The Republic of Iceland ( /ˈaɪslənd/ (help·info)) (Icelandic Icelandic ( íslenska ) is a North Germanic language, the language of Iceland. Its closest relatives are Faroese and certain Norwegian dialects such as Telemark dialect and Sognamål: Ísland or Lýðveldið Ísland (names of Iceland There are numerous different names for Iceland, which have over the years appeared in poetry or literature); IPA: [ˈislant]), is an island country An island country is a country whose primary territory consists of one or more islands or parts of islands[citation needed]. As of 2008, forty-seven (appoximately 25%) of the world's countries are island countries located in the North Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions; with a total area of about 106.4 million square kilometres . It covers approximately one-fifth of the Earth's surface. The first part of its name refers to the Atlas of Greek mythology, making the Atlantic the "Sea of Atlas". The oldest known mention of this name.^[2] It has a population of about 320,000 and a total area of 103,000 km².^[3] Its capital A capital is the area of a country, province, region, or state, regarded as enjoying primary status; although there are exceptions, a capital is almost always a city which physically encompasses the offices and meeting places of the seat of government and fixed by law. Alternate terms include capital city and political capital; the latter phrase and largest city is Reykjavík Reykjavík (Icelandic pronunciation: [ˈreiːkʲaviːk]) is the capital and largest city of Iceland. Its latitude at 64°08' N makes it the world's most northern national capital with the exception of Nuuk, Greenland. It is located in southwestern Iceland, on the southern shore of Faxaflói Bay. With a population of around 120,000 (and over 200,000, home to approximately 50% of the national population. Located on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a mid-ocean ridge, a divergent tectonic plate boundary located along the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, and the longest mountain range in the world. It separates the Eurasian Plate and North American Plate in the North Atlantic, and the African Plate from the South American Plate in the South Atlantic. The Ridge extends, Iceland is volcanically A volcano is an opening, or rupture, in a planet's surface or crust, which allows hot magma, ash and gases to escape from below the surface. The word volcano is derived from the name of Vulcano island off Sicily which in turn, was named after Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and geologically active The geothermal gradient is the rate at which the Earth's temperature increases with depth, indicating outward heat flows from a hot interior. Away from tectonic plate boundaries, it is 25-30°C per km of depth in most of the world. Strictly speaking, geo-thermal necessarily refers to the Earth but the concept may be applied to other planets. The on a large scale; this defines the landscape. The interior mainly consists of a plateau In geology and earth science, a plateau, also called a high plain or tableland, is an area of highland, usually consisting of relatively flat terrain. A highly eroded plateau is called a dissected plateau. A volcanic plateau is a plateau produced by volcanic activity characterised by sand fields A desert is a landscape or region that receives almost no precipitation. Deserts are defined as areas with an average annual precipitation of less than 250 millimetres per year, or as areas where more water is lost by evapotranspiration than falls as precipitation. In the Köppen climate classification system, deserts are classed as BWh (hot, mountains and glaciers A glacier is a perennial mass of ice which moves over land. A glacier forms in locations where the mass accumulation of snow and ice exceeds ablation over many years. The word glacier comes from French via the Vulgar Latin glacia, and ultimately from Latin glacies meaning ice, while many big glacial rivers A river is a natural watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing toward an ocean, a lake, a sea or another river. In a few cases, a river simply flows into the ground or dries up completely before reaching another body of water. Small rivers may also be called by several other names, including stream, creek, brook, rivulet, and rill; there is no flow to the sea through the lowlands. Warmed by the Gulf Stream The Gulf Stream, together with its northern extension towards Europe, the North Atlantic Drift, is a powerful, warm, and swift Atlantic ocean current that originates in the Gulf of Mexico, exits through the Strait of Florida, and follows the eastern coastlines of the United States and Newfoundland before crossing the Atlantic Ocean. The process of, Iceland has a temperate climate In geography, temperate or tepid latitudes of the globe lie between the tropics and the polar circles. The changes in these regions between summer and winter are generally mild, rather than extreme hot or cold. But in continental areas, such as central North America the variations between summer and winter can be extreme. In regions traditionally relative to its latitude Latitude, usually denoted by the Greek letter phi gives the location of a place on Earth (or other planetary body) north or south of the equator. Lines of Latitude are the horizontal lines shown running east-to-west on maps (particularly so in the Mercator projection). Technically, latitude is an angular measurement in degrees (marked with °) and provides a habitable environment and nature.

