{"id":3493,"date":"2014-08-06T16:34:03","date_gmt":"2014-08-06T16:34:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/?p=3493"},"modified":"2014-08-06T16:34:03","modified_gmt":"2014-08-06T16:34:03","slug":"green-iceland-icy-greenland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/2014\/08\/06\/green-iceland-icy-greenland\/","title":{"rendered":"Green Iceland, icy Greenland"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Image by Max Naylor on Wikimedia Commons. The three routes of the earliest founders of Iceland.<\/p><\/div>\n

By now I’m sure you’ve all seen that one meme that in all its simple beauty compares together a picture of Iceland and Greenland and their seemingly\u00a0illogical names. It’s still somewhat understandable why someone would want to call Iceland icy, after all on the winter part of the year its whiteness can easily rival that of Greenland’s, but who on their right mind would ever call Greenland with its massive glacier top green?<\/p>\n

Eir\u00edkur hinn rau\u00f0i \u00deorvaldsson<\/em> (Erik the Red, \u00deorvaldur’s son) would. But going straight to him and the reasons why he decided to settle Greenland and name it thus would be a huge historical leap so let’s start with the name that was there first, Iceland or \u00cdsland<\/em> as this country is called in Icelandic.<\/p>\n

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Image by Moyan Brenn on Flickr.com. Green Iceland is green indeed.<\/p><\/div>\n

The man who most often gets the credit for settling Iceland was called Ing\u00f3lfur Arnarson<\/em>, but though he was the first permanent settler mentioned in the Norse history books, he was not the first one to find the place nor, possibly, the first one to live here. Ari fr\u00f3\u00f0i \u00deorgilsson<\/em> mentions that at least one of Iceland’s islands, Papey<\/em>, was already settled by Irish monks (= papar<\/em>, hence the name Papars’\u00a0Island). There’s no way of telling whether this is true or false, but European history writing does know to tell of Thule, a land up north where summer nights are nightless. We cannot tell with any certainty whether Thule did mean Iceland in particular since the name has been also used for every Nordic country aside of Denmark and also for Faroe Islands, but it’s good to remember that many of those descriptions do fit Iceland well so it’s entirely possible other people had been here before the Norse came over.<\/p>\n

Why did they come over then? Why cross the Atlantic Ocean, a dangerous and uncomfortable journey that at best could last weeks and at worst months? History books claim the settlers were men with such fierce sense of freedom that they could not bend their will under that of king Haraldur H\u00e1rfagri<\/em>, Haraldur Fairhair, but alas the actual reason is far less glorious than that. Norway was simply running out of space and the men who\u00a0saw\u00a0no\u00a0future there were naturally tempted by this promise of an unsettled large island in the west.<\/p>\n

That’s why Ing\u00f3lfur was hardly the first, he happened to be written down in history as the first permanent settler because many of the previous ones found the land inhospitable and went away. There was Naddoddur<\/em> who found the island sometime around the 850’s and called the country Sn\u00e6land<\/em> (= Snowland) because of the snow peaked mountains he saw here. Gar\u00f0ar Svavarsson<\/em> from Sweden was the\u00a0second,\u00a0and he named the country Gar\u00f0arsh\u00f3lmi<\/em>, Gar\u00f0ar’s island.<\/p>\n

The next one was\u00a0Fl\u00f3ki Vilger\u00f0arson<\/em>, also known as Hrafna-Fl\u00f3ki<\/em> (raven Fl\u00f3ki). His trip turned disastrous when a long winter killed his cattle and he was forced to return to Norway, but not before he had vented his\u00a0disappointment by giving the country its name – Iceland!<\/p>\n