Icelanders

• 1. Introduction

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  In mid 930 CE, the Icelanders, or Íslendingar, gathered on the Þingvellir plain for the first session of their Alþingi, a parliament. Those present spoke Icelandic, a North Germanic language. They were meeting on an island where, only a few decades earlier, nobody had lived. Almost everything about that gathering raises a question. Who were these people, and what did they leave behind to reach such a remote place? What does their DNA say that the old stories do not? How did a nation that built its own assembly come to lose control of its affairs for centuries, and then win it back? And why did a people on a small island end up farther west than almost any other Europeans of their age?

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• 2. Ships to an Empty Island

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  Gardar Svavarsson was sailing from Norway to the Faroe Islands when harsh conditions pushed him off course, and he became the first Viking to sight Iceland. His reports encouraged the first efforts to settle there. Flóki Vilgerðarson, born in the 9th century, was the first Norseman to make the voyage on purpose. The Landnámabók manuscript preserves his story, and he is said to have given the island the name Ísland.

  The land they were reaching was geologically very young. Volcanic eruptions along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge built it, an estimated 20 million years ago. It was one of the last larger islands to stay empty of people. The date generally accepted for the first human settlement is 874, though some evidence points to human activity before the Norse came.

  Ingólfur Arnarson, a Norwegian chieftain, is usually named as the first permanent settler. Around 874 he settled with his family at a spot he called the Bay of Smokes, which in Icelandic is Reykjavík.

  In that same year of 874, another group of Norwegians crossed the North Atlantic, trying to escape the domination of Harald Fairhair, the first King of Norway. They brought their families, livestock, slaves and belongings some 1,000 km in Viking longships. The newcomers were mostly of Norwegian, Irish or Gaelic Scottish origin. According to the Icelandic sagas, the Irish and Scottish Gaels were slaves or servants of the Norse chiefs. Another account describes them as descendants of Norsemen who had settled in Scotland and Ireland and intermarried with Gaelic speakers.

  The period known as Landnámsöld, the Age of Settlement, began in 874 and ended once most of the island had been claimed.

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• 3. Written in DNA

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  Historical records and DNA together suggest that 60 to 80 percent of the male settlers were of Norse origin, mainly from Western Norway. A similar share of the women were of Gaelic stock, from Ireland and the fringes of Scotland. Studies of Y-chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA put the figures at 75 percent of paternal ancestry from Scandinavia and 62 percent of maternal ancestry from Scotland and Ireland. In most of the remainder, the origins are reversed. The Gaelic share of the paternal line is about 20-25 percent.

  Iceland's small founding group and relative isolation have led many to call Icelanders unusually homogeneous among Europeans. Genealogical records reaching back to the settlement add to the appeal. Biotechnology companies, universities and medical researchers have all drawn on this material.

  Hans Jonatan, Iceland's first known black inhabitant, shows what that material can do. Researchers rebuilt much of his maternal genome from the DNA of his living descendants. This worked partly because the distinctly African parts of his genome were unique in Iceland until very recently.

  Not every study agrees on how uniform the population is. One analysis of mitochondrial DNA, blood groups and isozymes found more variety than expected, similar to some other European peoples. Another found that a tiny share of today's Icelanders carry haplogroup C1e. It may trace back to the settlement of the Americas around 14,000 years ago, and it hints at some Native American ancestry. Icelanders also show an unusually high level of Denisovan heritage.

  One study found that the settlers averaged 56 percent Norse ancestry, while the figure for the present population is 70 percent. Founder effects and genetic drift help explain the change. The researchers read it as a sign that people with more Norse ancestry had more children.

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• 4. Centuries of Hardship

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  The Alþingi could make laws but had no power to enforce them. By 1262, rivalry among chieftains had split the country so badly that King Haakon IV of Norway was invited to settle all disputes, under an arrangement called the Old Covenant. This turbulent period is known as the Age of the Sturlungs. Norwegian leadership lasted until 1380, when the Royal House of Norway died out and both Norway and Iceland passed to the Danish Crown.

  Denmark later introduced absolute monarchy, and the Icelanders gave up their autonomy, including the right to start and approve legislation. Nearly 300 years of decline followed. Denmark did not treat Iceland as a colony deserving support, and without help for defense the coasts suffered constant raids by pirates.

  Unlike Norway, Denmark had no need of Icelandic fish or homespun wool. Trade fell into deep deficit, and no new ships were built. In 1602 the Danish government forbade Iceland from trading with other countries. By the 18th century, the climate had sunk to its worst since the Settlement.

  Then, in 1783-84, the Laki fissure in the south of the island erupted. It poured out about 15 km3 of basalt lava and 0.91 km3 of tephra. The aerosols it released cooled the Northern Hemisphere. In Iceland itself, about 25-33 percent of the people died in the famine of those two years. Fluorosis, caused by 8 million tons of released fluorine, killed around 80 percent of the sheep and 50 percent of both cattle and horses. Icelanders call the disaster the Mist Hardship, or Móðuharðindin.

  In 1798-99, the Alþingi was discontinued, and it stayed silent for several decades.

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• 5. The Road Back

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  In 1844 the Alþingi was restored and moved to Reykjavík, the capital, after more than nine centuries at Þingvellir.

  Jón Sigurðsson, a statesman, historian and authority on Icelandic literature, led the protest movement behind the revival. Inspired by romantic and nationalist currents in mainland Europe, he used political journals and self-publications to call for "a return to national consciousness". He also pressed for political and social changes to speed Iceland's development.

