Iceland Sentence Examples

Arason, who was the last Roman Catholic bishop in Iceland, is celebrated as a poet, and as the man who introduced printing into the island.

Maps of the Faroer and of Iceland have likewise been issued.

This creature displays an almost unexampled frequency and extent of distribution in the whole North Sea, in the western parts of the Baltic, near the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland and the English coasts, so that it may be regarded as a characteristic North Sea echinoderm form.

Greenland, like Iceland, had a republican organization up to the years 1247 to 1261, when the Greenlanders were induced to swear allegiance to the king of Norway.

For many years the whole trade of Iceland, which he frequently visited, passed through his hands, and he soon became equally well known at Gli ckstadt, then the chief emporium of the Iceland trade, and at Copenhagen.

In 1854 the trade of Iceland was declared free to all nations.

In Iceland the third part of a thing which corresponds roughly to an English county was called thrithjungr; in Norway, however, the thrithjungr seems to have been an ecclesiastical division.

Christian was also the ruler of Iceland, where he was received with great enthusiasm when he visited the island in 1874.

A century later Greenland was peopled from Iceland, and a colony existed for over four hundred years, when it was snuffed out, doubtless by hostile Eskimos.

He early made himself known as a poet, especially by glorifying the exploits of the contemporary Norse kings and earls; at the same time he was a learned lawyer, and from 1215 became the lOgsiigumaar, or president of the legislative assembly and supreme court of Iceland.

When, owing to disputes between Icelandic and Norwegian merchants, Skuli thought of a military expedition to Iceland, Snorri promised to make the inhabitants submit to Haakon of their own free will.

On his return home Snorri sent his son to the king as a hostage, and made peace between Norway and Iceland, but his power and influence were used more for his own enrichment and aggrandizement - he was logsogumaar again from 1222 to 1232 - than for the advantage of the king.

Learning that his cousin Sturla in Iceland had fallen in battle against Gissur, Snorri's son-in-law, Snorri, although expressly forbidden by his liege lord, returned to Iceland in 1239 and once more took possession of his property.

See further Iceland, Literature, and Edda.

Northward it established itself about 1838 on Myggenaes Holm, one of the Faeroes, while it has several stations off the coast of Iceland and Spitsbergen, as well as at Bear Island.

Their settlements in Greenland and Canada likewise came to an end, but Iceland, which was formerly uninhabited, remained a Scandinavian colony.

On the other hand the conditions of the migration period were doubtless favourable to monarchical government, and from this time onwards kingship appears to have been universal, except among the Old Saxons and in Iceland.

In the north, after several attempts during the 9th century which met with only temporary success, Christianity was established in Denmark under Harold Bluetooth, about 94 0 -9 60, and in Norway and Sweden before the end of the century, while in Iceland it obtained public recognition in the year 1000.

Some scholars hold that they were peculiar to the mythology of Norway and Iceland and that they arose at a late period, largely through Christian influence.

To these must be added a large number of Old Norse writings including the older Edda and the prose Edda (the chief authorities for Northern mythology), Islands Landnamabok and many sagas dealing with the history of families in Iceland (such as Eyrbyggia Saga) or with the lives of Norwegian and other kings, both historical and legendary (in Heimskringla, Fornmanna Sogur and Rafn's Fornaldar Sogur Norr landa).

The approaches to Cossack, North Australia; Cape St Francis, Labrador; the coasts of Madagascar and Iceland, are remarkable for such disturbance of the compass.

The Libel of English Policie, a poem of the first half of the 15th century, says with reference to Iceland (chap. x.) "Out of Bristowe, and costes many one, Men haue practised by nedle and by stone Thider wardes within a litle while."

After three days he worked with common electricity, trying glass, heavy optical glass, quartz, Iceland spar, all without effect, as on former trials.

One of the most useful nutritious species is Cetraria islandica, " Iceland moss," which, after being deprived of its bitterness by boiling in water, is reduced to a powder and made into cakes, or is boiled and eaten with milk by the poor Icelander, whose sole food it often constitutes.

This is the " Iceland moss " of the druggists' shops, which is undoubtedly an excellent demulcent in various dyspeptic and chest complaints.

Travelling generally in companies, and carrying a simple outfit, these Celtic pioneers flung themselves on the continent of Europe, and, not content with reproducing at Annegray or Luxeuil the willow or brushwood huts, the chapel and the round tower, which they had left behind in Derry or in the island of Hy (Iona), they braved the dangers of the northern seas, and penetrated as far as the Faroes and even far distant Iceland.

About the same time, and largely owing to the exertions of Olaf, Iceland, Greenland and the Orkney and Shetland islands were also evangelized.

During 6th and 7th centuries, Irish anchorites, in their "passion fc_ solitude," found their way to the Hebrides, Orkneys, Shetlands, Faroes and Iceland, but they were not interested in colonization or geographical knowledge.

The main stream of Norsemen took a westerly course, striking Great Britain, Ireland and the Western Isles, and ultimately reached Iceland (in 874), Greenland (in 985) and Vinland (in r ood).

The chiefs and their followers that settled Iceland were "picked men," the flower of the land, and sought a new home from other motives than want or gain.

In Iceland they lived active, not to say tumultuous, lives, and left fine literary records of their doings and achievements.

