A Somewhat Brief History of Iceland
According to Icelandic tradition, Naddoddr, a sailor traveling from Norway to the Faroe Islands got lost and drifted to the east coast of Iceland. Naddoddr named the country Snæland (Snowland). Garðar Svavarsson later also accidentally drifted to the coast of Iceland. He discovered that the country was an island and named it Garðarshólmi and stayed for the winter at Húsavík. The first to deliberately sail for Garðarshólmi was Flóki Vilgerðarson. He set sail in order to find Gardarsholm and took three ravens to help him find his way. Thus, he was nicknamed Raven-Floki (Hrafna-Flóki).
Floki sailed with Thorolf, Herjolf and Faxe. Near the Faroes, Floki set the ravens free. The first raven flew back on board, the second flew up in the air and back on board, but the third flew in front of the ship. Thus, they followed the third raven west until they spotted a large bay. Floki set up a winter camp; as the summer was very good Floki was ill-prepared for the cold winter that followed. Waiting for the spring Floki hiked up the highest mountain above his camp. From there, he spotted a large fjord full of drift ice. Thus, he named the entire country "Iceland".When Floki and the other men returned to Norway, they were asked about the newly found land. Floki believed it to be worthless. Herjolf believed that the land had both good and bad qualities. Thorolf claimed that butter was smeared on every straw on the land that they had found. Thorolf was thus nicknamed Thorolf Butter.
Later, Ingólfur Arnarson, had instigated a blood feud in his homeland, Norway. He and his foster-brother Hjörleifur first went on an exploratory expedition to Iceland, and stayed over winter. A few years later, Ingolfur returned to settle the land with more men. When they approached the island, Ingólfur cast his high seat pillars overboard and swore that he would settle where they drifted to shore. He then sent his slaves Vífill and Karli to search for the pillars. They found his foster-brother Hjörleifur murdered, and all his men gone. Ingólfur buried his foster-brother and slew the murderers, who had fled to the Westman Islands.
As winter approached, Ingólfur's slaves found the pillars by Arnarhvol. In the summer of 870 A.D. he built a farmstead in Reykjavik and claimed all the land west of the rivers of Ölfusá, Öxará and Brynjudalsá. He was followed by many more Norse chieftains, their families and slaves who settled all the inhabitable areas of the island in the next decades. These people were primarily of Norwegian, Irish and Scottish origin, the Irish and Scots being mainly slaves and servants of the Norse chiefs. Iceland was fully settled within 60 years, which likely means that all territory had been claimed by various settlers.
In 930, the ruling chiefs established an assembly called the Althing. The parliament convened each summer at Þingvellir, where the chieftains (Goðar) argued over laws, settled disputes and appointed juries to judge lawsuits. Laws were not written down, but were instead memorized by an elected Lawspeaker. The Icelandic justice system was conducive to blood-feuds which would eventually completely destabilize the country. One of these Althings decided that Iceland should convert to Christianity en masse to prevent feuds on religious grounds, and by 1105, Iceland had its own bishop.
The wandering spirit of the Norse and their constant feuding brought them further afield as well. Greenland was first sighted by Gunnbjörn Ulfsson when he was blown off course sailing from Norway to Iceland in the early 10th century. The first Greenlander chieftain, Erik Raudi was exiled from Iceland for a period of three years, due to a murder. He sailed to Greenland, where he explored the coastline and claimed certain lands as his own. He then returned to Iceland to bring people to settle on Greenland. In 985 AD, 25 ships with settlers left with Erik. The following year Bjarni Herjólfsson set sail from Iceland to Greenland to visit his father. His ship was blown off course by a storm and thus accidentally discovered the east coast of North America. He then afterwards told the story and sold the ships to Lucky Leif Eiríksson. With wood being in very short supply in Greenland, the settlers there were eager to explore the riches of this new land. Some years later Leif Eiríksson explored this coast, and established a short-lived colony on a part of the coast that he called Vinland.Three more abortive colonization attempts followed, under Leif’s brother Thorvald, a Norwegian called Thorfinn Karlsfeni and later his Leif’s murderous sister Freydis.
In the early 1140s, three expeditions under Umar abu Khattab, Mohammed ibn Umar and Rothriq ibn Hussayn al-Quti operating from Ghent brought down the Kingdom of Denmark. The Danes fled the Muslim occupation in numbers, most heading for Novgorod, Norway or York, but some also to Iceland and a handful to Greenland thence. However, most of the ones who fled to Iceland were poor, and soon entered the service of the rich, established Godar clans in Iceland. The Novgorodians backed by the Emperor in Constantinople invaded Denmark in 1159, wresting it from Muslim control, but already by 1184 they themselves fought several bloody conflicts over the new territory. The fighting and the forced introduction of the Greek Rite was driving away more Danes. The new arrivals kept up the steady trickle of colonists westward but also strengthened the Godars even more. By 1220 Iceland was in the grips of a 42-year long civil war between the six dominant clans, with the Sturlungs emerging the strongest due to Norwegian support. Perhaps they would have remained loyal vassals to the Norwegian king, if history didn’t play another card.
