Settlement of Iceland

• 1. Introduction

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  The settlement of Iceland began in the second half of the ninth century. Norse ships started crossing open water toward a landmass with no earlier inhabitants to displace. One newcomer's slave, a man named Karli, complained about the plot of land his master had chosen: "How ill that we should pass good land, to settle in this remote peninsula." His master built a farm there anyway, on a spot that would grow into Reykjavík. Behind that single complaint sits a much bigger set of questions. Why would people leave Scandinavia for an island nobody owned? Who actually reached its shores first? And how much of the story later Icelanders told about themselves can historians even trust?

• 2. Traces Before The Sagas

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  Radiocarbon dating from Vestmannaeyjar, an island group off Iceland's southern coast, has been used to argue for early Norse settlement. Some researchers place it as far back as the late sixth or seventh century. The dating rests on material found beneath a layer of volcanic tephra known as the Settlement Layer. Ice cores date the eruption that left that layer to about 871. But doubts have been raised about that method, since volcanic carbon dioxide can skew radiocarbon results. Magnús Stefánsson argues this material should not be read as evidence of a sixth-to-seventh-century settlement.

  Archaeologists excavating in Reykjavík in 1971-73 found dwellings sitting below the Settlement Layer, meaning they predate 870. Further west, a cabin at Hafnir was abandoned sometime between 770 and 880, likely used as a seasonal hunting and fishing outpost. It is not known whether the people who built it came from Scandinavia, Ireland, or Scotland. Since 2015, archaeologists have excavated two longhouses built one after another at Stöð, near the eastern village of Stöðvarfjörður. The older of the two ranks among the largest longhouses ever found in Iceland and may date to as early as 800. Bjarni F. Einarsson, who led the excavation, believes Scandinavians used that older longhouse as a summer outpost. Archaeologist Orri Vésteinsson suspects a period of seasonal, part-time settlement preceded Iceland's permanent villages.

  Ari Thorgilsson's Íslendingabók claims the Norse found Gaelic monks already living in Iceland, men the Norsemen called papar. Sediment at Kverkarhellir cave, on the Seljaland farm in the south, suggests people lived there around 800. Crosses cut into a nearby cave wall match the Hiberno-Scottish style. Ari writes that the monks left once the Norsemen arrived, unwilling to live alongside non-Christians. The earliest known reference to the name Iceland is an eleventh-century rune carving from Gotland. An Irish monk named Dicuil may have mentioned the island even earlier, in a work called De mensura orbis terrae dated to 825. Dicuil wrote of monks who had lived on an island called Thule, describing winter darkness and summer light bright enough to pick lice from clothing. That claim is hard to verify. Iceland sits only about 450 kilometres from the Faroe Islands, which Irish monks had visited in the sixth century and Norse settlers had reached around 650. That short hop across open water meant Norse sailors already had a foothold in the region a good two centuries before anyone tried to reach Iceland itself.

• 3. Ravens And Rumors

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  Landnámabók credits a Viking named Naddoddr as the first Norseman to set foot on Icelandic soil. Naddoddr stayed only briefly but left the island a name, Snæland, meaning Land of Snow. Garðar Svavarsson came next and became the first to stay through a winter. Around 860, a storm blew his ship far north until it reached Iceland's eastern coast. Garðar sailed westward along the coast, then north, building a house at Húsavík before completing a full circle around the island. That voyage proved the landmass was in fact an island, and before leaving the following summer, Garðar renamed it Garðarshólmur, or Garðar's Island. One of his crew, Náttfari, chose to stay behind with two slaves, settling at what became known as Náttfaravík, near Skjálfandi. Landnámabók is careful to note that Náttfari was not counted as a permanent settler.

  The next Norseman to reach Iceland, Flóki Vilgerðarson, arrived in a year the sources never pin down. Flóki carried three ravens to help him navigate, earning him the nickname Hrafna-Flóki, or Raven-Flóki. He released them near the Faroe Islands. The first flew back toward the Faroes, and the second circled before returning to the ship. The third raven flew onward, and Flóki followed its path to Iceland. He landed at Vatnsfjörður in the Westfjords, having already passed the area now known as Reykjavík. His crewman Faxi remarked on the fine land he saw there, and the bay off Reykjavík has been called Faxaflói ever since. A brutal winter killed off all of Flóki's cattle. When he later spotted drift ice in a fjord, he named the country Ísland, or Iceland. Food remained scarce, yet Flóki and his men stayed a second year at Borgarfjörður before sailing back to Norway the following summer. He eventually returned to Iceland and settled in the area still called Flókadalur. None of these early arrivals, Naddoddr, Garðar, or Flóki, stayed for good. It would take another Norseman entirely, fleeing trouble of his own back in Norway, to make the settlement stick.

• 4. The Pillars Come Ashore

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  Ingólfur Arnarson left Norway after touching off a blood feud there, his homeland no longer safe to stay in. He and his foster-brother, Hjörleifr Hróðmarsson, first sailed to Iceland only to scout it, wintering at Álftafjörður before heading home. A few years later they came back with their own men, ready to settle for good. As they neared the coast, Ingólfur threw his high seat pillars into the sea and vowed to build his farm wherever they washed ashore. He sent two of his slaves, Vífill and Karli, to search the coastline for them.

