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Traditional church in Iceland
It is extremely difficult to see volcanoes, glaciers, beaches, geysers, fumaroles, icebergs, lava deserts and, to top it off, the Northern Lights in a single trip.
Therefore, visiting Iceland is not just another trip, without a doubt it is one of the most impressive destinations in the world.
Located near the Arctic Circle, Iceland is considered the country of ice and fire, it is the largest volcanic island in the world, a paradise for lovers of photography and geology.
It is curious, but everyone who travels to Iceland returns with the feeling of having been on another planet, a place where nature sets the pace of life.
Here we leave you the video of our recent trip to Iceland with Polar Lands, in which you can see the incredible variety of landscapes of this unique country.
Europe's largest glaciers in Iceland
As its name suggests, Iceland has large expanses of ice, as some of the largest glaciers in Europe are found here.
But in addition, it has the peculiarity that it also has a very important volcanic activity.
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Snaefellsnes Peninsula in Iceland
This small country became known to the world in 2010 precisely because of the explosion of one of its volcanoes with a difficult to pronounce the name, Eyjafjallajökull, an eruption that blocked European airspace for several weeks.
From there began a tourist boom that has led it to receive more than 2 million tourists in 2018.
Keep in mind that the total population of Iceland is only 360,000 inhabitants, in an area similar to Portugal, of which 212,000 live in the capital, ReykjavÃk.
This means that most of the island has a very low population density; In fact, no one lives in the interior of the island, all Icelanders live near, or relatively near, the coast.
Geology of Iceland: how it was formed
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Jokulsarlon beach in Iceland
As a curious fact, Iceland is the youngest land mass on the planet; When the dinosaurs disappeared, the island was beginning to form and it did not look like it does today.
First of all, we must remember that the planet is in continuous movement, and from these displacements, Iceland has arisen, a land mass that did not belong to the super-continent of Pangea, which was fragmented and separated to form the current continents.
Iceland is located right where the Eurasian and American tectonic plates separate.
From this mass collision, a network of seamounts of 15,000 kilometers is formed, separated by a rift called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which runs right through the center of Iceland.
The western half of the island geologically belongs to America and the eastern end to Europe, and it takes the same time to get to Iceland from Madrid as it does from New York.
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Solheimajokull Glacier in Iceland
From this open wound that is produced by the separation of these two immense masses of land, earthquakes and continuous volcanic eruptions arise, which are what have ended up forming Iceland.
Who were the first settlers of Iceland
Due to the geological origin of Iceland , it is very easy to understand that it is a country that has not had prehistory like in Africa or Europe.
All the inhabitants of this island were arriving later, and it was not so many years ago.
The first settlers were Irish monks who came to these uninhabited lands around 600 AD. after being diverted by sea from their original route to the Faroe Islands.
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Gullfoss frozen waterfall in Iceland
There are no physical remains of their presence, but it is known that this happened thanks to the famous Icelandic Sagas that we will talk about later.
Iceland had been known since Roman times, as there were accounts of a frozen land some six days' sail from England, but its colonization did not come until much later.
Around the year 860 it is known that a Swede already explored it, but it was a few years later, in 865, when Hrafna-Flóki Vilgerðarson reported the news to Norway that there was an interesting land to colonize there.
Many of you will be familiar with the navigator and shipbuilder Floki from the Vikings series .
This caused that a few years later, in 874, Ingolfur Arnarson , another Viking who for various reasons was wanting to leave Norway, gathered ships, cattle, servants and launched into colonization.
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Diamond Beach in Iceland
He chose ReykjavÃk to start his new settlement, and it was not by chance, because he threw some logs into the sea, and where the current left them, that would be his starting point.
He did it this way with the idea that it could be reached more easily, just letting himself be carried away by the current.
Therefore, he became the owner of the entire area, and it was very common that when colonizing you would take possession of all the territory that you could reach in a day on horseback.
This caused him to take possession of all the land from ReykjavÃk to Thingvellir, in the famous Golden Circle.
Around 930 they begin to realize that they need a more stable form of government, so they establish a set of laws while deciding to create the first modern democratic parliament.
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Sulfurous waters at KrysuvÃk in Iceland
In the year 1000, as a form of cohesion, it is decided to adopt Christianity to avoid massacres among all the inhabitants of Iceland.
In the middle of the 13th century, Norway includes Iceland within its territory; later it would pass into the hands of the Danish crown until in the 19th century its history changed.
At that time it managed to become an autonomous territory, as Greenland is today, but in World War II, when the Nazis invaded Denmark, the Icelanders decided in 1944 to declare their independence.
From that moment on, Iceland became a completely independent state.
The best place to see all this history is in Thingvellir, in the Golden Circle, where the former residence of the Prime Minister is located.
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icelandic horse
What are the Icelandic Sagas
When we talk about the history of Iceland , it is important to understand what The Sagas are .
The Norse sagas , as they are commonly known, are different visions of the history of the Norwegian Vikings , from the point of view of different social groups.
There are sagas of all kinds, and they are the ones that shape the history we know today of all these arctic regions.
Thus there are sagas of the first Christian bishops, sagas of the kings, sagas of the Icelanders, sagas of chivalry, of ancient times, of the gods, of the poets, of the outlaws and of the paladins.
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Reykjavik in Iceland
They are mainly set in Iceland , Norway , and Greenland .
They are prose narratives mainly of anonymous origin, which were produced in the Middle Ages between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries.
This stems from the time when stories and stories were told, which was a typical pastime in the long nights of Iceland; you just have to imagine the nights with a bonfire and telling stories.
Recent history of Iceland
Until a few years ago, Iceland was a fairly isolated country that no one wanted to go to, especially because of the harsh weather it has for much of the year.
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Reykjavik in Iceland
It was a country that no one paid attention to.
But it was progressing quietly until in 2008 it became one of the most developed countries in the world.
But their joy was short-lived because that same year the world crisis hit them very hard and the country went bankrupt.
The currency crashed, unemployment rose, and 97% of the financial system collapsed, leading to the resignation of the country's president.
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Reykjavik in Iceland
From this very complicated financial crisis came a first decision that would begin to place Iceland on the world map, and that is that in that country an unprecedented measure was taken in the world: it let the banks fall.
From that moment the country experienced a rapid economic recovery helped by the fall of the currency and the aforementioned great eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, which changed the tourist destination of the country.
These two events gave Iceland visibility that it had not enjoyed until then, since then it has become a leading tourist destination for lovers of landscapes and nature.
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