The land on the Arctic Circle is divided among eight countries: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, the United States ( Alaska ), Canada, Denmark ( Greenland ), and Iceland ( where it passes through the small offshore island of Grímsey ).

* 1980 – Vigdís Finnbogadóttir is elected President of Iceland and becomes the world's first democratically elected female head of state

Abalone is also farmed in Australia, Hawaii, Canada, Chile, France, Iceland, Ireland, Mexico, Namibia, New Zealand, South Africa, Thailand, and the United States.

The arctic fox has a circumpolar range, meaning that it is found throughout the entire Arctic, including the outer edges of Greenland, Russia, Canada, Alaska, and Svalbard, as well as in Subarctic and alpine areas, such as Iceland and mainland alpine Scandinavia.

The arctic fox is the only native land mammal to Iceland.

The town centre is home to a number of high street multiples, including: Greggs, Argos, Specsavers, Wilkinson's, Shoe Zone, Superdrug, Costa Coffee, JJB Sports, Cash Generator, GAME, Poundland, Timpson, Althams Travel, Ladbrokes, Paddy Power, Claire's, Grainger Games, Post Office, Thomas Cook, Thomson, Burton, Holland & Barrett, Dorothy Perkins, Blockbuster, WHSmith, H Samuel, Iceland, Phones 4U, Boots Opticians, Card Factory, Boots, Store Twenty One, Poundworld, Peacocks, B & M Bargains, Wetherspoons and a mix of other shops.

Baldr's death is portrayed in this illustration from an 18th century Iceland ic manuscript.

Freyja's necklace Brisingamen features prominently in Betsy Tobin's novel Iceland, where the necklace is seen to have significant protective powers.

It is widespread practice in the media in the UK ( and elsewhere ) to use the word Europe to mean continental Europe ; that is, " Europe " excludes Britain, Iceland and Ireland ( though the term is sometimes used to refer to the European Union ).

Danish is a mandatory subject in school in the Danish crown territories of the Faroe Islands ( where it is also an official language after Faroese ) and Greenland ( where, however, the only official language since 2009 is Kalaallisut ), as well as the former crown holding of Iceland.

Danish was an official language in Iceland until 1944 but is today still widely used and is a mandatory subject in school.

In addition, Malta was considered an island of North Africa for centuries, while Iceland, though nearer to Greenland ( North America ), is also generally included in Europe.

Expression of belief in huldufólk or " hidden folk ", the elves that dwell in rock formations, is common in Iceland.

Maximum magnitudes along many normal faults are even more limited because many of them are located along spreading centers, as in Iceland, where the thickness of the brittle layer is only about 6 km.

Little is known about them, except that they used the Faroes ( and Iceland ) as a hermitage.

This description " eastman " ( from Norway ) has to be seen together with the description " westman " ( From Ireland / Scotland ) which is to be found in local place-names such as " Vestmanna-havn " i. e. " Irish-mens harbour " in the Faroe Isles, and " Vestmannaeyjar " i. e. " Irish-mens islands " in Iceland.

* The nation itself is the second northernmost country in Europe after Iceland, third place if one considers the Norwegian overseas-territory of Svalbard, an island in the Arctic Ocean, part of Europe.

Finland is the only Nordic country to have joined the Eurozone ; Denmark and Sweden have retained their traditional currencies, whereas Iceland and Norway are not members of the EU at all.

Greenland is located between the Arctic Ocean and the North Atlantic Ocean, northeast of Canada and northwest of Iceland.

In Iceland, the hate speech law is not confined to inciting hatred, as one can see from Article 233 a. in the Icelandic Penal Code, but includes simply expressing such hatred publicly:

Following the restoration of independence from the Soviet Union, Russia was one of the first nations to recognize Estonia's independence ( the first country to do so was Iceland on 22 August 1991 ).

Only one leaf of the manuscript survived and it is now kept in the National and University Library of Iceland.

* The Nordic countries, the northwestern European countries of Scandinavia ( Denmark, Norway, Sweden ), as well as Iceland and Finland ; or a native of one of the Nordic countries

If one sails west from Norway one encounters Iceland.

On his return, he meets and marries Gudrid, one of the survivors from a ship which has made land at Herjolfsnes after a difficult voyage from Iceland.

Davidson notes that there is no mention of a sacred tree at Þingvellir in Iceland yet that Adam of Bremen describes a huge tree standing next to the Temple at Uppsala in Sweden, which Adam describes as remaining green throughout summer and winter, and that no one knew what type of tree it was.