The other saga, which by chance came to be looked upon as the chief repository of facts concerning the Vinland voyages, is found in a large Icelandic work known as the Flatey Book, as it was once owned by a man who lived on Flat Island (Flatey), on the north-western coast of Iceland.

He visited the famous King Olaf Tryggvason, who reigned from 995 to 1000, and was bending his energies toward Christianizing Norway and Iceland.

This he did a year later, and spent the winter of 1006-7 there, whereupon he settled in Iceland.

And here it is important to remember that before the age of writing in Iceland there was a saga-telling age, a most remarkable period of intellectual activity, by the aid of which the deeds and events of the seething life of the heroic age was carried over into the age of writing.

Between the Shetlands and Iceland we cross the curve of maximum frequency, and farther north the frequency diminishes.

The Iceland poppy (P. undicaule), is one of the showiest species, having grey-green pinnate leaves and flowers varying in colour from pure white to deep orange-yellow, orange-scarlet, &c. Specially fine varieties with stalks 18-24 in.

The Faeroe islands, which form an integral part of the kingdom of Denmark in the wider sense, are represented in the Danish parliament, but not the other dependencies of the Danish crown, namely Iceland, Greenland and the West Indian islands of St Thomas, St John and St Croix.

The revenue and expenditure of the Faeroes are included in the budget for Denmark proper, but Iceland and the West Indies have their separate budgets.

The Danish treasury receives nothing from these possessions; on the contrary, Iceland receives an annual grant, and the West Indian islands have been heavily subsidized by the Danish finances to assist the sugar industry.

In Iceland this tongue, with some modifications, has remained in use, and until about 110o it was the literary language of the whole of Scandinavia.

It is typical, one may notice in passing, of the evolution of the epic elsewhere; in Iceland, for instance, id - Persia and in Greece.

It was discovered in 1772 by Sir Joseph Banks, who visited Staffa on his expedition to Iceland.

Having obtained pecuniary assistance from the Danish government, he travelled through all Iceland for scientific purposes in the years 1837-1842, and made many interesting geological observations.

He was well read in German literature, Heine and Schiller being his favourites, and the study of the German masters and the old classical writers of Iceland opened his eyes to the corrupt state of Icelandic poetry and showed him the way to make it better.

The great Danish philologist and friend of Iceland, Rasmus Rask, and the poet Bjarni Thorarensen had done much to purify the language, but Jonas Hallgrimsson completed their work by his poems and tales, in a purer language than ever had been written in Iceland since the days of Snorri Sturlason.

Although his poetical works are all comprised in one small volume, he strikes every string of the old harp of Iceland.

A nearer parallel to Greek colonization may be found in Iceland, whither the adherents of the old Norse polity fled from the usurpation of Harold Haarfager; and the early history of the English pale in Ireland shows, though not in orderliness and prosperity, several points of resemblance to the Roman colonial system.

It was borne by one of the 'early settlers in Iceland, and a monk named Biuulf is commemorated in the Liber Vitae of the church of Durham.

This is a species of comparatively limited range, breeding only in some two or three localities in the Shetlands, about half a dozen in the Faeroes, 3 and hardly more in Iceland.

His Atland (or Atlantika) appeared in four folio volumes, in Latin and Swedish, in 1675-1698; it was an attempt to summon all the authority of the past, all the sages of Greece and the bards of Iceland, to prove the inherent and indisputable greatness of the Swedish nation, in which the fabulous Atlantis had been at last discovered.

The Faeroes, Iceland and Norway have also been suggested, but are for various reasons much less likely.

In Iceland, the concubine was recognized in addition to the lawful wife, though it was forbidden that they should dwell in the same house.

These vessels have a wide range of operations, pursuing their work as far as the Faeroe Islands and Iceland on the one hand, and the Bay of Biscay and the Portuguese coast on the other.

During his Danish life he twice revisited Iceland (last in 1858), and made short tours in Norway and South Germany with friends.

The teal inhabits almost the whole of Europe and Asia, - from Iceland to Japan, - in winter visiting Northern Africa and India.

Four-horned sheep are common in Iceland and the Hebrides; the small half-wild breed of Soa often showing this reduplication.

On the one side, developing the great salt-fish trade, her vessels were encompassing Iceland, and feeling their way towards the Banks of the West; on the other they were beginning to feel their way into the Mediterranean.

It ranges from Iceland to the shores of the Red Sea, and lives chiefly on marine worms, crustacea and such molluscs as it is able to obtain.

Hot springs are found in every part of Iceland, both singly and in groups; they are particularly numerous in the western portion of the southern lowlands, where amongst others is the famous Geyser.

Iceland is built up almost entirely of volcanic rocks, none of them older, however, than the middle of the Tertiary period.

All over Iceland, in both the basalt and breccia formations, there occur small intrusive beds and dikes of liparite, and as this rock is of a lighter colour than the basalt, it is visible from a distance.

In the south-east of the island, in the parish of Lon, there exist a few mountains of gabbro, a rock which does not occur in any other part of Iceland.

During the Glacial epoch the whole of Iceland was covered by a vast sheet of inland ice, except for a few small isolated peaks rising along its outer margins.

Rocks scored by glacial ice and showing plain indications of striation, together with thousands of erratic blocks, are found scattered all over Iceland.

