Iceland

° Grundartangi ° Hafnarfjordur ° Reykjavik

Lydveldid

Iceland (Lydveldid) is an island country that lies just below the Arctic Circle in the North Atlantic Ocean. It is east of Greenland and west of Norway. Iceland is the most westerly nation of Europe, the least populated and was the last to be settled. Of its 103,000 square kilometers, only 1,000 are cultivated, with glaciers and lava taking up 23,000 square kilometers.

Map of Iceland Abraham Ortelius 1527-1598 Ortelius was a Flemish cartographer and geographer, generally recognized as the creator of the first modern atlas, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theatre of the World). He is also believed to be the first person to imagine that the continents were joined together before drifting to their present positions.

The earliest account of settlers on Iceland was written in 825 A.D. by the Irish monk Dicuil. He recorded first-hand accounts of Irish people who lived on the island of Thule, which became known as Iceland. Sometime between 850 and 875, a Swede named Gardar Svavarsson is thought to have arrived on the island, and his arrival was followed by an influx of pagan Norse during the period of 874-930 and from Viking colonies in the British Isles. Some of the settlers had married Celtic people and some had Celtic slaves, therefore, Icelanders resemble the people of northern Norway, Ireland and northern Scotland.

The first man to settle in Iceland was Ingolfur Arnarson. According to theLandnamabok, or Book of Settlements, written in the twelfth century, Arnarson was a chieftain from Norway. Bringing his family and dependents to Iceland, he built a farm in what eventually became the capitol city of Reykjavik. Like many of the first settlers to Iceland, Arnarson had fled Norway to avoi

Many of the early settlers of this period were seafarers, including Erik the Red (Eirikur Rauthi), who discovered Greenland. In the year 1000 A.D., his son, Leif Eriksson became the first person to travel to North America, predating Columbus by 500 years.

For centuries, most Icelanders have been living in coastal towns and making their living from the sea, either by fishing or by working in fish processing plants. Almost all the country's exports are fish or fish products.

Iceland often had to import food to feed its people. In the 1600 s and 1700's, Denmark imposed harsh trade restrictions on Iceland. Danish traders bought fish from the Icelanders at low prices and sold them food at high prices. As a result, many people became very poor. During the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800's, ships bringing food could not reach Iceland and many people starved to death.

September 7, 1821, The Edinburgh Advertiser , Edinburgh, Midlothian, U.K.

Extract of a letter from Iceland, dated 9th July: "A vessel is cast on shore on Westrnann. islands; she has been upset a considerable time; there were live bodies found on board in a decayed state; they have been buried in one coffin. She is supposed to be from the coast of Labrador; the only papers found are two duplicate bills of exchange upon somebody at Stourminster. Aboard, apparently from" the stern has been sent to the Governor: there is upon it Jane of Dartmouth, painted in large German text, nearly obliterated. She is a sloop or small schooner, and has been laden with fish and oil; the bills are dated in October 1820."

October 15, 1821, Courier, Middlesex, London, United Kingdom

Lava Fields Covered in Green Moss.
South Iceland.

"We have accounts from Iceland of the 13th of August. They state that the summer has been uncommonly warm, though a very large quantity of ice surrounded the north and west coasts. About thirty Dutch ships are said to be entangled in the ice, and several other ships have been stranded."

April 9, 1822, New Times, London, Middlesex, United Kingdom

Accounts have been received at Copenhagen from Iceland.

"While the winter in the east of Europe has been remarkably mild, it set in early in Iceland, with great rigour. Vast quantities of snow fell, and the northern and eastern coasts were wholly blocked up with floating ice. In the night of the 20th of December, the mountain Oefields Jokel, to the south east of Hecla, which has been at rest ever since 1612, began to emit fire, so that the ice with which it was covered, suddenly burst wiih a dreadful crash, tbe earth trembled, and immense masses of snow rolled from the summit of the mountain, a height of 5,500 feet. Even since, a large column of fire has been rising from the mountain, which threw out vast quantities of ashes and stoues, some of the latter weighing from 50 to 8O pounds, being cast lo the distance of a German mile, (five English miles. The mountain continued to burn till the 1st of February, and smoked till the 23d, but at that time the ice had again collected round the crater. The weather was very unsettled and stormy during tbe eruptions."

