ABSTRACT
Iceland was the last country in Europe to be settled. Major sources like Ari fróòi’s (“the learned”) Islendingabók, from about 1130, and Landnàmabók, from about the same time but preserved in much later versions, provide only one possible interpretation of the oldest history. Settlement is said to have begun about 870, and these oldest sources were not written down until 250 years later. No traces of human habitation have been found that can with certainty be dated before the middle of the 9th century.
