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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.
The oldest known source which mentions the name "Iceland" is an eleventh-century rune carving from Gotland. There is a possible early mention of Iceland in the book De mensura orbis terrae by the Irish monk Dicuil, dating to 825. [9] Dicuil claimed to have met some monks who had lived on the island of Thule. They said that darkness reigned ...
Southern Iceland is hit by two earthquakes, the first 6.6 M L and the second 6.5 M L. There were no fatalities but a few people were injured and there was some considerable damage to infrastructure. 2004: 2 June: The president of Iceland, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, refuses to sign a bill from the parliament for the first time in the nation's ...
Bruno Icher of Libération wrote that the film exhibits the director's appreciation for "the paganistic charm of Iceland" and creates an impression of moving between fiction and investigation; the critic called it a "throbbing and delirious lullaby where discerning the true from the false does not have the slightest importance". [3]
Iceland has a high level of car ownership per capita, with a car for every 1.5 inhabitants; it is the main form of transport. [166] Iceland has 13,034 km (8,099 mi) of administered roads, of which 4,617 km (2,869 mi) are paved and 8,338 km (5,181 mi) are not.
Sturlunga saga is the main source of Icelandic history during the 12th and 13th centuries and was written by people who experienced the internal power struggle which ended in Iceland's loss of sovereignty and submission to Norway in 1262–64; the descriptions of wounds in Íslendinga saga are so detailed that they may be based on eyewitness ...
Crymogæa's influence stretched much farther than Iceland. Because of it, Arngrímur became the best-known Icelander among the learned Europeans in the 17th century. [ 1 ] His humanistic work made them aware of the Icelandic sagas and kindled a general interest in medieval Icelandic literature. [ 4 ]
Day and night were more equal than in Greenland or Iceland. — Beamish (1864), p.64 [4] [5] As Leif and his crew explore the land, they discover grapes. Leif therefore names the country Vinland meaning Wine land. In the spring, the expedition sets sail back to Greenland with a ship loaded with wood and grapes.