Under constructionAthugið - þessi síða er í vinnslu
WELCOME TO ICELAND
WELCOME:
Welcome to this site of Icelandic Internet resources. My purpose in
constructing the site, which began originally as a simple bookmarks
list in support of my own research interests, is to provide ready access
to commonly needed information on the country, especially about those
things for which Iceland is known and about which we have first
perceptions. The sites reflect those kinds of things that an area
specialist would hold for the country; in this regard, then, the list
is holistic, although general. However, because Iceland is now
regarded as the most "connected" country in the world, the site is
virtually incomplete and only a small fraction of the topics and
websites connected with Iceland are identified here; using nearly any
search engine on the World Wide Web will produce some source on nearly
any area of interest.
I first became interested in this fascinating country when I was an
undergraduate student in college taking a course in the Geography of
Europe. I completed a book report on Vilhjalmur Stefansson's ICELAND:
THE FIRST AMERICAN REPUBLIC and soon found myself reading other
monographic and serial literature on the country, writing the Embassy
in Washington for additional information, and getting an Icelandic
sweater for Christmas (which I still have close to forty years later;
it's still in good shape, but I'm not). I was hooked. Seven or eight
years later, as a student in India, I found myself visiting the Danish
Embassy to see how I could include Iceland on my itinerary crossing
the Atlantic enroute home (in those days, many trans-Atlantic flights
stopped in Iceland, and my Pan Am flight was not an exception). In
1988, when I decided to spend some time in the country for the first
time, the travel agent had no idea where to start; so I did the
legwork myself that year and in six subsequent trips (seven in July,
2007). Iceland is NOT for everyone: if your idea of a vacation is
lying on a sandy, pristine beach in 90 degree (F) temperatures, forget
this place. American servicepeople assigned to the country frequently
complain about the winters - not the temperatures, which are mild and
not as bad as we might expect, but rather the short days (about three
hours at Christmas; this is compensated for, of course, by the
almost-midnight sun in the summer). Outside the southwestern part
of the country, people are few and far between; the landscape, while
beautiful, is desolate. So if cultural geography is your forte rather
than physical geography, France or India might be better choices.
On the other hand, if you love a beautiful, almost pollution-free
environment and spectacular scenery and you are into physical geography,
welcome to Iceland! Here are some salient features of the country;
they are generally reflected in the categories and the sites selected
for the website:
PHYSICAL FEATURES:
Iceland is an island - the second largest in Europe - in the North
Atlantic Ocean, slightly closer to Europe than to North America, and
along the great circle route between the two continents. As such, it
used to be a convenient refueling stopover for planes, but few have
such need today. Nevertheless, this location still gives the country
some strategic importance, and the country is a member of the NATO
alliance and an important military (NATO/U.S. Navy) and civilian
airbase is found at Keflavik. Iceland is almost exactly the same size
as Ohio - roughly 40,000 square miles of area. It touches the Arctic
Circle in the north, meaning that days are long in the summer and
nights are long in the winter.
Iceland is one of the world's youngest geological landmasses, with
scientists believing that it arose from the ocean floor little more
than 20 million years ago. There are two different processes that
affect the composition and appearance of the island today: vulcanism,
or the geology of molten rock and volcanoes; and those kinds of forces
associated with earthquakes. In addition, gradational forces also
influence Iceland's topography and are especially prominent in the
glaciers and other landforms of Iceland. More than three-quarters of
the country is volcanic, with lava fields and some 250 solfataras
(areas exhibiting steamvents, boiling pools, and the like) dotting the
countryside. Beginning in 1963, some new volcanic activity in the
Westmann Islands off the southern coast resulted in the formation of
a new island named Surtsey; after its formation, scientists isolated
it and forbade anyone's setting foot there in order that they could
study the various biological processes. The island of Heimaey, also
in the Westmann Islands and the only inhabited island, was almost
destroyed in 1973, when a lava flow threatened to destroy the island;
its nearly 5,000 residents escaped because the entire fishing fleet
fortuitously was in the harbor when the eruption began. Interestingly,
the lava wall of nearly 500 feet was stopped by an ingenious idea of
cooling the forward edges with water to harden the rock and to create
a dam. About four years ago, Hekla, a prominent volcano near the
southern coast, erupted; in the Middle Ages, this mountain was thought
to be the entry to hell, and its eruptions were perceived as being the
fires of hell; this legend probably originated with the Irish monk,
St. Brendan, who was offshore in the Atlantic when Hekla erupted. In
1875, when Hekla erupted again, many nearby residents emigrated to
Canada, where they founded a community known today as New Iceland;
centered on Gimli, north of Winnipeg on Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba, it
is the largest settlement of Icelanders outside of Iceland. In
addition, Iceland sits on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and is a good
example of sea-floor spreading and plate tectonics; the country widens
by approximately one inch per year. In the summer of 2000, a series
of fairly severe earthquakes hit Selfoss and southern Iceland and minor
tremors are yet an almost-daily occurrence (see, for example), though
few are severe or even felt.
