Icelandic Highlands

The Icelandic Highlands form the volcanic and glaciated interior of an island whose settled communities lived with recurring ash fall and climatic hardship. The wider country's political allegiance passed through the Norwegian and Danish crowns, and Lutheranism was imposed during the sixteenth-century Reformation. Denmark's trade restrictions later limited overseas exchange.

Within this setting the highlands' volcanic activity had consequences reaching far beyond the mountains themselves. The Laki eruption in 1783 devastated livestock and was followed by famine, remembered as the Mist Hardships. More than half the island's animals died, undermining the pastoral economy on which households depended.

Such disasters added to the effects of cold winters and disease, including the smallpox epidemic of the early eighteenth century. Despite repeated hardship, Icelandic communities maintained literary traditions in sacred poetry and rhymed narratives. The empty-looking interior was therefore part of the historical environment of farms around the island: glaciers, lava fields and volcanic ash influenced livelihoods, while distant royal and trading policies shaped the produce available for recovery.