  In 1854 the Danish government eased the trade ban it had imposed in 1602. Iceland gradually rejoined Western Europe economically and socially, and its arts, especially literature, began to wake again. A constitution came in 1874, twenty years later. Icelanders today credit Jón's efforts as largely responsible for this resurgence.

  On the 1st of December 1918, after World War I, Iceland won full sovereignty from Denmark and became the Kingdom of Iceland. The King of Denmark also served as King of Iceland, but the two countries kept only formal ties.

  On the 17th of June 1944, the monarchy was abolished and a republic was established. That ended nearly six centuries of connection with Denmark. The date was the 133rd birthday of Jón Sigurðsson.

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• 6. Sagas and Faith

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  Icelandic is the de facto official language of Iceland, since the laws say nothing on the matter. Its inflected grammar is comparable to that of Latin and Ancient Greek, closer to Old English, and practically identical to Old Norse. Written Icelandic has changed little since the 13th century, so modern readers can follow the sagas. Those tales describe events in Iceland in the 10th and early 11th centuries.

  Old Icelandic literature falls into three categories best known abroad. Eddic poetry consists of heroic and mythological poems. Skaldic poetry, also called court poetry, praises a person. Saga literature is prose, ranging from pure fiction to fairly factual history. The Poetic Edda is a collection of poems and stories from the late 10th century. The Prose Edda is a manual of poetry that holds many tales of Norse mythology.

  Around the year 1000, Iceland embraced Christianity in an event called the kristnitaka. The Lutheran church claims about 84 percent of the population, though observance is mostly secular. Early Icelandic Christianity was more relaxed than traditional Catholicism, and the Reformation replaced Catholicism with Protestantism.

  In the 18th century, Pietism arrived from Denmark and discouraged every leisure activity except religious ones. The result was a dourness long treated as an Icelandic stereotype. It also brought a boom in printing, and Iceland today is among the most literate societies in the world.

  Perhaps unique to Iceland is the fast-growing Ásatrúarfélag, a legally recognized revival of the pre-Christian Nordic religion of the original settlers.

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• 7. Westward Voyages

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  Erik the Red led Icelanders to Greenland in the late 10th century, and these roughly 500 people were the first Europeans to settle there. Isolated fjords offered enough grazing for cattle and sheep, but the climate was too cold for cereal crops. Royal trade ships from Norway occasionally came for walrus tusks and falcons. The population may have peaked near 3,000 in two communities, which developed independent institutions. Then they faded away during the 15th century. A papal legation reached Greenland as late as 1492, the year Columbus tried for Asia and met the Americas instead.

  The Saga of Eric the Red dates Icelandic arrival in North America to Vinland, around 1006. The colony was believed to have been short-lived, abandoned by the 1020s. Historians and archaeologists did not confirm it as more than legend until the 1960s. The Norse site now called L'Anse aux Meadows predates Columbus's arrival in the Americas by almost 500 years.

  In 1855 a small group settled in Spanish Fork, Utah, and another Icelandic colony took root on Washington Island, Wisconsin. Emigration to the United States and Canada began in earnest in the 1870s, mostly toward the Great Lakes region. These migrants were escaping famine and overcrowding at home. Today sizable Icelandic-descended communities live in both countries. Gimli, in Manitoba, Canada, holds the largest population of Icelanders outside Iceland itself.

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• 8. Shark, Song and Newcomers

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  Fermented shark is among the dishes of Þorramatur, Iceland's traditional foods. The list also includes smoked and salted lamb, singed sheep heads, dried fish and smoked and pickled salmon. Asked about the most disgusting thing he had ever eaten, the chef Andrew Zimmern, host of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, answered, "That would have to be the fermented shark fin I had in Iceland". Everyday cooking centers on fish, lamb and dairy. Fish once dominated the Icelandic diet but has recently yielded ground to beef, pork and poultry.

  The rímur, epic tales from the Viking era often sung without accompaniment, are the earliest indigenous Icelandic music. Christianity shaped the tradition too, and the 17th-century poet and priest Hallgrímur Pétursson wrote many hymns in the local idiom. Pipe organs did not appear on the island until the 19th century. Voces Thules, The Sugarcubes, Björk, Sigur Rós and Of Monsters and Men are among the groups and singers to emerge more recently.

  The national anthem, "Ó Guð vors lands", or "Our Country's God", was written in 1874 by Matthías Jochumsson, with music by Sveinbjörn Sveinbjörnsson. It marked the thousandth anniversary of settlement and first appeared as A Hymn in Commemoration of Iceland's Thousand Years.

  In sport, Iceland's men's football team reached the quarter finals of UEFA Euro 2016, its first major tournament. It then played in its first FIFA World Cup in 2018. The women's team has not reached a World Cup, and its best major result is a quarterfinal at UEFA Women's Euro 2013. Iceland first competed at the Olympics in 1912, skipped the next several Games until 1936, and made its Winter Games debut in 1948. Vilhjálmur Einarsson won silver in the triple jump in 1956. The handball team took silver at the 2008 Olympic Games and third place at the 2010 European Men's Handball Championship.

  From the mid-1990s, immigration to Iceland began to rise. By 2017 there were 35,997 first-generation immigrants, or 10.6 percent of residents, plus 4,473 in the second generation. In 2016 alone, 703 foreign-born people gained Icelandic citizenship, a count markedly higher than in the 1990s.

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