Iceland

Iceland is a big island far out in the sea.

It is near the top of the world, and winters are dark. Some mountains are volcanoes. Hot water bubbles up out of the ground. The capital city is called Reykjavík.

Iceland is an island country in the North Atlantic Ocean. The Arctic Circle nearly touches its northern tip, and its nearest neighbor in Europe, Scotland, is about 800 kilometers away. Greenland lies about 320 kilometers to the northwest, across the Denmark Strait.

Iceland sits right on top of a long underwater mountain chain called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, on the border between two giant plates of Earth's crust. That is why it has so many volcanoes: about 200. It also has more hot springs than any other country. Its capital is Reykjavík, and about 396,500 people lived in Iceland at the end of June 2026.

Iceland covers about 103,000 km² in the North Atlantic, roughly 800 km from Scotland and 320 km from Greenland across the Denmark Strait; its rugged coastline is more than 4,800 km long. Britannica describes it as a tableland broken by faults, with an average elevation of about 500 m, a quarter of the country below about 200 m (650 feet), and an uninhabited center.

The island lies on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the spreading boundary between North America and Europe. It is geologically young (its oldest rocks formed about 16 million years ago) and holds about 200 volcanoes; Britannica estimates that since 1500 about a third of Earth's total lava flow has come from Icelandic volcanoes. Statistics Iceland counted 396,500 residents at the end of the second quarter of 2026, 253,230 of them in the Capital region around Reykjavík.

Reykjavík is the biggest city in Iceland.

It is by the sea. Hot water from under the ground warms its houses. Not far away, a geyser shoots water high into the air. Big waterfalls roar over the rocks.

Reykjavík, the capital, stands where Iceland's first farm was built, more than 1,000 years ago. Its name means "Bay of Smokes." Today hot water from deep underground heats every home and building in the city. More than half of all Icelanders live in Reykjavík and the towns around it.

East of the capital, in the Geysir geothermal field, the geyser Strokkur shoots hot water into the sky. Nearby is Gullfoss, a waterfall 32 meters high. In the northeast, Dettifoss drops 44 meters, and in the south, Seljalandsfoss falls 65 meters.

Reykjavík ("Bay of Smokes") occupies the site of the island's first farmstead and is the seat of government and the national center of commerce, industry, higher education and culture; geothermal energy heats all of it. Statistics Iceland counted 253,230 people in the Capital region at the end of June 2026, close to two-thirds of the population. Akureyri, on the Eyja Fjord in the north, is the second center, a fishing and educational town.

Þingvellir (Thingvellir), east of Reykjavík, is where the Althing, an open-air assembly for all of Iceland, was founded in 930 and met until 1798; UNESCO inscribed the national park in 2004 for the assembly site, with fragments of about 50 turf-and-stone booths. Off the south coast, Surtsey, a World Heritage Site since 2008, is a new island built by eruptions from 1963 to 1967. Among its natural sights are the Strokkur geyser in the Geysir field and the waterfalls Gullfoss (32 m), Dettifoss (44 m) and Seljalandsfoss (65 m).

Iceland has fire and ice.

Fire comes from volcanoes. Ice comes from giant glaciers. The biggest glacier is called Vatnajökull. In some places, hot water and steam puff out of the ground.

About one-tenth of Iceland is covered by glacier ice, and about one-tenth by cooled lava. The biggest glacier, Vatnajökull, covered about 7,500 square kilometers in 2023 and is up to about 950 meters thick. Under the ice are volcanoes. When one erupts, melted ice can burst out in a sudden flood.

Volcanoes erupt often. In 2010, ash clouds from Eyjafjallajökull disrupted air traffic across northern and central Europe for days. The highest peak, Hvannadalshnúkur, is 2,110 meters tall. The warm Gulf Stream current keeps Iceland milder than you might expect: in Reykjavík the average temperature is about −0.5 °C in January and 11 °C in July.

