The first permanent settler in Iceland is usually considered to have been a Norwegian chieftain named Ingólfur Arnarson. According to Landnáma, he threw two carved pillars overboard as he neared land, vowing to settle wherever they landed. He then sailed along the coast until the pillars were found in the southwestern peninsula, now known asReykjanesskagi. There he settled with his family around 874, in a place he named Reykjavík (Cove of Smoke) due to the geothermal steam rising from the earth.
This very place would eventually become the capital and the largest city of modern 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 ofGarðar Svavarsson's men who stayed behind when Garðar returned to Scandinavia.
Ingólfur was followed by many more Norse chieftains, their families and slaves who settled all the inhabitable areas of the island in the next decades. These people were primarily of Norwegian, Irish and Scottish origin. Some of the Irish and Scots were slaves and servants of the Norse chiefs according to the Icelandic sagas and Landnámabók and other documents. Some settlers coming from the British Isles were "Hiberno-Norse," with cultural and family connections both to the coastal and island areas of Ireland and/or Scotland and to Norway.In 930, the ruling chiefs established an assembly called the Alþingi(Althing). The parliament convened each summer at Þingvellir, where representative chieftains (Goðorðsmenn or Goðar) amended laws, settled disputes and appointed juries to judge lawsuits. Laws were not written down, but were instead memorized by an elected Lawspeaker (lögsögumaður).
(19th-century depiction of a session of Alþingi). A short of Parliament pic below -Þingvellir, seat of Alþingi. A short of Parliuament house.