Iceland lies contiguous to that part of the north Atlantic in which the shifting areas of low pressure prevail, so that storms are frequent and the barometer is seldom firm.

The wild flora of Iceland is small and delicate, with bright bloom, the heaths being especially admired.

Iceland possesses neither reptiles nor batrachians.

Iceland possesses four agricultural schools, one agricultural society, and small agricultural associations in nearly every district.

Since 1874, when Iceland obtained her own administration, commerce has increased considerably.

According to the constitution granted to Iceland in 1874, the king of Denmark shares the legislative power with the Althing, an assembly of 36 members, 30 of whom are elected by household suffrage, and 6 nominated by the king.

The minister for Iceland, who resided in Copenhagen until 1903, when his office was transferred to Reykjavik, is responsible to the king and the Althing for the maintenance of the constitution, and he submits to the king for confirmation the legislative measures proposed by the Althing.

Formerly Iceland was divided into four quarters, the east, the south, the west and north.

Iceland has her own budget, the Althing having, by the constitution of 1874, the right to vote its own supplies.

Iceland has her own customs service, but the only import duties levied are upon spirits, tobacco, coffee and sugar, and in each case the duties are fairly low.

Eighteen newspapers are issued (once and twice a week), besides several journals, and Iceland has always been distinguished for her native literature.

Shortly after the discovery of Iceland by the Scandinavians, c. 850 (it had long been inhabited by a small colony of Irish Culdees), a stream of immigration set in towards it, which lasted for sixty years, and resulted in the establishment of some 4000 homesteads.

Iceland was not agricultural but pastoral, depending upon flocks and herds for subsistence, for, though rye and other grain would grow in favoured localities, the hay, self-sown, was the only regular crop. In some districts the fisheries and fowling Mode of were of importance, but nine-tenths of the population M i lved by their sheep and cattle.

During the heathen days many great chiefs passed part of their lives in Norway at the king's court, but after the establishment of Christianity in Iceland they kept more at home, visiting the continent, however, for purposes of state, suits with clergy, &c. Trade was from the first almost entirely in foreign (Norse) hands.

The union of the Three Crowns transferred the practical rule of Iceland to Denmark in 1280, and the old Treaty of Union, by which the island had reserved its essential rights, was disregarded by the absolute Danish monarchs; but, though new taxation was imposed, it was rather their careless neglect than their too active interference that damaged Iceland's interests.

The Reformation in Iceland wakened men's minds, but it left their circumstances little changed.

Though the fires of martyrdom were never lighted in Iceland, the story of the easily accepted Reformation is not altogether Y P g a pleasant one.

While there was this revolution in religion a social and political revolution never came to Iceland.

But the 18th century is the most gloomy in Iceland's annals.

Gradually the ideas which were agitating Europe spread through Scandinavia into Iceland, and its claims were more respectfully listened to.

The continental system, which, by its leading to the blockade of Denmark, threatened to starve Iceland,was neutralized by special action of the British government.

Iceland has always borne a high renown for song, but has never produced a poet of the highest order, the qualities which in other lands were most sought for and admired in poetry being in Iceland lavished on the saga, a prose epic, while Icelandic poetry is to be rated very high for the one quality which its authors have ever aimed at - melody of sound.

The solution is that these poems do not belong to Iceland at all.

It was among the Scandinavian colonists of the British coasts that in the first generations after the colonization of Iceland therefrom a magnificent school of poetry arose, to which we owe works that for power and beauty can be paralleled in no Teutonic language till centuries after their date.

To Greenland, Iceland's farthest colony, founded in the 10th century, we owe the two Lays of Atli, and probably HymiskviOa, which, though of a weirder, harsher cast, yet belong to the Western Isles school and not to Iceland.

The characteristics of this Western school are no doubt the result of the contact of Scandinavian colonists of the Viking-tide, living lives of the wildest adventure, with an imaginative and civilized race, that exercised upon them a very strong and lasting influence (the effects of which were also felt in Iceland, but in a different way).

Men of good birth (nearly always, too, of Celtic blood on one side at least), they leave Iceland young and attach themselves to the kings and earls of the north, living in their courts as their henchmen, sharing their adventures in weal and woe, praising their victories, and hymning their deaths if they did not fall by their sides - men of quick passion, unhappy in their loves, jealous of rival poets and of their own fame, ever ready to answer criticism with a satire or with a sword-thrust, but clinging through all to their art, in which they attained most marvellous skill.

Such men were Egil, the foe of Eirik Bloodaxe and the friend of lEthelstan; Kormak, the hot-headed champion; Eyvind, King Haakon's poet, called Skaldaspillir, because he copied in his dirge over that king the older and finer Eiriksmal; Gunnlaug, who sang at Æthelred's court, and fell at the hands of a brother bard, Hrafn; Hallfred, Olaf Tryggvason's poet, who lies in Iona by the side of Macbeth; Sighvat, Saint Olaf's henchman, most prolific of all his comrades; Thormod, Coalbrow's poet, who died singing after Sticklestad battle; Ref, Ottar the Black, Arnor the earls' poet, and, of those whose poetry was almost confined to Iceland, Gretti, Biorn the Hitdale champion, and the two model Icelandic masters, Einar Skulason and Markus the Lawman, both of the 12th century.