Brim of Fjallsjoekull Glacier

The first Icelandic settlers in North America arrived in Utah in 1855 seeking religious freedom to follow Mormonism. Eleven Mormon converts left Iceland for North America between 1854 and 1857. A few years later nine Icelanders settled in the town of Spanish Fork, Utah, along with other Scandinavians. For the next 20 years, small groups of Icelanders joined the settlement from time to time. Thorarinn Haflidason Thorason and Gudmund Gudmundsson, Icelandic apprentices who had converted to Mormonism in Denmark and travelled to America in the 1850s, were typical of Icelandic emigrants coming to Utah. Skilled artisans, trades-persons, or farmers, the Icelandic emigrants brought with them useful skills for the frontier, although it was some time before they could use those skills in gainful employment.

The United States suffered an economic depression in the mid-1870s, and jobs were scarce. Many Icelandic men took laboring jobs as unskilled factory workers and woodcutters, or as dockworkers in Milwaukee when they first arrived. Working to build capital and to learn farming techniques suitable for their new land so that they could start farms of their own, early Icelandic immigrant communities were largely agricultural. Drawing from their backgrounds in farming, the new immigrants maintained their ties to their Icelandic heritage.

In the late 1800's, the Icelandic government regained control over internal affairs; in 1918, Iceland became a self-governing kingdom, united with Denmark.

Fort Wayne Daily Sentinel , June 18, 1874, Fort Wayne, Indiana

ICELAND'S ANNIVERSARY
Dr. Hayes Not Successful in Forming an Excursion Party.
(From the New York Tribune.)

The millennia) anniversary of the establishment of the Republic of Iceland will be celebrated in that island during the first week of August. Cyrus W. Field and Dr. 1. 1. Hayes, the Arctic explorer, have been chosen to represent the American Geographical Society at the celebration. Mr. Field has just returned from California, and will sail for England on the 17th inst., intending to go by steamer from Leith, in Scotland, to the Iceland festival. Dr. Hayes has been trying lo get together a party of eight to sail to Iceland in a schooner.

He told a Tribune reporter on Friday that he had secured the stanch schooner Mary D. Leech, and would have the sole conduct of the excursion. Four gentlemen have agreed to join the party, and inquiries have been made about the trip by nearly 150 others, but most of the inquirers do not like the notion of seafaring in a schooner. If he does not fill up the required number (eight) within ten days or thereabouts, Dr. Hayes will abandon the enterprise, and will sail for England on the 24th inst., and go to Iceland from Scotland by steamer. The expenses of the excursion party would be about $8,000.

It was originally intended to sail on the 20th of this month, but delay in forming the party will defer the departure till the end of the month. The first place touched at will be Halifax, whence the schooner will sail for Greenland. After remaining there two days, to give the passengers an opportunity to see something of life and scenery in Greenland, the schooner will sail for Iceland.

On the first day of August the anniversary celebration will begin at the Capital Reykjavik, where the King of Denmark will confer a free constitution upon the Icelanders . . . Dr. Hayes anticipates that there will he a large gathering of persons of high position from the Continent of Europe and England. The King of Denmark and the Danes who go with him will sail from Copenhagen. Those who go from Great Britain will go from Glasgow and Leith, in Scotland, from which ports there is a weekly steamer to Iceland in the summer. The occasion, says Dr. Hayes, is looked upon as of great interest and importance, because it is the first instance in history of the celebration of its thousandth anniversary by a nation which has preserved its original form of government for that time.

Atchison Daily Globe , March 10, 1888, Atchison, Kansas

TO LEAVE THE LAND OF ICE
WILL THE HARDY SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF ICE MIGRATE?

There Is a Plan Afoot to Transport the Entire Population of the Island, 75,000 Souls, to Manitoba.

For the third time in history Iceland is threatened with depopulation. For the third time the climate of that strangely interesting island is changing for the worse, and this time the change is so prolonged that a scheme is projected in the Canadian northwest to bring all the remaining 75,000 in Iceland to the new world. The extinction of such a people would be a calamity and we may well refuse to believe it possible; for no doubt a remnant will remain, will find life much more tolerable when the surplus population is removed, and, when nature again becomes genial, will thoroughly re-people the old land.

Iceland is the most interesting island in the world. About as large as Ohio, it contains as many volcanoes this continent: and with a population never as large as a congressional district, is has produced more poets and romantic writers than any state, and has a history as fascinating as that of any other nation. When all Europe was sunk in the barbarism that followed the northmen's destruction of Rome, Irish priests and scholars founded a religious community in Iceland and when civilization had revived in only a few Mediterranean provinces and that but feebly, Iceland was in its golden age of poets, preachers and scholars. There is good evidence that Columbus obtained his first ideas of the western world in Iceland, and there is undoubted history that people of that race discovered America long before the Spaniards.

During its 1014 years of authentic history a blight fell on Ireland, its population sank to a minimum, and for 200 years it had neither scholars nor historians; at another time the cold increased for a term of years and threatened general destruction and now the same phenomenon is being repeated, with the additional evil that the ice flow from Greenland comes later in the season and has formed a permanent mass against the north side of the island.