Although one formation theory originally proposed since the 1980s by Bohan-Henry and collaborators suggests that drumlin creation by a catastrophic flooding release of highly pressurized water flowing underneath the glacial ice, the recent retreat of a marginal outlet glacier of Hofsjökull in Iceland provided the opportunity for direct study of a drumlin field with formation of > 50 drumlins ranging from in length, in width, and in height.

Although Norway's trade policies have long aimed at harmonizing its industrial and trade policy with the EU's, a new referendum in 1994 gave the same result as in 1972, and Norway remains one of only two Nordic countries outside the EU, the other being Iceland.

Only one person ever held the title of Earl ( or Jarl ) in Iceland.

Although it allows films from small countries like Iceland or Bosnia and Herzegovina to get recognized by the Academy by putting them on an equal footing with major releases from established filmmaking nations, it also forces countries to exclude many motion pictures because they are forced to select only one film.

Iceland remained for a long time one of the world's last larger islands uninhabited by humans ( the others being New Zealand and Madagascar ).

According to Landnámabók, Iceland was first discovered by Naddoddr, one of the first settlers in the Faroe Islands, who was sailing from Norway to the Faroe Islands, but lost his way and drifted to the east coast of Iceland.

It is recognized, however, that Ingólfur Arnarson may not have been the first one to settle permanently in Iceland — that may have been Náttfari, one of Garðar Svavarsson's men who stayed behind when Garðar returned to Scandinavia.

" This refers to Sturla Þórðarson and his sons Þórður, Sighvatur, and Snorri, who were one of two main clans fighting for power over Iceland, causing havoc in a land inhabited almost entirely by farmers who could ill-afford to travel far from their farms, across the island to fight for their leaders.

The most notable new religious community in Iceland, and in 2003 the fastest-growing one, is the Ásatrúarfélagið, a legally recognized revival of the pre-Christian religion of Iceland.

As a result, Iceland was rated as having one of the world's highest levels of economic freedom as well as civil freedoms.

In 2007, Iceland topped the list of nations ranked by Human Development Index and was one of the most egalitarian, according to the calculation provided by the Gini coefficient.

Iceland is however the only NATO member which maintains no standing army, although there is no legal impediment to forming one and Icelandic services perform the operations fellow NATO allies relegate to their standing armies.

* Iceland has many famous hot springs, including the one feeding the Blue Lagoon spa in Grindavík, Iceland, and Europe's highest flow rate hot spring Deildartunguhver.

There are two examples: Iceland, which is the world's second largest volcanic island, and Jan Mayen — both are in the Atlantic.

In October 2007 an Arctica islandica clam, caught off the coast of Iceland, was discovered to be at least 405 years old, and was declared the world's oldest living animal by researchers from Bangor University ; it was later named Ming.

One of the world's most sparsely populated countries, the republic of Iceland is almost completely coterminous with the main island – the world's 18th largest in area and possessing almost all of the country's area and population.

The rest of the world's population is divided between Canada, Ireland, Faroe Islands and Iceland, with small numbers in France ( they are often seen in the Bay of Biscay ), the Channel Islands, Norway and a single colony in Germany on Heligoland.

The GIUK gap was particularly important to the British Royal Navy, as any attempt by northern European forces to break into the open Atlantic would have to do so either through the heavily defended English Channel, which is also one of the world's busiest seaways, or through one of the exits on either side of Iceland.

Set aside as a public resort in 1932, the first formal hotel facilities were opened in the late 1940s and they are, today, the world's second-most visited mineral hot springs, after the ones in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Nanoarchaeum equitans, an archaeal microorganism containing the world's smallest known genome, was discovered by Stetter in 2002 in a hydrothermal vent off the coast of Iceland.

Iceland has committed to becoming the world's first hydrogen economy by the year 2050.

According to Guinness World Records Slættaratindur is the object of the world's longest sight line, 550 km from Vatnajökull, the largest glacier in Iceland.

The GIUK gap is particularly important to the Royal Navy, as any attempt by northern European forces to break into the open Atlantic would have to do so either through the heavily defended English Channel which is also the world's busiest shipping lane or through one of the exits on either side of Iceland.

The Icelandic Phallological Museum () in Reykjavík, Iceland, houses the world's largest collection of penises and penile parts.

In the late 1990s deCODE proposed to create the world's first population-wide genomic biobank by collecting data from the entire population of Iceland, which numbered 270, 000 at the time.

The hunt is currently practiced in six countries: Canada, where most of the world's seal hunting takes place, Namibia, Greenland, Iceland, Norway and Russia.

* June 27: Same-sex marriage becomes legal in Iceland ; Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, the country's prime-minister, became the world's first head of government to enter a same-sex marriage.