Arason is also celebrated as having introduced printing into Iceland.

The first (870-980), after noticing the migration of the father and grandfather of the hero poet Egil, and the origin of the feud between them and the kings of Norway, treats fully of Egil's career, his enmity with Eirik Bloodaxe, his service with Æthelstan, and finally, after many adventures abroad, of his latter days in Iceland at Borg, illustrating very clearly what manner of men those great settlers and their descendants were, and the feelings of pride and freedom which led them to Iceland.

It includes a mass of information on the law, religion, traditions, &c., of the heathen days in Iceland, and the lives of Eric, the real discoverer of Greenland, Biorn of Broadwick, a famous chief, and Snorri, the greatest statesman of his day.

Of the north there are the sagas of Kormak (930-960), most primitive of all, a tale of a wild poet's love and feuds, containing many notices of the heathen times; of Vatzdeelasaga (890-980), relating to the settlement and the chief family in Waterdale; of Hallfred the poet (996-1014), narrating his fortune at King Olaf's court, his love affairs in Iceland, and finally his death and burial at Iona; of Reyk -deela (990), which preserves the lives of Askell and his son Viga-Skuti; of Svarf-deela (980-990), a cruel, coarse story of the old days, with some good scenes in it, unfortunately imperfect, chapters I-10 being forged; of VigaGlum (970-990), a fine story of a heathen hero, brave, crafty and cruel.

About the year of the battle of Hastings was born Ari Fr061 Thorgilsson (1067-1148), one of the blood of Queen Aud, who founded the famous historical school of Iceland, and himself produced its greatest monument in a work which can be compared for value with the English Domesday Book.

It was he too that fixed the style in which history should be composed in Iceland.

Ari also wrote a Book of Icelanders (IslendingabOk, c. 1127), which has perished as a whole, but fragments of it are embedded in many sagas and Kings' Lives; it seems to have been a complete epitome of his earlier works, together with an account of the constitutional history, ecclesiastical and civil, of Iceland.

Kristni-Saga, the story of the christening of Iceland, is also a work of Ari's, " overlaid " by a later editor, but often preserving Ari's very words.

This saga, together with several scattered tales of early Christians in Iceland before the change of faith (1002), may have made up a section of the lost Liber.

Among them are the sagas of Thorgils and Haflidi (I118-1121), the feud and peacemaking of two great chiefs, contemporaries of Ari; of Sturla (1150-1183), the founder of the great Sturlung family, down to the settlement of his great lawsuit by Jon Loptsson, who thereupon took his son Snorri the historian to fosterage, - a humorous story but with traces of the decadence about it, and glimpses of the evil days that were to come; of the Onundar-brennusaga (1185-1200), a tale of feud and fire-raising in the north of the island, the hero of which, Gudmund Dyri, goes at last into a cloister; of Hrafn Sveinbiornsson (1190-1213), the noblest Icelander of his day, warrior, leech, seaman, craftsman, poet and chief, whose life at home, travels and pilgrimages abroad (Hrafn was one of the first to visit Becket's shrine), and death at the hands of a foe whom he had twice spared, are recounted by a loving friend in pious memory of his virtues, c. 1220; of Aron Hiorleifsson (1200-1255), a man whose strength, courage and adventures befit rather a henchman of Olaf Tryggvason than one of King Haakon's thanes (the beginning of the feuds that rise round Bishop Gudmund are told here), of the Svinefell-men (1248-1252), a pitiful story of a family feud in the far east of Iceland.

The saga of Thorgils Skardi (1252-1261) seems to have been the first of his works on Icelandic contemporary history; it deals with the life of his own nephew, especially his career in Iceland from 1252 to 1258.

The latter, Laurentius Saga Biskups, by his disciple, priest Einar Haflidason, is a charming biography of a good and pious man, whose chequered career in Norway and Iceland is picturesquely told (1324-1331).

The ordinary medieval literature reached Iceland through Norway, and every one began to put it into a vernacular dress, so neglecting their own classics that but for a few collectors like Lawman Hauk they would have perished entirely.

They reached Iceland and were eagerly read, many Rimur being founded on them.

The medieval religious literature of Western Europe also influenced Iceland, and the Homilies (like the Laws) were, according to Thorodd, the earliest books written in the vernacular, antedating even Ari's histories.

Brought up in Norway, he travelled in Denmark and Germany, and took upon him the new faith before he returned to Iceland, where he became secretary to Bishop Ogmund of Skalholt.

Three years after his death the first press was set up"in Iceland by John Matthewson, at Breidabolstad, in Hunafloe, and a Gospel and Epistle Book, according to Odd's version, issued from it in 1562.

This fine volume was the basis of every Bible issued for Iceland till 1826, when it was replaced by a bad modern version.

The most notable theological work Iceland ever produced is the Postill-Book of Bishop John Vidalin (1666-1720), whose bold homely style and stirring eloquence made " John's Book," as it is lovingly called, a favourite in every household, till in the 19th century it was replaced for the worse by the more sentimental and polished Danish tracts and sermons.

Iceland is emphatically a land of proverbs, while of folk-tales, those other keys to the poeple's heart, there is plentiful store.

The Renaissance of Iceland dates from the beginning of the 17th century, when a school of antiquaries arose.

