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I always found it interesting that Iceland has no indigenous population (like the inuit), prior to Scandinavian and British immigration. Like, what if it's beca
by johnyzee 3y ago
I always found it interesting that Iceland has no indigenous population (like the inuit), prior to Scandinavian and British immigration. Like, what if it's because it is regularly buried in lava or something.
- jeofken 3y agoWhat makes the Icelandic people not indigenous?
- lnsru 3y agoThey’re living there not long enough compared to the rest of Europe? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settlement_of_Iceland https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settlement_of_Iceland
- netsharc 3y agoProbably because they're Vikings who came from Scandinavia around the 8th-9th century, whereas the Inuit/other indigenous people have lived in their region since the BC times. Iceland seems to have only been habitable with the "modern" technology. I also find it fascinating, it's a place where there's no "colonializers" and "colonized"...
- meheleventyone 3y agoNot strictly true as Iceland was ruled by Denmark for a long time and only became fully independent in 1944.
- kwk1 3y agoNot sure exactly which point you're refuting, but for a long time Vikings and Danes were synonymous, as preserved in terms like Danegeld or Danelaw.
- meheleventyone 3y agoThat Denmark treated Iceland as a colony (and very poorly for a long time) isn’t exactly news despite there being common lineage all over Western Europe.
- northwest65 3y agoI think the implication is, that like the Maoris in New Zealand, they're only faux indigenous, as they arrived on boats. Probably doesn't matter much as there is no grift to be had.
- walthamstow 3y agoYou could kind-of say the same thing about the Anglo-Saxons, it's interesting where we choose to draw the line sometimes
- eesmith 3y agoLava doesn't cover all of Iceland anywhere near enough to regularly bury things on that timescale. There was arable land and forest when the Norse came. There is some evidence that Irish monks were on Iceland before the Norse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Iceland#Irish_monks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Iceland#Irish_monks Were there another non-European population earlier, they would need to get there by sea. I would expect archeological evidence of sea-worthy ships, which we do for the Norse. It is a long way from Greenland to Iceland - far greater than the ~35 km from Ellesmere Island to Greenland, which is how we think the Dorset and Thule people got to Greenland. (And that was on the other side of Greenland.)
- Bjemslev 3y ago[flagged]
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- gojomo 3y agoWere your ancestors there before the immigration the parent post alludes to? Are you a Huldufólk with internet access?
- Bjemslev 3y ago[flagged]
- sokka_h2otribe 3y agoHi, I'd suggest looking it up.. Paraphrasing what I remember from a museum.... "We mostly had sheep. The danish king was hard to work with and always let us down. Every 150-200 years things started looking up, then there was a volcanoes. Some percentage survived on boats, then the majority starved over the winter bc all the sheep had died." I am sure there are many many more depths, but this struck me as considerably dark history tbh
- gojomo 3y agoThe 1783 Laki eruption killed roughly a quarter of Iceland's human population via famine & majority of its livestock via poisoning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laki
- delano 3y agoThanks for the mention. That was an interesting read!
- euroderf 3y agoNot sure if it's cause & effect, but forests were mostly cut down. The largest "forest" nowadays is 740 hectares (7.4 km2) (2.86 mi2).