Iceland: the edge of the Viking world

As Tora and her crew prepare to set sail for Iceland in the next Shieldmaiden installment, it feels appropriate to write about the island itself. When Vikings spoke of going to the land’s end, this was what they meant.

First sightings

According to the sagas, Iceland was first sighted by Naddodd from Norway, blown off course on his way to the Faroes. Naddodd actually appears in our Viking Ventures series: in Home, Ulv discovers that Naddodd is his uncle and tries to sell him a gem.

Later, the island was explored by men like Flóki Vilgerðarson, nicknamed Hrafna-Flóki — Raven-Flóki — because he used ravens to find land. He released them at sea, and when one flew off towards the horizon instead of returning to the ship, he followed it to Iceland.

The land of the landless

By the late 9th century, Iceland was being settled in earnest, mainly by Norwegians escaping Harald Fairhair’s tightening grip on power. One of the grievances that drove them away was Fairhair’s decision to strip away the old inheritance rights to land. For generations, farms had been divided among sons; that system gave free farmers their independence. Harald ended it, and to many Norwegians this was not just politics — it was an attack on their families, their traditions, and their freedom.

So they left. For them, Iceland represented a harsh but unclaimed land where they could start anew, far from any king’s reach. By the end of the 10th century, somewhere around 30,000 people lived there, scattered across valleys, fjords, and windswept plains.

Life was hard. Winters were long, storms unforgiving, and even driftwood was precious. Homes were built from turf and stone, livestock meant survival, and every voyage across the sea was a gamble.

A society without a king

And yet Iceland became one of the most independent and literate societies in the Norse world.

They had no king. Instead, they governed themselves through the Althing, the great national assembly where laws were recited aloud, disputes settled, and alliances forged. Established around 930 AD, it’s still regarded as the oldest surviving parliament in the world. Not bad for a windswept island of farmers at the edge of the map.

Iceland also became home to some of the most famous Vikings of all time. Thorvald and his son Eirik Raude — Erik the Red — made their lives there before sailing further west to Greenland, and eventually Vinland. In that way, Iceland was more than a frontier; it was the springboard for the Viking discovery of North America.

The keeper of memory

Just as important: Iceland remembered.

With no kings to glorify, the Icelanders preserved sagas, poetry, and law codes that tell us more about Viking life than almost anywhere else. The sagas written down in Iceland centuries later preserved the feuds, the voyages, and the heroes that defined the age. Without those Icelandic scribes, much of what we know about the Viking world might have vanished entirely.

Back to the books

So when Tora and her crew approach those volcanic shores in The Shieldmaiden’s Crossing, they’re not just landing in a new place. They’re stepping into a land of freedom, fire, and fate.

Some of this was clear to Tora and her crew before they sailed. Not all of it. Let’s just say they’re heading for some hard times.

And if you want the story of the king whose hard rule sent all those settlers across the sea in the first place, that’s Harald Fairhair.