Of his poems may be mentioned The Oath, a series of most beautiful ballads, with a tragical love-story of the 17th century as their base, but with many and happy satirical allusions to modern life; JOrundr, a long poem about the convict king, the Danish pirate Jorgensen, who nearly succeeded in making himself the master of Iceland, and The Fate of the Gods and The Men of the West (the Americans), two poems which, with their anti-clerical and half-socialistic tendencies, have caused strong protests from orthodox Lutheran clergy.

In his splendid ballad, The Death of Skarphedinn, and in his beautiful series of songs describing a voyage through some of the most picturesque parts of Iceland, he is entirely original; but in his love-songs, beautiful as many of them are, a strong foreign influence can be observed.

The most distinguished writer of that school has been Gestur Palsson (1852-1891), whose short stories with their sharp and biting satire have produced many imitations in Iceland.

In geography and geology porvaldr Thoroddsen has acquired a European fame for his researches and travels in Iceland, especially in the rarely-visited interior.

Of the younger historians we may mention porkell Bjarnason (History of the Reformation in Iceland).

It is only occasionally found near the shore; its real home is the Atlantic, especially near Madeira and the Azores, but many captures are recorded from Great Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia; it strays as far north as Iceland and Newfoundland, and probably southwards to the latitudes of the coast of Guinea.

They are situated between Iceland and the Shetland Islands, about 200 m.

Warming and others, Botany of the Faeroes (Copenhagen, 1901-1903); Annandale, The Faroes and Iceland (Oxford, 1905).

His realm was, however, threatened by dangers from without, as large numbers of his opponents had taken refuge, not only in Iceland, then recently discovered, but also in the Orkneys, Shetlands, Hebrides and Faeroes, and in Scotland itself; and from these winter quarters sallied forth to harry Norway as well as the rest of northern Europe.

Numbers of them fled to Iceland, which grew into an independent commonwealth, while the Scottish isles fell under Norwegian rule.

Cormac ua Liathain, a disciple of St Columba, visited the Orkneys, and when the Northmen first discovered Iceland they found there books and other traces of the early Irish church.

It may be mentioned that the geographer Dicuil who lived at the court of Charlemagne gives a description of Iceland which must have been obtained from some one who had been there.

Among the children of this marriage were Helgi Magri, one of the early settlers in Iceland, and Thurida, wife of Thorstein the Red.

Bub there is no doubt that in Iceland he was worshipped more than any other god, and the same seems to have been the case in Norway - indeed, perhaps, in all northern countries - except among the royal families.

Max Muller asked (when speaking of the mental condition of men when myths were developed), " was there a period of temporary madness through which the human mind had to pass, and was it a madness identically the same in the south of India and the north of Iceland?

The constant enemies of the gods, the giants, could also assume animal forms. Thus in Thiodolf's Haust-long (composed after the settlement of Iceland) we read about a shield on which events from mythology were painted; among these was the flight of " giant Thiazzi in an ancient eagle's feathers."

Examining the light reflected from the windows of the Luxemburg palace with a doubly refracting prism, he was led to infer (though more refined experiments have shown that this is not strictly the case) that light reflected at a certain angle, called the polarizing angle, from the surface of transparent substances has the same properties with respect to the plane of incidence as those of the ordinary stream in Iceland spar with respect to the principal plane of the crystal.

In order to isolate a polarized pencil of rays with a rhomb of Iceland spar, it is necessary to have a crystal of such a thickness that the emergent streams are separated, so that one may be stopped by a screen.

Common light, circularly polarized and partially circularly polarized light all have the characteristic of giving two streams of equal intensity on passing through a rhomb of Iceland spar, however it may be turned.

Elliptically polarized, partially elliptically polarized and partially plane polarized light give with Iceland spar two streams of, in general, unequal intensity, neither of which can be made to vanish.

While the galleys, being unfit for the high seas, were confined to the Mediterranean and the coast, the sailing vessels ranged into the Atlantic as far as the Canaries or even to Iceland.

This Herr Abeling locates among the Franks of what is now southern France, whence the stories spread, from the 6th century onwards, on the one hand across the Rhine into Franconia, on the other hand westwards and northwards, by way of Ireland - at that time in close intercourse with continental Europe - and the northern islands, to Iceland.

At least he'd made it near shore after being stranded in Iceland for the night to regain his power.

Iceland, meanwhile, temporarily abandons its maritime pretensions and instead dedicates itself to producing highly-talented elfin chanteuse Bjork.

No, I intend to concentrate on Iceland, home of elfin chanteuse Bjork.

Its ninth biennial conference (PPSN IX) will be held in Reykjavik, Iceland on 9-13 September 2006.

He has also worked recently in southern Iceland on 934 AD Eldgja fissure eruption that produced the largest lava flow in historic times.

A team of scientists in Iceland has discovered one of the 'holy Grails ' of science a gene for Type 2 diabetes.

However, given the chronic American inability to understand geography, they were reported as coming from Lapland rather than Iceland.

Scoured by Ice Age glaciers, almost the entire length of Iceland's east coast is deeply indented.

The Blue Lagoon & Reykjanes Peninsula Shaped like an outstretched leg, the volcanic Reykjanes Peninsula forms Iceland's south west corner.