Iceland's capital city, Reykjavik, is the world's most northerly and
poleward capital city. Because of its volcanic nature, geothermal
activity provides nearly all heat for the city and the country and
substantial electricity (energy also derives from hydroelectric sources).
Evidences of this geothermal activity abound, with steam vents evident
throughout the country. When Iceland's first settler, Ingólfur Arnarson,
saw these vents in 874, he thought there was smoke coming out of the
ground and named the site Reykjavik, or "Smoky Bay." Pollution does
not exist because of Iceland's energy sources. (That is not wholly
true, of course, because transportation and other uses do generate some
fossil fuel pollution, but this is minimal.) Iceland uses only about
ten per cent of its potential geothermal and hydroelectric potential,
and technology is being sought to export its surplus power. There is
ittle industry to take advantage of this energy, save the several
aluminum smelters that have been constructed in Iceland to take
advantage of low-cost water transportation and the voracious power
requirements of aluminum refining; others are being planned.
While the country is so far north that it touches the Arctic Circle,
climate is moderated by the presence of the Atlantic Ocean, which
surrounds the island, and by the warm current known as the North
Atlantic Drift; consequently, temperatures are not extreme, with the
highest sea-level temperature ever recorded being 86 degrees Fahrenheit
and the lowest temperature being minus 18 degrees Fahrenheit. (For
geographers, Koeppen would classify Iceland's climate - at least the
populated southern and southwestern areas of the country - as Cfc, a
kind of Marine West Coast climate, which makes it generally the same as
found in the American Pacific Northwest or Canada's British Columbia).
Vegetation-wise, Iceland is treeless, though apparently at the time
of original settlement about a quarter of the country was covered with
birch forests and attempts are now being made to reforest the country,
again with birch and also now with aspen trees. (A standing joke is
what do you do if you find yourself in an Icelandic forest; the answer
is: stand up....a popular place now for planting trees is cemeteries.)
It is not surprising, therefore, that little wood is used in the
construction industry and houses are built of masonry or metal. Because
some high elevations are found in Iceland, going as high as 7,000 feet,
glaciers develop at this high latitude. Approximately one-sixth of the
country is covered by glaciers, or ice caps, with four major and
perhaps two dozen minor glaciers found throughout the country. One of
the glaciers, Vatna, is Europe's largest. The country is deeply cut
by fjords on all but the southern side. In addition, Iceland is an
earthquake zone, and there are occasional happenings of these events,
but they are not nearly as prominent as the other geological concerns
of the country (several years ago, an earthquake may have been induced
by drilling during construction of a geothermal power facility). There
are few natural species of fauna.
HISTORY:
Iceland was the last European country to be settled and thus its social
history is fairly recent (even as its political history is fairly old,
as measured today). Its discovery was probably earlier, however,
because a country called Thule was known to the Greeks and Romans around
300 B.C., and that was the name of the country in the Middle Ages.
Further, there have been found some Roman coins dating to about 300 A.D.
