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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 ...
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 ...
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.
According to the ancient manuscript Landnámabók, the settlement of Iceland began in 874 AD, when the Norwegian chieftain Ingólfr Arnarson became the island's first permanent settler. [15] In the following centuries, Norwegians , and to a lesser extent other Scandinavians , immigrated to Iceland, bringing with them thralls (i.e., slaves or ...
The history of the Icelandic language began in the 9th century when the settlement of Iceland, mostly by Norwegians, brought a dialect of Old Norse to the island. The oldest preserved texts in Icelandic were written around 1100, the oldest single text being Íslendingabók followed by Landnámabók .
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 ...
A page from a vellum manuscript of Landnáma in the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies in Reykjavík, Iceland. Landnámabók (Icelandic pronunciation: [ˈlantˌnauːmaˌpouːk], "Book of Settlements"), often shortened to Landnáma, is a medieval Icelandic written work which describes in considerable detail the settlement (landnám) of Iceland by the Norse in the 9th and 10th ...