THE FIRST HUMANS

The first inhabitants of Iceland were Irish monks. In the latter half of the eighth century a few monks seeking extreme isolation in which to pursue their solitary lifestyle arrived on the island. According to later written accounts, Norwegian sailors blown off course sighted the island, but the time was not yet right for territorial expansion by the Scandinavians.

HARALD FAIRHAIR

Large-scale colonization of Iceland, mostly by Norwegians, began around 870. (The Irish monks quickly left.) A common, romantic tradition holds that colonization was the result of events in Norway. Germanic society had always been organized around clan leaders (the jarl, English "earl"); the ambitious Harald vowed to rule all of Norway. (He also vowed not to cut his hair until he succeeded, hence the epithet "Fairhair" (hárfagr).) By tradition, he nominally secured his goal by winning the sea battle of Hafrsfjord in 872. The freedom-loving people of the Trondheim refused to accept him, and emigrated to Iceland. In fact, the battle actually was fought in 890, long after colonization had begun. The real motive for settlement lay in more prosaic issues of economics and population.

COLONIZATION

Early colonization amounted to a fifty year land-grab. By around 920 most of the useable land had been claimed and the great families of Iceland were on their way to financial success. Habitation was feasible only along the coasts (an arm of the Gulf Stream warms Icelandic coastal waters slightly) and the interior of the island was (and to this day still is) essentially uninhabited. At first labor depended in part on slaves, many of whom were brought from Ireland, but the broken Icelandic landscape was not conducive to slave management and in a century or so the institution faded away. Icelanders kept their family ties with Norway, and any young man of means would go viking, which could mean journeying as far as Constantinople. Thus Icelanders were familiar with the outside world, but were sufficiently isolated to maintain some of the old traditions.

CHRISTIANIZATION

There had been a few Christians among Iceland's early settlers, and the religion was tolerated from the beginning. (Icelandic law simply required that a Christian chapel be built out of sight of travellers on established roadways.) In the year 1000 the entire country officially converted, but the old traditions persisted, assisted in part by isolation from dogmatic church officials on the continent. With Christianization came vernacular writing (c. 1100). Several monasteries became major repositories of vernacular texts (against the pleasure of their continental superiors) but literacy was surprisingly high in medieval Iceland, and wealthy landowners also had private manuscript collections. Most of the mythic and heroic narratives were recorded in the period between 1150 and 1250.