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Mid-Atlantic Ridge and adjacent plates. Volcanoes indicated in red.. In geological terms, Iceland is a young island. It started to form in the Miocene era about 20 million years ago from a series of volcanic eruptions on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where it lies between the North American Plate and Eurasian Plate.
Travels of the first Scandinavians in Iceland during the ninth century. Landnámabók claims that the first Norseman to rest his feet on Icelandic soil was a viking by the name of Naddoddr. Naddoddr stayed for only a short period of time, but gave the country a name: Snæland (Land of Snow).
While Christopher Columbus was first to sight the Cayman Islands on May 10, 1503, Caymanian folklore holds that the island's first inhabitants were English soldiers involved in Oliver Cromwell's capture of Jamaica around 1658. The first recorded permanent inhabitant was Isaac Bodden, the grandson of one of these first settlers, born on Grand ...
It is also the location of the capital Reykjavík, the northernmost national capital in the world. More than 70 percent of Iceland's population lives in the southwest corner (Greater Reykjavík and the nearby Southern Peninsula), which covers less than two percent of Iceland's land area.
Iceland's men's national football team participated in their first FIFA World Cup in 2018, after reaching the quarter finals of its first major international tournament, UEFA Euro 2016. The women's national football team has yet to reach a World Cup; its best result at a major international event was a quarterfinal finish in UEFA Women's Euro 2013.
Iceland is one of the smallest linguistic areas in the world, with only around 330,000 inhabitants and very few speakers outside the country. The language has not changed much since the time of settlement in the 9th century and modern Icelanders can still read the original medieval texts with relative ease.
[citation needed] First women's secondary school Kvennaskólinn í Reykjavík is founded by Thora Melsted. 1874: The King of Denmark visits Iceland and grants Icelanders a constitution. 1000 years of settlement celebrated throughout the country. [citation needed] 1875: First session of the restored Althing which has the power to pass laws.
Leif was the son of Erik the Red and his wife Thjodhild (Old Norse: Þjóðhildur), and, through his paternal line, the grandson of Thorvald Ásvaldsson.When Erik the Red was young, his father was banished from Norway for manslaughter, and the family went into exile in Iceland (which, during the century preceding Leif's birth, had been colonized by Norsemen, mainly from Norway).