There was an extensive epidemic of poliomyelitis in Iceland caused by type I poliovirus that coincided with and was followed by outbreaks of ID.

Alcoa announced today that they would possibly want to build a $ 1-billion aluminum smelter in North Iceland.

The challenge is to walk across the Southern Highlands through one of the most actively volcanic areas Iceland.

She recently visited Iceland, drawn by its unique frozen landscape that is still volcanic.

Beyond this he spoke of a land called Thule, which, if his estimate of the length of the longest day is correct, may have been Shetland, but was possibly Iceland; and from some confused statements as to a sea which could not be sailed through, it has been assumed that Pytheas was the first of the Greeks to obtain direct knowledge of the Arctic regions.

His son, Leif Ericsson, and others of his followers were concerned in the discovery of the North American coast (see Vinland), which, but for the isolation of Iceland from the centres of European awakening, would have had momentous consequences.

Greenland belonged to the Norwegian crown till 1814, when, at the dissolution of the union between Denmark and Norway, neither it nor Iceland and the Faeroes were mentioned, and they, therefore, were kept by the Danish king and thus came to Denmark.

The Danish rule had, during the centuries following the Reformation, gradually brought Iceland to the verge of economic ruin; the ancient Parliament of the island, which had degenerated to a mere shadow, had been abolished in 1800; all the revenue of Iceland went into the Danish treasury, and only very small sums were spent for the good of the island; but worst of all was the notorious monopoly which gave away the whole trade of Iceland to a single Danish trading company.

After Iceland had got home rule in 1874, the grateful people showered on Jon Sigur3sson all the honours it could bestow.

In the 10th and 11th centuries Norse sea-rovers, starting from Iceland, had made small settlements in Greenland and had pushed as far as the coast of New England (or possibly Nova Scotia) in transient visits (see Vinland and Leif Ericsson).

Boyd Dawkins and Brinton, that the French cave man came hither by way of Iceland; or with Keane, that two subvarieties, the long-headed Eskimo-Botocudo type and the Mexican roundheaded type, prior to all cultural developments, reached the New World, one by Iceland, the other by Bering Sea; or that Malayoid wanderers were stranded on the coast of South America; or that no breach of continuity has occurred since first the march of tribes began this way - ethnologists agree that the aborigines of the western came from the eastern hemisphere,and there is lacking any biological evidence of Caucasoid or Negroid blood flowing in the veins of Americans before the invasions of historic times.

The other and larger tableland, which constitutes the substantial part of Iceland, reaches its culminating point in the south-east, in the gigantic snowfield of Vatnajokull, which covers 3300 sq.

The south coast is flat next the sea; but immediately underneath Vatnajokull there is a strip of gravel and sand, brought down and deposited by the glacial streams. The largest low-lying plain of Iceland, lying between Myrdalsjokull and Reykjanes, has an area of about 1550 sq.

Such men were Egil, the foe of Eirik Bloodaxe and the friend of lEthelstan; Kormak, the hot-headed champion; Eyvind, King Haakon's poet, called Skaldaspillir, because he copied in his dirge over that king the older and finer Eiriksmal; Gunnlaug, who sang at Æthelred's court, and fell at the hands of a brother bard, Hrafn; Hallfred, Olaf Tryggvason's poet, who lies in Iona by the side of Macbeth; Sighvat, Saint Olaf's henchman, most prolific of all his comrades; Thormod, Coalbrow's poet, who died singing after Sticklestad battle; Ref, Ottar the Black, Arnor the earls' poet, and, of those whose poetry was almost confined to Iceland, Gretti, Biorn the Hitdale champion, and the two model Icelandic masters, Einar Skulason and Markus the Lawman, both of the 12th century.

The first (870-980), after noticing the migration of the father and grandfather of the hero poet Egil, and the origin of the feud between them and the kings of Norway, treats fully of Egil's career, his enmity with Eirik Bloodaxe, his service with Æthelstan, and finally, after many adventures abroad, of his latter days in Iceland at Borg, illustrating very clearly what manner of men those great settlers and their descendants were, and the feelings of pride and freedom which led them to Iceland.

In the 1200s it killed a third of everyone in Iceland.

I did not know whether they had come to sow a crop of winter rye, or some other kind of grain recently introduced from Iceland.

Southern Iceland is known for its great skua colony living on the sands.

Well known and used by trawler skippers, Iceland was worked all the year round by many skippers.

The windy weather over the New Year brought an Iceland Gull to join the American Herring Gull on St Mary 's.

The only American to win the World Championship, Bobby Fischer was a volatile and opinionated man who was eventually exiled to Japan and then Iceland.

Skyn Iceland's Anti-Blemish Gel is rich in green tea and willow bark, both recognized for their antioxidants and antibacterial properties.

We find in nature two other unlike substances, marble and Iceland spar, each of which is wholly composed of carbon dioxide and lime.

North of the fiftieth parallel the depths diminish towards the north-east, two long submarine ridges of volcanic origin extend north-eastwards to the southwest of Iceland and to the Faeroe Islands, and these, with their intervening valleys, end in a transverse ridge connecting Greenland, through Iceland and the Faeroe Islands, with Northwestern Scotland and the continental mass of Europe.