that are believed to have been brought to the country by seafaring people
from England, which was a Roman colony at the time. It is also believed
that Irish monks visited the country in the eighth century; these monks,
who are referred to as Papar in the sagas, were probably the first - but
not permanent - settlers. From about 870 to 930, Vikings from Norway,
Denmark, and Sweden settled Iceland permanently, throwing out the Irish
monks in the process. Some of these Vikings had also been resident in
the British Isles and consequently the present ethnic stock is considered
both Nordic and Celtic. In 930, a parliament was founded by these early
settlers at a place called Thingvellir; this parliament, or Althing, is
the world's oldest governing body. Christianity, at that time meaning
Catholicism, was adopted by the parliament in about 1000. In 1262,
Iceland came under the king of Norway; a century later, the king of
Denmark took command of Iceland, and he brought the Reformation and the
Lutheran religion to Iceland. In 1904, Icelanders regained control of
their government, and in 1918 made an agreement with Denmark that
established them as an independent kingdom in a personal union with
Denmark. In 1943, when the agreement was to end, Denmark was occupied
by Germany and Iceland was being protected by the United States after
first being occupied by Great Britain in the early part of the war. The
Althing decided to break completely with Denmark and in 1944 proclaimed a
republic in a ceremony at Thingvellir. While its settlement history is
young, along with its geological history, Iceland's political history
makes it one of the world's oldest countries, however.
THE PEOPLE:
Icelanders are Scandinavian, with some mixing of Celtic (Irish) stock.
The population in 2001 is approximately 281,000, with more than half
the people living in Reykjavik and its suburbs. The population is
dominantly urban, roughly 92 percent, although the population of
Reykjavik, the country's capital and largest city, is only about
100,000 and the second largest city in the country (Kopavogur, a suburb
of Reykjavik) has a population of only 20,000. Nearly all settlements
are coastal (in other words, its population is peripheral). Besides
Reykjavik, the country's most important cities are Keflavik, about thirty
miles to the southwest and the site of the international airport/NATO
base, with a population of 7,400; and Akureyri, the cultural and
commercial heart of north Iceland, with a population of approximately
15,000. Icelanders are known to be extremely intelligent people, with
probably the highest literacy rate in the world, usually given as over 99
per cent; they write, read, and publish more books per capita than any
other people or country in the world. Radio operators along the coast are
known to read poetry to the fishing fleet at night. Their growth rate is
low, about 1.1 per cent per annum, and they are an older population; life
expectancy is among the world's highest and exceeds that of the United
States: it is about 78 for men and about 82 for women, with a national
value of nearly 80 years. Migration, once negative, now positively
affects population growth, which totals 1.48 per cent per annum. In
addition to the population noted above, Iceland also has many unseen
(but not unknown) residents: one of the interesting trait of Icelanders
is their susperstitious character, especially in regard to elves, for
whom the craggy terrain provides residences for the 500 elves living in
the country; when their places of residence become known, plans for road
construction and other projects often have to be changed in order to
avoid uprooting these "people."
NAMES:
By law, Icelanders do not have family names. Instead, they use a system
of patronymics. They have a given name, perhaps a middle name, and a
last name that is composed of (usually) their father's first name, to
which is added son if the person is a male or dottir if it is a female.
Thus, I would be David Josephson, while my son would be John Davidsson;
his son would be David Johnson. My daughter would be Gudrun Davidsdottir.
About ten percent of the population was exempted from this law and
carries a family name; many of these people were Danes who were resident
in the country. If you should immigrate to Iceland and become a citizen,
the law requires a name change to conform to their pattern (CondeNast
Traveler indicates there is a specific list of names to accommodate
newcomers).
In the Icelandic phone directory - there used to be only one for the
entire country, but they now have one for the Reykjavik area and another
for the rest of the country - names are listed by first name, followed
by a short description of the person's occupation so that you can
identify which Jon Jonsson you really want! At any rate, there is no
confusing the gender of the person in the book. You can safely say that
everyone is on a first-name basis!
Note: In March, 1996, a law was introduced in the Icelandic Parliament
(Althing) that would allow a family name to be added to the traditional
patronymic scheme; the bill apparently has been tabled for the time being.
LANGUAGE:
Icelandic is a Germanic language, believed to have changed little from
the Old Norse of the Vikings and original settlers; consequently, it is
known as Europe's oldest living language. Until recently, Icelanders
resisted the introduction of foreign words into the language or other
changes. In fact, there is a state committee which is responsible for
the determination of the Icelandic equivalent of new and foreign words.
Because words are pieced together to form new words for modern items,
twenty-letter words are not uncommon. It is a language rich in ancient
literature. Icelanders are almost universally fluent in English and
frequently in another language, either Danish or German, as well.