According to Landnámabók Landnámabók is a medieval Icelandic manuscript describing in considerable detail the settlement ("landnám") of Iceland by the Norse in the 9th and 10th century A.D. It begins with Ingólfur Arnarson's original settlement in Reykjavík and his claims on land to the north, west, east and south. It then moves on to describe the, the settlement of Iceland The settlement of Iceland began in the second half of the 9th century AD, when Norse settlers migrated across the North Atlantic. Their reasons for migrating may be traced to a shortage of arable land in Scandinavia, and civil strife brought about by the ambitions of the Norse king Harald the Fair-haired. Unlike Britain and Ireland, Iceland was began in AD 874 when the Norwegian chieftain Ingólfur Arnarson became the first permanent Norwegian 83% of the population of Norway are members of the Christian Evangelical Lutheran Church of Norway. Norway is highly secularized, and only about 10% of the population attend religious services more than once a month settler on the island.^[4] Others had visited the island earlier and stayed over winter. Over the next centuries, people of Nordic The Nordic countries make up a region in Northern Europe and the North Atlantic which consists of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and their associated territories which include the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland. Scandinavia is sometimes used as a synonym for the Nordic countries, although within the Nordic countries the terms origin settled in Iceland. Until the 20th century The 20th century of the Common Era began on January 1, 1901 and ended on December 31, 2000, according to the Gregorian calendar, the Icelandic population Lutheran majority with Catholic, Asatruar, non-religious and other minorities relied on fisheries and agriculture, and was from 1262 to 1918 a part of the Norwegian Norway (pronounced /ˈnɔrweɪ/ ; Norwegian: Norge (Bokmål), Noreg (Nynorsk) or Norga (North Sami)), officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a country in Northern Europe occupying the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, as well as Jan Mayen and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard under the Spitsbergen Treaty. The majority of the country, and later the Danish Denmark (pronounced /ˈdɛnmɑrk/ ; Danish: Danmark, pronounced [ˈd̥ænmɑɡ̊], archaic: [ˈd̥anmɑːɡ̊]) is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe and the senior member of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries; southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and it is bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark monarchies. In the 20th century, Iceland's economy and welfare system developed quickly, and in recent decades the nation has implemented free trade Free trade is a type of trade policy that allows traders to act and transact without interference from government. According to the law of comparative advantage the policy permits trading partners mutual gains from trade of goods and services in the European Economic Area The European Economic Area was established on 1 January 1994 following an agreement between member states of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), the European Community (EC), and all member states of the European Union (EU). It allows these EFTA countries to participate in the European single market without joining the EU and diversified from fishing to new economic fields in services The tertiary sector of economy is one of the three economic sectors, the others being the secondary sector (approximately manufacturing) and the primary sector (extraction such as mining, agriculture and fishing). The general definition of the tertiary sector is producing a service instead of just an end product, in the case of the secondary, finance Finance is the science of funds management. The general areas of finance are business finance, personal finance, and public finance. Finance includes saving money and often includes lending money. The field of finance deals with the concepts of time, money and risk and how they are interrelated. It also deals with how money is spent and budgeted and various industries An industry is the manufacturing of a good or service within a category. Although industry is a broad term for any kind of economic production, in economics and urban planning industry is a synonym for the secondary sector, which is a type of economic activity involved in the manufacturing of raw materials into goods and products. Iceland is a free market economy A market economy is an economy based on the division of labor in which the prices of goods and services are determined in a free price system set by supply and demand. This is often contrasted with a planned economy, in which a central government determines the price of goods and services using a fixed price system. Market economies are contrasted with low taxes compared to other OECD The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (in French: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, OCDE) is an international organisation of 30 countries that accept the principles of representative democracy and free-market economy. Most OECD members are high-income economies with a high HDI and are regarded as countries.