No class of foreigners became Americanized so rapidly and easily as the Scandinavians. This is true of the Swedes, Danes and Norwegians, and pre-eminently true of the Icelanders. Those in Manitoba are enthusiastic for the confederation, and liberal supporters of all English Canadian schemes of progress; they have several newspapers in their own language, and maintain good schools and churches.

Norwegian Fjord Horse, Dun Pony. 1923.
Edward Herbert Miner.

In the church library in the little village of Mountain (containing less than fifty houses} are several hundred volumes in English, French German, Norwegian and Icelandic, Greek and Latin, and the resident preacher (Lutheran) is a most accomplished scholar, both in the classical and modern languages. There is no country in the world, probably, where education is so universal as in Iceland.

Norway and Denmark were united, and when again divided Iceland fell to Denmark, to which it is still attached. In 1874 the Icelanders celebrated the 1,000 anniversary of settlement, which attracted visitors from all parts of the world . . . The only grain used is imported; but heavy crops of vegetables are grown. The wealth of the country is in cattle and sheep, fish and birds. The latter are wonderfully numerous, among them the eider duck, whose nests are strictly protected by the people. The white bear often comes on the ice from Greenland. Such are but a few of the interesting points of Iceland. Its literature is so voluminous that we cannot even give a list of the more important of its books.

Gyrfalcon (Falco Rusticolus)

As many as one-third of Europe’s population of gyrfalcons (Falco rusticolus) come to Iceland to breed, feasting on the abundance of ducks and ground-nesting birds that flock around the country’s thermal pools in summer. Favored by royal falconers in the Middle Ages, the gyrfalcon is a speedy Arctic predator that is a common character in Icelandic folklore. ~ Smithsonian

November 15, 1951, Healdsburg Tribune, Enterprise and Scimitar.

In the bleak territory which they inhabit, Gyrfalcons perform like true members of the hawk and falcon family. They are among the fastest of all feathered fliers, with the skills of soaring and diving and a keen eye for prey: birds, rabbits, mice, shrews, and other small animals. The struggle with a victim is usually short, because the Gyrfalcon is a large, powerful bird with strong feet and beak. He is from 20 to 25 inches long and has a heavy body. His wings, built for speed, are long and slim, and his tail is somewhat long. Only experts can be sure of identifying him, says the National Wildlife Federation, in part because Gryfialcons are rarely seen, and partly because they come in different color combinations.

Gyrfalcon. Harry Curieux Adamson

Some are white, with broken bars of brown or black across their backs and wings. Others are darker, with mostly brown, gray, or black feathers and only a bit of white. At one time this caused bird authorities to list three or four races of Gyrfalcons living in North America. But now they feel that there is only one, and that the different colors may show up among birds of the same brood.

The young make their appearance in a rough nest of sticks and twigs, built in a protected corner of a high cliff. There are three or four of them to a fami y. They are hatched from large buff or brownish eggs which are marked with reddish brown and live where ice and snow never completely disappear. The soon they gain the thick layers of feathers which will protect them against wintry blasts and soon display their flying skill. Beating their wings in rapid flight or holding them outstreached while soaring, the young join their parents on patrols of the arctic skies.

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1899. World's Fleet. Boston Daily Globe

Lloyds Register of Shipping gives the entire fleet of the world as 28,180 steamers and sailing vessels, with a total tonnage of 27,673,628, of which 39 perent are British.

Great Britain	10,990 vessels, total tonnage of 10,792,714
United States	3,010 vessels, total tonnage of 2,405,887
Norway	2,528 vessels, tonnage of 1,604,230
Germany	1,676 vessels, with a tonnage of 2,453,334, in which are included her particularly large ships.
Sweden	1,408 vessels with a tonnage of 643, 527
Italy	1,150 vessels
France	1,182 vessels

For Historical Comparison
Top 10 Maritime Nations Ranked by Value (2017)

	Country	# of Vessels	Gross Tonnage (m)	Total Value (USDbn)
1	Greece	4,453	206.47	$88.0
2	Japan	4,317	150.26	$79.8
3	China	4,938	159.71	$71.7
4	USA	2,399	55.92	$46.5
5	Singapore	2,662	64.03	$41.7
6	Norway	1,668	39.68	$41.1
7	Germany	2,923	81.17	$30.3
8	UK	883	28.78	$24.3
9	Denmark	1,040	36.17	$23.4
10	South Korea	1,484	49.88	$20.1
Total		26,767	87.21	$466.9