Setting the scene

The modern visitor to Iceland from abroad usually approaches the island from the air, very differently and much more easily than the first settlers did as they approached an unknown land by sea on board small ships, bringing with them some family members, their animals and some precious household possessions, probably including some numinous object representing the power of their gods, like the first settler Ingólfr's high-seat pillars. Travelling today towards the almost suburban sprawl of Reykjavík from the airport at Keflavík along a metalled road and in a comfortable bus, the visitor may find it hard to imagine the privations that faced the first inhabitants of Iceland and that, indeed, continued for many of their descendants down to the twentieth century. Yet a glance outside the bus window tells the story: the landscape is in most respects as rugged, barren and striking now as it was at the time of the first settlement in the late ninth and early tenth centuries AD, and the weather is also much the same, with rain, snow or sleet, depending on the season of the year, occasional sun, and wind, almost always wind blowing.