^[5] The country maintains a Nordic welfare system The Nordic model refers to the economic and social models of the Nordic countries . This particular adaptation of the mixed market economy is characterized by more generous welfare states (relative to other developed countries), which are aimed specifically at enhancing individual autonomy, ensuring the universal provision of basic human rights providing universal health care Universal health care is health care coverage for all eligible residents of a political region and often covers medical, dental and mental health care. Typically, costs are borne in the majority by government-funded programs and post-secondary education Free education is education that is provided at no cost to students. Although primary school and other comprehensive or compulsory education is free in many countries, the Nordic countries are all examples of countries where education is mostly free all the way up (but often not including books (from primary) and a number of administrative and for its citizens.^[6]

Icelandic culture is based on the nation’s Norse Norse is an adjective relating things to ancient Scandinavia, that is Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland during the early Middle-Ages heritage and its status as a developed The term developed country is used to describe countries that have a high level of development according to some criteria. Which criteria, and which countries are classified as being developed, is a contentious issue and there is fierce debate about this. Economic criteria have tended to dominate discussions. One such criterion is income per and technologically advanced society. Cultural heritages include traditional Icelandic cuisine, the nation’s poetry, and the medieval Icelandic Sagas The Sagas of Icelanders —many of which are also known as family sagas—are prose histories mostly describing events that took place in Iceland in the 10th and early 11th centuries, during the so-called Saga Age. They are the best-known specimens of Icelandic literature which are internationally renowned. In recent years, Iceland has been one of the wealthiest and most developed nations in the world. In 2007, it was ranked as the most This is a list of all countries by Human Development Index as included in a United Nations Development Program's Human Development Statistical Update released on December 18, 2008, compiled on the basis of data from 2006. It covers 177 U.N. member countries , along with: Hong Kong (SAR of China) and PA-governed territories. Fifteen U.N. member developed country The Human Development Index is an index used to rank countries by level of "human development", which usually also implies whether a country is a developed, developing, or underdeveloped country in the world by the United Nations' Human Development Index The Human Development Index is an index used to rank countries by level of "human development", which usually also implies whether a country is a developed, developing, or underdeveloped country and the fourth This article includes a list of countries of the world sorted by their gross domestic product , the market value of all final goods and services from a nation in a given year. The GDP dollar estimates presented here are calculated at market or government official exchange rates most productive country The gross domestic product or gross domestic income (GDI) is a basic measure of a country's economic performance and is the market value of all final goods and services made within the borders of a nation in a year . It is a fundamental measurement of production and is very often positively corrolated with the standard of living. . GDP can be per capita.^[7][8] In 2008, the nation’s banking system systematically failed, causing significant economic contraction In economics, a recession is a general slowdown in economic activity over a sustained period of time, or a business cycle contraction. During recessions, many macroeconomic indicators vary in a similar way. Production as measured by Gross Domestic Product , employment, investment spending, capacity utilization, household incomes and business and political unrest that lead to early In parliamentary systems, a dissolution of parliament is the dispersal of a legislature at the call of an election parliamentary elections Prior to the election, the Progressive Party changed its EU accession policy from opposition to support. The Independence Party is also expected to address this issue at its party congress. When the Alliance started to assemble the new minority government, its leader stated that there should be a referendum on EU membership on 30 May 2009, and making Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir is an Icelandic politician and the current Prime Minister of Iceland. She had previously been Iceland's Minister of Social Affairs and Social Security from 1987–1994 and 2007–2009. She has been a member of the Althing (Iceland's parliament) for Reykjavík constituencies since 1978, winning re-election on eight the country's prime minister. She is the first openly gay head of government in modern times.^[9]

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