It is generally accepted that Norse people crossed the North Atlantic to settle Iceland in the second part of the ninth century. The causes of the migration are unclear; later in the Middle Ages, Icelanders tended to blame political unrest on the ambitions of the Norwegian king Harald I of Norway, but contemporary historians place more emphasis on more fundamental causes, like a lack of fertile land in Scandinavia. Iceland was uninhabited area that could be claimed without causing confrontation with the local population, unlike Great Britain and Ireland.


The years 870 and 874 have historically been regarded as the initial years of settlement based on slendingabók by Ari orgilsson and Landnámabók, chronicles from the twelfth and thirteenth century that provide a wealth of detail about the settlement. The information concerning the settlement provided by these sources is, however, mainly untrustworthy, and more recent research has tended to emphasize archaeological and genetic evidence.

As a matter of tradition, the years 874 to 930 are regarded as the Icelandic Age of Settlement.

The Viking colonisation of Iceland in the ninth and tenth centuries is described in great detail in the medieval Icelandic manuscript Landnámabók. Naddodd, who was traveling from Norway to the Faroe Islands when he got lost and drifted to Iceland's east coast, is credited with discovering the island, according to Landnámabók. Around what is now the Icelandic town of Reyarfjörur, Naddodd arrived across the shore of a region with a bay and mountains.

He ascended a mountain in search of fireplace smoke, but he found no evidence of any human presence. Naddodd made the decision to carry on to the Faroe Islands, but as he approached his boat, it began to snow, prompting him to give the area the name Snowland.
The island was later known as Iceland following the settlement of Hrafna-Flóki Vilgerðarson.

Naddodd was the probable father of Ann Naddodsdóttir from Shetland. Naddodd has distant relations to Erik the Red and his son, Leif Erikson.

Ingólfr Arnarson, in some sources named Bjǫrnólfsson, is commonly recognized as the first permanent Norse settler of Iceland, together with his wife Hallveig Fróðadóttir and foster brother Hjörleifr Hróðmarsson. According to tradition, they settled in Reykjavík in 874.

Written sources consider the age of settlement in Iceland to have begun with settlement by Ingólfr Arnarson around 874, for he was the first to sail to Iceland with the purpose of settling the land. Archaeological evidence shows that extensive human settlement of the island indeed began at this time, and the whole country was occupied within a couple of decades towards the end of the 9th century. Estimates of the number of people who migrated to the country during the Age of Settlement range between 4,300 and 24,000,with estimates of the number of initial settlers ranging between 311 and 436.

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