  While the pillars were still missing, Hjörleifr was murdered by his own Irish slaves. Ingólfur tracked the killers down and killed them on what became known as the Westman Islands. The name comes from vestmenn, the Norsemen's word for the Irish. Ingólfur went on to settle a large stretch of southwestern Iceland, though little more is recorded of him after that. His son, Þorsteinn Ingólfsson, grew into a major chieftain and is credited with founding the first thing, an early regional assembly, later seen as a forerunner to the Alþingi.

  As winter closed in, Ingólfur's slaves finally found the pillars near Arnarhvoll. By the following summer he had raised a farmstead at Reykjavík and claimed all the land west of the Ölfusá, Öxará, and Brynjudalsá rivers. Ingólfur's claim was only the opening move. A much larger wave of settlers, and a murkier question of where they really came from, followed in the years after him.

• 5. Who Came And Why

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  Estimates of the number of people who migrated to Iceland during the Age of Settlement range from 4,300 to 24,000. The initial group of settlers is put at somewhere between 311 and 436. Archaeological evidence supports the written sources' claim. Researchers describe it as proof that "the whole country was occupied within a couple of decades towards the end of the ninth century."

  Studies of mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosomes show that 62% of Icelanders' matrilineal ancestry traces back to Scotland and Ireland, with most of the remainder from Scandinavia. Written sources, by contrast, emphasize settlement from Norway alone. On the male line, 75% of patrilineal ancestry traces to Scandinavia, with most of the rest from the Irish and British Isles. Archaeogenetic research points to an even higher share of non-Scandinavian ancestry among the original settlers than these figures suggest. One study found that Norse ancestry averaged 56% among Iceland's settlers, compared with 70% in today's population. Researchers believe most settlers from Ireland and Scotland arrived as slaves. As a result, they likely reproduced less successfully than higher-status Scandinavian settlers, leaving a smaller genetic mark on later generations.

  Walrus ivory was one lure, a resource valuable enough to make Iceland attractive to traders looking to profit. Unclaimed land itself drew Vikings too, especially given Iceland's relatively warm climate during that period. Stronger resistance to Viking raids across the British Isles and continental Europe in the late ninth century pushed raiders toward more peaceful ventures instead. Medieval sources also blame Harald Fairhair, whose centralizing rule in Norway and heavy taxation of farmers is said to have driven many of them to leave. The idea that simple overcrowding at home pushed people to Iceland has no support in the academic literature, despite being tempting as an explanation.

  Medievalist Hans Kuhn argued that early settlers gave away or simply allowed newcomers to take land because they had no use for such large holdings themselves. Land changed hands in several ways as a result. Some settlers claimed it outright, some bought or were given it, and others took it by force or the threat of force. Renting land was likely not the practice during the Age of Settlement. Historian Gunnar Karlsson adds that encouraging newcomers to settle nearby made practical sense too. It eased the work of managing cattle and slaves, and provided insurance in hard times. None of these arrangements were permanent yet. Within a few decades, the flow of new arrivals would force a reckoning over how much usable land actually remained.

• 6. A Country Fully Claimed

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  Ari Thorgilsson writes in Íslendingabók that Iceland was "fully settled" by 930. Landnámabók backs that timeline, suggesting that within roughly sixty years nearly all the usable land had been taken. It records about 1,500 farm and place names and more than 3,500 people, arranged geographically across the island. Icelandic history therefore treats 930, the year the Alþingi assembly was founded, as the formal end of the Age of Settlement. That same year marks the start of the Icelandic Commonwealth period.

  By some measures, Iceland ranks as the second-to-last major landmass permanently settled by humans, behind only Madagascar and ahead of New Zealand. Madagascar was settled in the mid-first millennium, while New Zealand followed later, in the thirteenth century. Archaeological evidence complicates Iceland's tidy 930 cutoff, showing that immigrants kept arriving throughout the tenth century. The researchers behind that finding speculate that continued immigration may have been needed just to sustain the population. Filling the land was one thing. Adapting to life on it, without the raiding culture many settlers had left behind, was another matter entirely.

• 7. From Raiders To Neighbors

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  Medievalist Jesse L. Byock notes that feuds among Icelandic settlers still occurred, but consistently showed restraint, rarely escalating past the level of a vendetta. That restraint reflected a broader shift: many Vikings who settled in Iceland moved into an agrarian way of life and largely left raiding behind. The change pushed Viking society toward more community-minded values, favoring negotiation over the manslaughter that had settled disputes before. Iceland's self-governing structure put a premium on individual integrity too, a trait researchers link partly to ideas about land ownership.

  Feuding for too long carried a real cost, cutting people off from social life. That isolation bit hardest through Iceland's dark winter months, with real effects on people's state of mind. Because Iceland was small and isolated, an us-against-them mentality could not hold for long, giving way to milder forms of vendetta. That restraint marked a real break from the raiding and pillaging still common elsewhere in the Viking world, setting Iceland's settlers apart from other Norse colonies. The same land that let Icelanders build this quieter, farm-based society was also being reshaped by them, in ways that would outlast the Viking age itself.

• 8. The Vanishing Forest

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  Before large-scale deforestation set in during the Middle Ages, about 40% of Iceland was covered in forest. Today that figure sits at roughly 2%. The Icelandic Forest Service has set a target of raising forest cover back to 10% through reforestation and natural regrowth.

  One study attributes the deforestation to "clearance for pastures and home-fields", not to what it calls "settlers' requirements for fuel and building material." Scholars more broadly argue that settlers drove soil erosion through heavy deforestation and overgrazing. Whether pasture clearing or fuel and building needs drove that deforestation is still debated. The answer matters directly for the current push to regrow a tenth of the island's lost tree cover.