Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Unlike Great Britain and Ireland, Iceland was unsettled land and could be claimed without conflict with existing inhabitants. On the basis of Íslendingabók by Ari Þorgilsson , and Landnámabók , histories dating from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and providing a wealth of detail about the settlement, the years 870 and 874 have ...
The recorded history of Iceland began with the settlement by Viking explorers and the people they enslaved from Western Europe, particularly in modern-day Norway and the British Isles, in the late ninth century. Iceland was still uninhabited long after the rest of Western Europe had been settled.
The first Bishop of Skalholt was Ísleifur Gissurarson, who was elected by the Althing in 1056. After his son Gissur was installed as bishop, the power and wealth of the church quickly grew due to the introduction of tithing, the first tax introduced in Iceland. The church became the second unifying institution in the country after the Althing.
Iceland is the world's 18th-largest island, and Europe's second-largest island after Great Britain and before Ireland. The main island covers 101,826 km 2 (39,315 sq mi), but the entire country is 103,000 km 2 (40,000 sq mi) in size, of which 62.7% is tundra .
This evidence shows that the founder population of Iceland came from Scandinavia, Ireland and Scotland: studies of Y-chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA indicate that 75% of Icelanders' patrilineal ancestry derives from Scandinavia (with most of the rest being from the Irish and British Isles), while 62% of their matrilineal ancestry derives from ...
The famous statue by Einar Jónsson, up on Arnarhóll in Reykjavík Monument at Ingólfshöfði, the site where Ingólfur is said to have passed his first winter in Iceland Ingólfur Arnarson , in some sources named Bjǫrnólfsson , [ a ] ( c. 849 – c. 910 ) is commonly recognized as the first permanent Norse settler of Iceland , together ...
Atlantic / Northern Europe: Iceland: CE 874 / 1,076 BP: Reykjavík: Ingólfr Arnarson, the first known Norse settler who came from mainland Norway, built his homestead in Reykjavík this year, though Norse or Hiberno-Scottish monks might have arrived up to two hundred years earlier. [102] Pacific: Easter Island: CE 750–1150 / 1,200–800 BP ...
Garðarr Svavarsson discovers Iceland. Blown from a storm near the Orkney Islands. He circumnavigated Iceland, thus the first to establish that the landmass was an island. He stayed for one winter in Skjálfandi. He praised the new land and called it Garðarshólmi (lit. Garðar's Islet). [citation needed] <870