Though centered around Japan, the film was also shot in such other countries as Guinea Bissau, Ireland and Iceland.

The Icelandic Commonwealth or the Icelandic Free State ( Icelandic: Þjóðveldið ) was the state existing in Iceland between the establishment of the Althing in 930 and the pledge of fealty to the Norwegian king in 1262.

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

On the Danish flag, the cross design, which represents Christianity, was subsequently adopted by the other Nordic countries ; Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Åland Islands and the Faroe Islands, as well as the Scottish archipelagos of Shetland and Orkney.

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.

Because of its graphic violence and terror, the original version of the movie was banned in several countries, including Finland, Germany, Iceland and Ireland.

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 ).

At that time, versions of the Prose Edda were well known in Iceland, but scholars speculated that there once was another Edda — an Elder Edda — which contained the pagan poems Snorri quotes in his book.

For centuries it was stored in the Royal Library in Copenhagen but in 1971 it was returned to Iceland.

It was also used in Scandinavia during the Middle Ages, but was subsequently replaced with dh and later d. Its use has survived in Iceland and the Faroe Islands.

The European nation that proved the exception to this however was the highly-literate Iceland, where a third of the 134 witch trials held here involved people who had owned grimoires.

The Great Auk was found in the cold North Atlantic coastal waters along the coasts of Canada, the northeastern United States, Norway, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Ireland, Great Britain, France, and northern Spain.

It was written in Old Norse in Iceland by the poet and historian Snorri Sturluson ( 1178 / 79 – 1241 ) ca.

It voyaged from Iceland to Bergen, Norway and was moved to Copenhagen, the University Library.

In Iceland, Keflavík was renowned as a rich source of musicians during the 1960s and 70s, and is therefore also known as bítlabærinn or " The Beatle Town ".

In the same year, the participating countries ( Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, West Germany, the United Kingdom, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United States ) signed an accord establishing a master financial-aid-coordinating agency, the Organization for European Economic Cooperation ( later called the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD ), which was headed by Frenchman Robert Marjolin.

He was later quoted as saying that he had the idea of the attempt to reach Moscow even before the departure, and he saw the trip to Iceland ( where he visited Hofdi House, the site of unsuccessful talks between the United States and the Soviet Union in October 1986 ) as a way to test his piloting skills.

There are few sources on Ole Rømer until his immatriculation in 1662 at the University of Copenhagen, at which his mentor was Rasmus Bartholin who published his discovery of the double refraction of a light ray by Iceland spar ( calcite ) in 1668, while Rømer was living in his home.

The fact that Pytheas lived centuries before the colonization of Iceland and Greenland by European agriculturalists makes them less likely candidates, as Thule was populated and its soil was tilled.

Thule was perhaps actually discovered in the 4th century BC but was lost, and then later reidentified by ancient explorers and geographers as Shetland, Iceland, Scandinavia, or even as nonexistent.

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

The United States joined Britain, France, Canada, Denmark, Portugal, Norway, Belgium, Iceland, Luxembourg, Italy, and the Netherlands in 1949 to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO ), the United States ' first " entangling " European alliance in 170 years.

Immigrants from Iceland then played on behalf of Canada and won the first ever Olympic medal in hockey.

Iceland became Europe's first modern republic, with an annual assembly of elected officials called the Althing, though only goði ( wealthy landowners ) had the right to vote there.

In the Viking colony of Iceland, an extraordinary vernacular literature blossomed in the twelfth to 14th centuries, and many traditions connected with the Viking Age were written down for the first time in the Icelandic sagas.

" This saga is set soon after Iceland converted to Christianity and identifies Yule with Christmas: " No Christian man is wont to eat meat this day Eve, because that on the morrow is the first day of Yule ," says she, " wherefore must men first fast today.

Despite the extensive intervention of central banks, including partial and total nationalization of major European banks, the crisis of sovereign debt became particularly acute, first in Iceland, though as events of the early 2010s would show, it was not an isolated European example.

* October 17 – WWII: The destroyer is torpedoed and damaged near Iceland, killing 11 sailors ( the first American military casualties of the war ).

* June 29 – Vigdis Finnbogadottir is elected president of Iceland, making her the first woman democratically elected as head of state.

* Fire and plague insurance first become available in Iceland, and the first documented outbreaks of influenza there happens.

* Ísleifur Gissurarson, first Bishop of Iceland

* 850 – 875: The first Norse settlers arrive on Iceland.

* February 16 – Knattspyrnufélag Reykjavíkur ( the first football club in Iceland ).

* January 28 – Iceland becomes the first country to legalize abortion on medical grounds.

* July 5 – Ísleifur Gissurarson, the first bishop in Iceland, dies while giving mass in Skálholt church.

* Ingólfur Arnarson arrives as the first permanent Viking settler in Iceland, settling in Reykjavík ( probable date ).

It has also been suggested that it was Heruli who first colonized Iceland or were assimilated among the people of Uppland initiating the drastic changes there in the 6th century.

* March 24 – Gissur Einarsson, first Lutheran bishop in Iceland

* The first plague and fire insurance policy is issued in Iceland.

According to the Sagas, the first European to see Canada was Bjarni Herjólfsson, who was blown off course en route from Iceland to Greenland in the summer of 985 or 986 CE.

Viking explorers first discovered and settled in Iceland in the 9th century, on their way from the Faroe Islands.