The Swedish seizure of Denmark attracted many returning Danes who’d have had enough of the wars in Iceland, and prompting some clans to seek the help of Sweden instead of Norway, prolonging the struggle further, with two men (Gissur Thorvaldsson and Flosi Asbjornsson) claiming the be Earls of Iceland, one as vassal to Norway, the other to Sweden. Meanwhile, the Lithuanians and Novgorodians were back in control of Denmark by 1267, and this time ruled until 1334. England, at the time, was under the rule of a Danish-descended king, and the 1267 migration headed mostly for York, rather than faraway and bloodsoaked Iceland. When the Swedish finally regained control of Denmark, the final wave of migrants left the country. Most of them were either Russian settlers or Orthodox Danes or the Lubek Germans who were part of the administration and so headed East. However, three important men – Kristian Jonassson, a formerly wealthy merchant and guildsman, as well as two Lithuanian officials who governed Fyn and Aarhus left for Iceland with their retinues and servants, guided by an Icelandic pilot.
The last two, Vladimir Fyodorovich and Vsevolod Veniaminovich, second cousins to the Philathropenos Tsar of Lithuania finally tipped the balance in the internecine struggle in Iceland. Unlike the previous waves of emigrating Danes, the last was lead by wealthy men who brought a good number of warriors with armour and more importantly, horses, which, although unable to breed, were key in establishing initial superiority of the side that the new migrants joined. The Kristianssons, Visvaldssons and Valdemarssons would eventually become very important clans in Iceland, and sided with pro-independence minded Godar against the pro-Norwegian ones, while the Swedish crown abandoned support of the Asbjornssons. Their descendants also formed the basis of the Orthodox minority that remained prominent in Iceland until the Reformation. The most prominent of the pro-Norwegian partisans were exiled from Iceland and told to sail Westward instead of back to Norway, to prevent further Norwegian involvement.
In Greenland, Alf Gissursson and Olaf Bardarsson fell afoul of the dominant Leifsson clan, and were exiled to Vinland permanently. Theirs was the first successful permanent settlement due to its enforced nature. However, when another group of settlers under Inge Six Fingers started a nearby settlement, the two groups fell to fighting, and the Olaffsons slaughtered Inge’s party. A ship visiting to buy timber under Konrad Valdemarsson learned of the event, and the following spring three ships were sent by the Icelanders to punish the murderers, only to find them gone. A larger expedition was staged for the same purpose by Bjorn Thorfinsson, a descendant of Lucky Leif. While searching for the fugitives (who built their own ships and sailed to another location in Vinland) he found a few spots where a new colony could be developed. He soon moved there, especially since the Greenland colony was fast failing due to the increasingly harsher winters and the incursions of the Inuit who had just migrated into mainland Greenland. The Western Settlement of Greenland was last heard of from in 1350, and in 1352 an expedition under Visvald Arasson was unsuccessful in locating any survivors. Eirik’s settlement was maintained as a refitting station on the way to Vinland, but no longer played much importance. The Norwegians tried to enforce their domination over Iceland in 1388, but were repulsed in a small naval skirmish off Reykjanes.
In 1402 plague arrived in Iceland, then Greenland, and then Vinland, greatly reducing the numbers, but wreaking total havoc with the Skraelings that the Icelanders traded with. The side effect of the plague was that most coasts were no longer contested. In 1419 explorers mapped Markland (Labrador) and southern Vinland, and by 1450 settlers spread there as well. Tales of the wondrous new lands spread to Europe (although in truth Arabic-inspired tales from Denmark’s libraries were often reinterpreted by local writers like Snorri Sturlasson (1178-1241) and tacked onto the tales of the deeds of historical characters) and Iceland was experiencing a steady influx of colonists who used it as a transit point for Vinland. Between 1462 and 1488 the Kings of Norway, Scotland and Sweden, as well as the High King of Ireland, Grand Duke of Brittany and finally the King of England sent explorers to map Iceland’s possessions in the New World. Despite the Icelanders’ best attempts, they were successful and eventually overtook the small country in colonizing the new areas. Nonetheless, it is to Iceland’s intrepid travelers that the honour of connecting Europe and Columbia (the Northern of the New World continents) must belong.
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So this is instead of an update since I'm still working on things. But it is a preview of what the Mod is like and a retrospective look at one of the smaller corners of the CK map.
Cheers.
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