People

Population (July 2006): 304,334 (2.8 per sq. km).

Modern Icelanders at a Folk Festival
Source: Iceland Tourist Board

There is still controversy as to the motives of the first widespread Nordic settlement in Iceland. Some sources say that the Norsemen were fleeing the tyranny of King Harald Finehair, who was uniting the whole of Norway under his command at the time. Others put this movement in the context of the general Viking expansion of the period, plausibly linked to population pressure in Scandinavia and increasing scarcity of farming land or to serious setbacks of the Vikings in Norse colonies in the British Isles.

However, the core of the settlers were thus Nordic people, coming mostly from Norway and Nordic settlements in the British Isles. The Scandinavians from the British Isles brought with them people of Celtic origin, so there are traces of Celtic influence in, for example, some of the Eddaic poems and in a few personal and place names. This blending of people and cultures, in which influences from all over Scandinavia and other regions where Scandinavians had settled, may explain in part why the Icelanders, alone of all the Nordic peoples, produced great literature in the Middle Ages. Since the settlement of Iceland was mostly complete by the middle of tenth century, immigration of foreign elements has been minimal until the past few decades.

Around the year 1100, the population, then entirely rural, is estimated to have been about 70 - 80,000. Three times in the 18th century it sank below 40,000 but by the year 1900 it had reached 78,000. It had passed the 100,000 mark in 1925; in 1967 it reached 200,000 and in 1999 the population was 279,000. The population of the capital area in 2003 was 181,917. The average life expectancy for men is 78.7 years and for women 82.5 years - one of the world's highest averages.

In 1880 there were only three towns in Iceland, where 5% of the population lived. By 1920 about 43% of the population lived in towns and villages with more than 200 inhabitants. By 1984 there were 23 towns and 42 villages where 89.2% of the population lived, while only 10.8% lived in rural districts and 1998 there were 30 towns and 94 other municipalities in Iceland.

Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe with an average about three inhabitants per square km. Almost four-fifths of the country are uninhabited and mostly uninhabitable, the population being concentrated in a narrow coastal belt, valleys and the southwest corner of the country.