Because of the Kalmar Union, Iceland had been under the control of the Crown of Denmark since 1380, [4] although formally it had been a Norwegian possession until 1814. [5] In 1874, one thousand years after the first acknowledged settlement, Denmark granted Iceland home rule. The constitution, written the same year, was revised in 1903 and the ...