Iceland

Iceland was settled from about 874, mostly by Norse chieftains and their households, along with people of Celtic origin, many of them enslaved. In 930 the settlers established the Althing, a general assembly at Þingvellir, now regarded as the oldest still-functioning parliament in the world. The medieval sagas, written down in the thirteenth century, record this era in prose of remarkable quality.

Iceland came under the Norwegian and then the Danish crown, and endured centuries of hardship: volcanic eruptions (the 1783 Laki eruption caused famine and killed a fifth of the population), plague, and a trade monopoly. A nineteenth-century independence movement led to home rule, then sovereignty in 1918 in a union with the Danish king, and finally a fully independent republic in 1944, declared while Denmark was under Nazi occupation.

Post-war Iceland modernised fast on cod and, later, aluminium smelting and finance. It fought the "Cod Wars" with Britain over fishing limits, joined NATO (but never the EU), and in 2008 suffered one of the most spectacular banking collapses of the financial crisis — its banks had grown to many times the size of the economy. Recovery came partly through a tourism boom so rapid that visitor numbers went from a few hundred thousand to well over two million a year within a decade.

Icelanders combine a frontier self-reliance with a strong welfare state and among the world's highest measures of gender equality and social trust. Belief in the "hidden people" (huldufólk) is a gently held folk tradition; a genuine and widely shared value is respect for the land, which visitors are expected to match by staying on marked paths and roads.

Literature runs deep: Iceland publishes more books per head than almost anywhere, the "Christmas book flood" (jólabókaflóð) is a real phenomenon, and the sagas are living culture rather than museum pieces. Music punches far above the country's weight, from Björk and Sigur Rós to a dense local scene.

The swimming pool — outdoor, geothermally heated, open year-round, with hot pots for soaking and chatting — is the true social centre of every town, more so than the pub. Knitting the lopapeysa wool sweater, foraging, and weekend trips to a summer house are common pastimes.

About two-thirds of Iceland's roughly 390,000 people live in the Reykjavík capital area; Akureyri in the north is the only other town of any size. The interior highlands are uninhabited, and settlement clings to the coast, often as single farms or small fishing villages.

The economy rests on fishing and fish products, tourism (now the largest export earner), aluminium smelting powered by cheap hydro and geothermal energy, and a growing tech and data-centre sector. Nearly all electricity and home heating comes from renewable sources. Housing costs in Reykjavík and the pressure of visitor numbers on infrastructure and nature are current concerns.

Daily life is shaped by the extreme light cycle — bright nights in June, dark mornings and afternoons in December — the weather, the pool, and, for many, a second job or a small-scale farming or fishing sideline.

Traditional Icelandic food was about preserving protein through long winters: wind-dried fish (harðfiskur) eaten with butter, smoked and salted lamb (hangikjöt), skyr (a thick, strained fresh-milk product, technically a cheese), dense dark rye bread baked slowly in geothermal heat, and, at the midwinter þorrablót feast, fermented shark (hákarl), singed sheep's head, and ram's testicles — mostly a test of nerve now.

Everyday eating is simpler and good: lamb (free-ranging and much of it organic), cod, haddock, and Arctic char, langoustine soup in the Höfn area, and the ubiquitous pylsur, a lamb-and-pork hot dog with fried and raw onion, ketchup, sweet mustard, and remoulade, best from the Bæjarins Beztu stand in Reykjavík.

Kleina (twisted doughnuts), cinnamon buns, and liquorice in many forms are the sweets. Brennivín, a caraway-and-cumin schnapps nicknamed "Black Death," is the national spirit; Icelandic craft beer and gin have taken off since a full beer ban was lifted only in 1989.

The Golden Circle, a short loop from Reykjavík, packs in Þingvellir — where the Mid-Atlantic Ridge surfaces and the old parliament met — the erupting Strokkur geyser, and the two-tiered Gullfoss waterfall. The capital itself has the Hallgrímskirkja church, the Harpa concert hall, the Perlan nature exhibition, and whale-watching and puffin trips from the harbour.

The Ring Road (Route 1) circles the island in about 1,330 kilometres, past the south coast's waterfalls (Seljalandsfoss, Skógafoss), the black beach and basalt columns at Reynisfjara, the glacier tongues of Vatnajökull — Europe's largest ice cap — and the Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon and its "Diamond Beach." The east fjords, Lake Mývatn's craters and mud pots in the north, thundering Dettifoss, and the whale-watching town of Húsavík complete the circuit.

Beyond the road are the Snæfellsnes peninsula with its glacier-topped volcano and Kirkjufell, the remote and cliff-lined Westfjords, the highland trekking of Landmannalaugar and the Laugavegur trail, and — for those who time it — the northern lights from autumn to spring and the sites of the recent Reykjanes peninsula eruptions near Grindavík. The Blue Lagoon and the many local geothermal pools are the classic way to end a cold day.