Glacier ice and cooled lava each cover about a tenth of Iceland. Vatnajökull, the largest ice cap, covered about 7,500 km² in 2023 and is up to about 950 m thick; Vatnajökull National Park notes that it is still Europe's largest ice cap by volume, although it lost more than 15 percent of its volume during the last century. UNESCO's Vatnajökull National Park (2019) covers over 1,400,000 ha, nearly 14 percent of Iceland, with ten central volcanoes, eight of them beneath the ice; eruptions under the glacier cause jökulhlaups, sudden floods that build wide sandur plains. On the rim of Öræfajökull's caldera, Hvannadalshnúkur rises to 2,110 m, the country's highest peak (Icelandic Met Office).

Iceland has more hot springs and solfataras than any other country: alkaline springs in about 250 areas, and 19 high-temperature fields. The climate is maritime subarctic, shaped by the Gulf Stream and the colder East Greenland Current; Reykjavík averages 4 °C over the year, and annual precipitation ranges from 410 mm on northern plateaus to more than 4,100 mm on southern ice-capped slopes. Only about a quarter of the land has continuous plant cover.

Puffins have big, colorful beaks.

About half of all Atlantic puffins nest in Iceland. Foxes live there too. Many ducks swim on a big lake in the north. Salmon and trout swim in the rivers.

When the first settlers arrived, foxes were the only land mammals in Iceland. People later brought farm animals, and reindeer, which still live in the highlands of the northeast. There are no reptiles or amphibians at all.

Birds are everywhere. Many sea cliffs are packed with nesting birds, and about half of all Atlantic puffins in the world breed in Iceland. The Westman Islands, off the south coast, have the largest puffin colony on Earth. In the north, Lake Mývatn has the largest and most varied colony of ducks in Europe. Salmon and trout swim in the rivers, and the seas around Iceland are rich in fish.

Britannica notes that foxes were Iceland's only land mammals at the time of settlement. Settlers brought domestic animals and accidentally introduced rats and mice; reindeer were introduced later and are still found in the northeastern highlands, and American mink, imported for fur farming, became wild after 1930. Iceland has no reptiles or amphibians.

About half of all Atlantic puffins (Fratercula arctica) breed in Iceland, and the Westman Islands hold the world's largest puffin colony (Cornell Lab of Ornithology). After mink spread in the 1930s almost all mainland colonies disappeared, so most remaining colonies are on small offshore islands; in the south, warming waters have changed the supply of sandeels, causing almost complete breeding failure for more than a decade. Lake Mývatn's duck colony is the largest and most varied in Europe. Cod and capelin make up about two-thirds of the fish catch, and strict catch quotas from the late 1980s helped the cod stock recover in the late 1990s.

About 396,500 people live in Iceland.

They speak Icelandic. Swimming in pools warmed by the ground is popular. Many people knit and weave with Icelandic wool. Fish and smoked lamb are traditional foods.

About 396,500 people lived in Iceland in mid-2026, and almost one in five of them were citizens of other countries. The main language is Icelandic. It grew from Old Norse, the language of the first settlers, and it has changed so little that Icelanders today can still read their old stories, called sagas, written about 800 years ago.

Icelandic cooking is built around fish, along with dishes such as smoked lamb and skyr, a dessert made from cultured skim milk, served with fresh bilberries in summer. Swimming in naturally heated pools is popular, and so are chess, horse riding and handball. Icelandic wool, knitted or woven, is a well-known craft.

Statistics Iceland counted 396,500 residents at the end of June 2026; 71,130 of them (17.9 percent) were foreign citizens. Britannica describes the settlers who came from 874 as mostly of Nordic stock from Norway, with the rest largely Celtic, from Scotland and Ireland. Their Old Norse evolved into modern Icelandic, used throughout the country; Icelanders can still read the medieval sagas, written from the late 12th to the 13th century, without difficulty. More than two-thirds of the population belongs to the Evangelical Lutheran church, and there is freedom of religion.

Cuisine centers on fish: cod, haddock and gravlax, with hangikjöt (smoked lamb) and skyr, made from cultured skim milk. Sheep and dairy farming are the main kinds of farming, and greenhouses heated by geothermal water grow vegetables. Icelanders publish more than 1,000 book titles a year, swim in naturally heated pools, play chess and team handball, and keep crafts such as knitting in Icelandic wool, which has two kinds of fiber, one fine and insulating and the other long and water-repellent.