An island still being made
Iceland sits on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the seam where the Eurasian and North American plates are drawing apart, and the ridge splits the island in two. It is one of very few places where the sea floor can be seen spreading on land, at just under two centimetres a year. The country first emerged from the ocean some 16 to 18 million years ago, and it keeps growing. On 14 November 1963 an undersea eruption broke the surface, and when it stopped in June 1967 there was a new island, Surtsey, named after a fire giant of Norse myth. Only a few scientists may land there, and they check their belongings for stray seeds.
Ice lies on top of all this heat. Vatnajökull, the largest ice cap in Iceland, covers about 8 percent of the country. Several volcanoes sit beneath it, and an eruption can release hidden water in a sudden flood called a jökulhlaup. Settlers found forest from mountain to shore, but felling and erosion followed, and only 23 percent of the surface is vegetated today.
The climate is kinder than the map suggests. Iceland lies just south of the Arctic Circle, yet the North Atlantic Current holds Reykjavík to an average of about 0.7 °C in January and 11.6 °C in July. In summer the sun sets only briefly, and on winter nights the northern lights often appear. The Arctic fox was the only land mammal here when people arrived, while puffins nest on the sea cliffs.
Icelanders have long had to live with eruptions. When a volcano opened on the island of Heimaey in January 1973, almost all of its 5,300 residents reached the mainland within six hours. Crews sprayed seawater on the lava, and the harbour survived, narrowed but better sheltered. A newer series began near the town of Grindavík in December 2023, with nine eruptions by August 2025, and the town has had to be evacuated as a precaution.
Hot water for everyone
Reykjavík means roughly Smoky Bay, a name said to come from the steam of nearby hot springs. That steam became an everyday luxury. In 1930 a three-kilometre pipe began carrying geothermal water from the city's old washing basins to a school, and the Reykjavík District Heating Company followed in 1946. By 2020 about 90 percent of the energy used to heat homes came from the ground, and nearly all the electricity is renewable too.
The happiest result is the swimming pool. Heated outdoor pools are run by communities for themselves, and people go to exercise, relax and talk even in the cold, with the hot tubs serving as informal debating chambers. UNESCO added this pool culture to its intangible heritage list in 2025.
Nearly two in three of Iceland's 396,500 people live in the capital region, around the world's northernmost capital of a sovereign state. Immigrants make up 19.6 percent of the population, with those born in Poland by far the largest group. Fishing once dominated exports, and in 2025 marine products earned about 18 percent of them, well behind tourism at 32 percent and just ahead of aluminium.
A parliament in a rift valley
Permanent settlement began in 874 with the Norwegian chieftain Ingólfr Arnarson, and by 930 the island had an assembly, the Althing, to make laws and settle disputes. It met at Þingvellir, in the rift valley that marks the plate boundary, until 1798.
Union with Norway came in the 1260s, and the 1814 Treaty of Kiel eventually left Iceland with Denmark. Life could be desperately hard. After the Laki eruption of 1783, about a quarter of the population starved. Iceland was recognised as sovereign under the Danish crown in 1918, and after more than 99 percent of voters chose to end the union, it became a republic on 17 June 1944. It joined NATO in 1949 without a standing army of its own. Extending its fishing limits to 200 nautical miles brought the 1970s Cod Wars with Britain, and the financial crisis of 2008 hit hard before tourism surged.
Patronymics, smoked lamb and a flood of books
Most Icelanders carry no family name. Ólafur, son of Jón, is Ólafur Jónsson, his sister takes -dóttir, and some children use their mother's name instead. Even the phone directory is ordered by first name.
The language has moved so little that modern speakers can follow sagas written about 800 years ago, usually in updated spelling. The scholar Árni Magnússon, who died in 1730, left his great manuscript collection to the University of Copenhagen, and by 1997 Denmark had handed 1,666 manuscripts back. Halldór Laxness won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1955.
Fish, lamb and dairy anchor the kitchen. Skyr, somewhere between yoghurt and cheese, has been a staple for over a thousand years, Christmas brings lamb smoked over birch or dried sheep dung, and dense rye bread is baked in geothermal heat. The brave try hákarl, shark that is fermented and dried for months.
Since 1944 a free catalogue of new titles has reached every household before Christmas, setting off the Jólabókaflóð, or Christmas book flood. Books are the country's favourite gift, which seems exactly right for a people who kept their old stories readable for eight centuries.