The Atlantic anticyclone is, therefore, at its weakest in winter, and on its polar side the polar eddy becomes a trough of low pressure, extending roughly from Labrador to Iceland and Jan Mayen, and traversed by a constant succession of cyclones.

The second, the Irminger stream, passes up the west side of Iceland; and the third goes up the Greenland side of Davis Strait to Baffin Bay.

In the end of the 9th century Iceland was colonized from Norway; and about 985 the intrepid viking, Eric the Red, discovered Greenland, and induced some of his Icelandic countrymen to settle on its inhospitable shores.

A list of its birds, with some notes, bibliographical and biological, has been given as an Appendix to Baring-Gould's Iceland, its Scenes and Sagas (8vo, 1862); and Shepherd's North-west Peninsula of Iceland (8vo, 1867) recounts a somewhat profitless expedition made thither expressly for ornithological objects.

A Norse belief found in Iceland is that the fylgia, a genius in animal form, attends human beings; and these animal guardians may sometimes be seen fighting; in the same way the Siberian shamans send their animal familiars to do battle instead of deciding their quarrels in person.

Fishing for herring and mackerel is carried on and the town equips a large fleet for the codbanks of Newfoundland and Iceland.

Denmark Strait is the sea between it and Iceland, and the northern Norwegian Sea or Greenland Sea separates it from Spitsbergen.

A submarine ridge, about 300 fathoms deep at its deepest, unites Greenland with Iceland (across Denmark Strait), the Faeroes and Scotland.

In the beginning of the 10th century the Norwegian Gunnbjdrn, son of Ulf Kraka, is reported to have found some islands to the west of Iceland, and he may have seen, without landing upon it, the southern part of the east coast of Greenland.

In 982 the Norwegian Eric the Red sailed from Iceland to find the land which GunnbjOrn had seen, and he spent three years on its south-western coasts exploring the country.

On his return to Iceland in 985 he called the land Greenland in order to make people more willing to go there, and reported so favourably on its possibilities that he had no difficulty in obtaining followers.

In 986 he started again from Iceland with 25 ships, but only 14 of them reached Greenland, where a colony was founded on the south-west coast, in the present Julianehaab district.

Hence from the 10th to the 12th centuries there was great intercourse with Iceland and Greenland on the part of the English, Swedish and Danish, but at the end of the 13th century some change occurred, resulting in the southerly emigration of the Eskimos and the extinction of European civilization in Greenland.

In Europe the best-known localities for them are the Lipari Islands, Pantellaria, Iceland and Hungary.

Included in this group are some rocks which are more properly to be regarded as vitreous forms of trachyte than as glassy rhyolites (Iceland), but except by chemical analyses they cannot be separated.

The word still appears in the names of the legislative assemblies of Norway, the Storthing and of Iceland, the Althing.

The avifauna is very rich in migratory water and marsh fowl (Grallatores and Natatores), which come to breed in the coast region; but only five land birds - the ptarmigan (Lagopus alpinus), snow-bunting, Iceland falcon, snow-owl and raven - are permanent inhabitants of the region.

There is regular communication with Iceland, the continental ports and London.

Of the reformed Churches of the continent of Europe only the Lutheran Churches of Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland preserve the episcopal system in anything of its historical sense; and of these only the two last can lay claim to the possession of bishops in the unbroken line of episcopal succession.

This godwit is a species of wide range, reaching Iceland, where it is called Jardraeka (= earthraker), in summer, and occurring numerously in India in winter.

Iceland has had the Islenzk Sagnablod (1817-1826), Ny Fjelagsrit (1841-1873), and Gefn (1870-1873).

After the Revolution of 1688, he commanded 1 The bird, however, does not inhabit Iceland, and the language to which the name belongs would perhaps be more correctly termed Old Teutonic. From this word is said to come the French Freux.

It has been found more convenient to take as northern boundaries the narrowest part of the straits near the Arctic circle, Bering Strait on the Pacific side, and on the Atlantic side the narrowest part of Davis Strait, and of Denmark Strait, then the shortest line from Iceland to the Faeroes, thence to the most northerly island of the Shetlands and thence to Cape Statland in Norway.

Instead of the expensive mile-long stout hemp lines used and since 1887 those of the prince of Monaco in his yachts, as by Ross, Maury introduced a ball of strong twine attached to a well as numerous Danish vessels in the sea between Iceland and cannon shot, which ran it out rapidly; when the bottom was Greenland, conspicuous amongst which were the expeditions reached the twine was cut and the depth deduced from the length in1896-1898on board the " Ingolf."

Amongst the best known of the furrows of the continental shelf are the Cape Breton Deep, in the Bay of Biscay, the Hudson Furrow, southward of New York, the so-called Congo Canon, the Swatch of No Ground off the Ganges delta, the Bottomless Pit off the Niger delta, and numerous similar furrows on the west coast of North America and outside the fjords of Norway, Iceland and the west of Scotland, as well as in the.

The ridge across Denmark Strait west of Iceland nowhere exceeds 300 fathoms in depth, so that the deeper water of the North Polar Basin is effectively separated from that of the Atlantic. A third small basin occupies Baffin Bay and contains a maximum depth of 1050 fathoms. Depths of from loo to 300 fathoms are not uncommon amongst the channels of the Arctic Archipelago north of North America, and Bering Strait, through which the surface water of the Arctic Sea meets that of the Pacific, is only 28 fathoms deep.