RELIGION:
Upon settlement, Iceland's religion consisted of pagan devotion to
Nordic deities, especially Thor and Odinn, the latter the primary god
throughout Scandinavia but second in Iceland to Thor. Eventually
Christianity came to the country with important bishoprics at Skalholt
in the South and Holar in the North. The Godafoss falls near Akureyri
in the North are famous because a local chieftan there threw deities in
the falls upon his conversion to Christianity in about 1000. The
Catholic bishops in Iceland were unlike Catholic bishops elsewhere in
that they were married. In fact, it is said that half of the population
of Iceland today can trace their roots to Jón Arason. Following the
Reformation, Iceland became a Protestant country, and Arason, the last
Catholic bishop, was beheaded in 1550. Today Lutheranism is the official
national religion, to which about 93 percent of the population nominally
belongs; about two percent are Roman Catholic and the remainder are of
other (including Ásatrú, the indigenous Icelandic religion) or of no
religion. Children are registered at birth into the religion of their
mothers. Interestingly, probably three-quarters of all first-born
children have unmarried parents.
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS:
The land itself has almost no minerals, forests, or oil, and few other
resources except for geothermal activity and hydroelectricity. Some
commercial mining of sulphur was done in the past (and even may have
been the source of Iceland's only war, other than the Cod Wars), but this
is insignificant today. Roughly one percent of the land is forested, one
percent is in agriculture, and less than one percent is devoted to cities,
roads, and other human pursuits. Agriculture is severely limited, and
only sheep and some cattle provide for some necessities, including a limited
industry based on wool. Thus, the basis of Iceland's economy and standard
of living is the sea, which establishes fishing as the country's only
natural resource and principal industry. Approximately 85 per cent of the
country's exports are fish, with woolen goods constituting most of the
remainder. This is the reason Iceland has been at the forefront of
international efforts to conserve sea resources and Iceland went to war
with Britain several times during the 1970's - the so-called "Cod Wars" -
to protect its fishing waters and was in part responsible for the creation
of a 200-mile economic zone written into the new Law of the Sea.
THE LINKS:
There is not much here that is new or that will not be found among other
Icelandic sites. We all cover pretty much the same materials. If you
use any search engine simply to look for "Iceland," the search likely
will generate over four million hits. Therefore, each individual's
page represents those things of interest to that particular author.
The links found here originated as my bookmarks on Iceland and are a
subjective decision as to what would constitute a good background
knowledge of Iceland (and a few personal and fun things of interest as
well). Much of this comes from my own academic research background
in Geography and Library Science. There has been no attempt to organize
the links by alphabet or by any other system; in fact, I have usually
simply added links to the bottom of each subsection. Thus, about the
only organizational feature that might be noted is that the site tends
to be academic in style. In some cases, a link has been selected for a
specific item, even though the link may appear to duplicate other sites
and be redundant. In general, the links are to sites in the English
language (since it started out as my bookmark page), though a good reason
may cause the inclusion of an Icelandic-only site from time to time (and
I still encourage your attempt to use Icelandic). In general, I have
excluded the purely commercial sites, e.g., to Esso or Olís, or to very
specialized sites, e.g., the Union of Electrical Workers, unless there
are some compelling reasons of description or other contributions to an
understanding and appreciation of Iceland that can be made in them. There
are situations, of course, where such sites do provide valuable insight
into the country and would be included. Further, I have avoided several
other kinds of sites: those that are largely photography, travel, or
biking in orientation (there are a million of these: just search for
"Iceland biking"); those that seem, a priori, to be transient in nature,
e.g., someone's personal homepage on Yahoo; and, of course, those sites
that might be offensive or objectionable (with a couple of exceptions
for particular reasons).
As stated elsewhere here, Iceland is now the world's most "connected"
country and the sheer number of its websites has grown beyond management.
It seems that every organization and individual in the country has a
website. If you cannot find something of interest after exhausting the
categories here, I suggest that you pull up any search engine and enter
"Iceland" and whatever other word(s) approximates your interest; almost
certainly the search will return hits that will satisfy that interest.
As always, check out each link at a site that you visit.
Links that are apparently unworkable may be left in place for a specific
reason. An archives site may have a record of the link; if the
non-working link is something of interest, its address may be used to
search for the copy at the archive site.
SEARCHING THE SITE:
To search for anything within the website, use "Control + F" to bring up
a search box; simply enter the desired term in the box and search in both
"up" and "down" directions.