He discovered double refraction in Iceland spar (Experimenta crystalli islandici disdiaclastici, Copenhagen, 1669).

In 1830 he was secretary to the bishop of Iceland, the learned Steingrimr Jonsson.

Of these we may mention LOgsogumannatal og LOgmanna a Islandi (" Speakers of the Law and Law-men in Iceland"); his edition of Landneima and other sagas in Islendinga SOgur, i.

But although he was one of the greatest scholars Iceland has produced, he was still greater as a politician.

But when Denmark got a free constitution in 1848, which had no legal validity in Iceland, the island felt justified in demanding full home rule.

To this the Danish government was vehemently opposed; it convoked an Icelandic National Assembly in 1851, and brought before that body a bill granting Iceland small local liberties, but practically incorporating Iceland in Denmark.

In 1871 the Danish parliament (Riksdag) passed a law defining the political position of Iceland in the Danish monarchy, which, though never recognized as valid by the Icelanders, became de facto the base of the political relations of Iceland and Denmark.

Recognizing the value of an intellectual centre, he made Reykjavik not only the political, but the spiritual capital of Iceland by removing all the chief institutions of learning to that city; he was the soul of many literary and political societies, and the chief editor of the Ny Felagsrit, which has done more than any other Icelandic periodical to promote the cause of civilization and progress in Iceland.

He was the author of the De mensura orbis terrae, finished in 825, which contains the earliest clear notice of a European discovery of and settlement in Iceland and the most definite Western reference to the old freshwater canal between the Nile and the Red Sea, finally blocked up in 767.

In 795 (February 1-August 1) Irish hermits had visited Iceland; on their return they reported the marvel of the perpetual day at midsummer in "Thule," where there was then "no darkness to hinder one from doing what one would."

These eremites also navigated the sea north of Iceland on their first arrival, and found it ice-free for one day's sail, after which they came to the ice-wall.

Relics of this, and perhaps of other Irish religious settlements, were found by the permanent Scandinavian colonists of Iceland in the 9th century.

As a straggler it has occurred within the Arctic Circle (as on the Varanger Fjord in Norway), as well as in Iceland and even Greenland; while it not unfrequently appears in Madeira and the Azores.

They are often carried on floating ice to great distances, and to more southern latitudes than their own, no fewer than twelve Polar bears having been known to reach Iceland in this way during one winter.

Beyond the tropical high-pressure belt, the winds of the North Pacific are under the control of an area of low pressure, which, however, attains neither the size nor the intensity of the " Iceland " depression in the north Atlantic. The result is that north-westerly winds, which in winter are exceedingly dry and cold, blow over the western or Asiatic area; westerly winds prevail in the centre, and south-westerly and southerly winds off the American coast.

He was a son of Eric the Red (Eirikr hinn raudi Thorvaldsson), the founder of the earliest Scandinavian settlements - from Iceland - in Greenland (985).

Here occurs the earliest mention of Vinland, and here are also references of great interest to Russia and Kiev, to the heathen Prussians, the Wends and other Slav races of the South Baltic coast, and to Finland, Thule or Iceland, Greenland and the Polar seas which Harald Hardrada and the nobles of Frisia had attempted to explore in Adam's own day (before 1066).

Iceland is a plateau or tableland, built up of volcanic rocks of older and younger formation, and pierced on all sides by fjords and valleys.

At the outside, not more than onefourth of the area of Iceland is inhabited; the rest consists of elevated deserts, lava streams and glaciers.

The axis of highest elevation of Iceland stretches from north-west to south-east, from the head of HvammsfjoriSr to Hornafjor5r, and from this water-parting the rivers descend on both sides.

Altogether, more than 120 glaciers are known in Iceland.

Iceland also possesses a great number of lakes, the largest being Thingvallavatn 3 and Thorisvatn, each about 27 sq.

The lakes of Iceland owe their origin to different causes, some being due to glacial erosion, others to volcanic subsidence.

Iceland is one of the most volcanic regions of the earth; volcanic activity has gone on continuously from the formation of the island in the Tertiary period down to the present time.

Altogether 107 volcanoes are known to exist in Iceland, with thousands of craters, great and small.

In the same way in the year 1362 Oeraefajdkull, the loftiest mountain in Iceland (6424 ft.), swept forty farms, together with their inhabitants and live stock, bodily into the ocean.

Iceland, however, possesses no constantly active volcano.

In the middle of Iceland, where the geological foundation is tuff and breccias, large areas are buried under ancient outflows of lava, which bear evidences of glacial scratching.

The barometric pressure at sea-level in the south-west of Iceland during the period 1878-1900 varied between 30.8 and 27.1 in.

The culture of grain is not practised in Iceland; all bread-stuffs are imported.

It is bounded on the east by the North Atlantic, the Norwegian and Greenland Seas-Jan Mayen, Iceland, the Faeroe Islands and the Shetlands being the only lands between it and Norway.

The great auk, once common on the British coasts, those of Denmark, the east coast of North America, then restricted to those of Newfoundland, Greenland and Iceland, has been killed by man, and the same fate has overtaken the Labrador duck, the Phillip Island parrot, Nestor productus, and the large cormorant of FIG.